The Restaurant Self-Coaching Program

How the program works

The program has four parts that build on each other. You start by coaching yourself with a weekly review. Then you add a regular one-on-one with each person who reports to you. Next comes a simple way to give feedback during a shift. Finally, you use a 30-day check-in with every new hire. You can start any of them this week, and none needs special software or a budget.

The program assumes you have limited time. Every piece fits around service, and the whole thing takes about two hours a week for an owner or general manager with four or five direct reports.

Part 1: Coach yourself with a weekly review

Pick a fixed 30 minutes each week when the restaurant is quiet. Monday afternoon works for many places. Sit down with last week's numbers and a notebook, and answer the same five questions every time:

1. What were my sales, covers and check average, and how do they compare with the same week last year?
2. What were my prime cost and labor percentage? (The prime cost calculator takes five minutes.)
3. What is the one thing that went best, and why?
4. What is the one problem I keep seeing, and what have I done about it?
5. What will I do differently this week, and how will I know if it worked?

Write the answers down. The value is in seeing four or eight weeks of answers side by side. Patterns jump out: the Tuesday that's overstaffed every week, the complaint you've written down three times without acting on it.

Once a month, add one more question: what feedback have I received, from guests, staff or a peer, and what am I doing with it? This is where a trusted outside voice helps. A fellow owner you have coffee with once a month can play the role a paid coach would.

Part 2: Weekly one-on-ones with your managers

A one-on-one is a short, regular meeting with each person who reports to you. It's the single most useful coaching habit a restaurant leader can build, and the one most often skipped because "we talk every day anyway." Talking during service is not the same. During service, you talk about the shift. In a one-on-one, you talk about the person.

Keep it to 20 or 30 minutes, at the same time each week or every other week, somewhere you won't be interrupted. Use the same agenda each time:

• Their agenda first. Ask what's on their mind and what's getting in the way. Listen more than you talk.
• One win. Name something specific they did well since the last meeting.
• One thing to work on. Only one. Describe what you saw, with a date, and what doing it well looks like.
• Commitments. What they'll do, what you'll do, and by when.
• A closing check. Anything about the schedule, pay, equipment or another person you should know about.

The one-on-one meeting template puts this on one page. Start the next meeting by reviewing last week's commitments, including your own. If you keep missing yours, your managers will stop taking theirs seriously.

Part 3: Feedback during the shift

Not everything can wait for the weekly meeting. For in-the-moment coaching, keep it short and private, and focus on what you saw rather than on character:

• Describe what happened: "Table 12 waited eight minutes for a greeting."
• Say why it matters: "They'd already started looking at their phones."
• Ask, then agree: "What happened? What would help next time?"

Positive feedback works the same way and should happen more often. "The way you handled the birthday table, checking in before the cake came out, was exactly right" teaches more than "great job tonight."

Avoid correcting someone in front of guests or the rest of the team unless safety requires it. And if you find yourself giving the same correction to the same person for the third time, it belongs in the one-on-one, written down.

Part 4: The 30-day check-in for new hires

Many of the hourly employees who leave a restaurant do it in the first weeks, often for reasons a manager could have fixed. A short check-in at day 30 catches most of them. Ask:

• Is the job what you expected when you were hired?
• Is your schedule what we agreed?
• Who has been most helpful in training you?
• What's one thing that would make the job easier?
• Is there anything you're unsure how to do?

Then act on at least one answer within a week. If the schedule doesn't match what was promised, fix it or explain why. The turnover cost calculator shows why this half hour is worth it.

Coaching managers to coach

Once your own one-on-ones are steady, teach your managers to run them with their shift leads and key staff. Sit in on one or two, then let them run it alone and debrief afterward. In your own one-on-one with each manager, ask one question every week: "Who did you coach this week, and how did it go?"

That question changes behavior. Managers who know they'll be asked start looking for coaching moments.

Keeping it going

The program fails in the same way every time: a busy week cancels the one-on-ones, then the next week too, and within a month the habit is gone. Protect the time. If you must move a meeting, reschedule it the same week. If you go a month without your own weekly review, start again with the next Monday; you don't need to catch up on what you missed.

Keep notes, too. A simple dated log of coaching conversations, wins and commitments makes follow-up easy and gives you facts if a performance problem later needs a formal response. The article on documenting your interactions covers what to write and how.