When guests search “restaurants near me,” they’re not choosing the best restaurant, they’re choosing the one with the most reviews and the highest rating.

That's why in this podcast, I break down why Google reviews are one of the biggest profit levers in the restaurant industry and how most restaurant owners are leaving massive money on the table by ignoring them. With food costs, labor costs, and rent all skyrocketing, hoping guests just “show up” is no longer a strategy. Reviews drive traffic, trust, and sales and the restaurants that understand this are winning.

I’ll show you exactly how to build a simple system to generate more five-star reviews, without being awkward, pushy, or hurting the guest experience. We walk through mapping the guest journey, training your team to elevate hospitality at every touchpoint, and implementing a repeatable review process that can quadruple your reviews in months.

This is how you turn one guest into three, widen your margins through sales (not cuts), and build a restaurant that’s resilient in today’s economy. If you’re serious about growing your restaurant and playing to win, this is a system you can’t ignore.

After creating training systems for over 300 restaurants and spending more than 10 years building restaurant training programs for groups and corporations, I’ve seen exactly where restaurant training breaks down, and why so many teams struggle to perform consistently.

In this live training, I break down the two biggest reasons restaurant training fails: underdeveloped training that creates chaos and overdeveloped training that becomes impossible to execute.

Most restaurants rely on unclear, unstructured, and unintentional training...shadowing someone for a few days and hoping for the best. This approach maximizes trial and error, burns guests, creates inconsistency, and leaves new hires guessing.

On the other end of the spectrum, overly complex training systems overwhelm teams, require constant micromanagement, and collapse the moment leadership isn’t present.

The most successful restaurant training lives in the middle ground: simple, intentional, and crystal clear. Training that’s easy to teach, easy to learn, and easy to execute creates buy-in from staff and leaders alike. When training is simple, performance improves, guest experience increases, reviews go up, and revenue compounds over time.

So, build simple but highly effective restaurant training systems, because training is the biggest lever to profitability, and brands like IKEA win by making complex things feel easy. If you want better staff performance, stronger leadership, happier guests, and a restaurant that actually scales, this is a must-watch.

Hospitality is not a soft skill or a “nice to have”, it is the most profitable marketing strategy successful restaurants use!

After working with and studying top-performing restaurant owners, one thing is clear: the most successful restaurants build their brand, culture, and long-term growth around hospitality, not social media ads or gimmicky marketing.

Hospitality starts with the owner’s mindset and becomes the foundation for everything the guest experiences.

In this podcast, I share real examples of a family-focused restaurant that stays packed seven days a week by combining high-quality food with a strong hospitality culture. Owners need to understand when employees feel valued and trained, it shows in how they treat guests, handle mistakes, and create loyalty that drives repeat business and positive reviews.

Most restaurant owners overspend on marketing while underinvesting in staff training, even though front-of-house teams directly control guest retention, reviews, and word of mouth. Guests must go through the experience to get to the food, and if hospitality breaks at any point, even great food loses value. The most profitable restaurants focus first on hospitality systems and training, then use marketing to amplify a strong foundation instead of trying to fix a broken one.