I am still incredibly grateful for my recent guest post on tipping. It inspired my response that discussed the economics of tipping. It also raised a few other interesting points that I am now learning are common misconceptions about restaurants. For people who have never worked in a restaurant, these misconceptions can easily be mistaken […]
Tag Archives | Restaurant Manager

Leadership: Empowering Others
Provide the power and watch your staff come to life. “If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled ‘subordinates,’ then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.” -Dee Hock You have two choices as a manager. You can force every staff member to do things as you would do them or […]

Leadership: Creating A Shared Goal
Each person climbs the mountain for their own reason “Leaders don’t force people to follow-they invite them on a journey.” -Charles S. Lauer The fundamental question behind the desire to manage rather than lead is, “How can I get people to do what I want them to do if they do not want to do it?” […]

The Keys To Leadership
Several times on this blog I have referred to the fact that you cannot manage servers. This is always followed up by the idea that you have to lead them instead. Managing servers is very much like trying to herd cats. I think this is a fairly easy concept to grasp. The difficulty in putting […]

Aspirational Dining Defined
I am a Mac guy. This means only the occasional interruption for updates from Microsoft. These are most often for Word for Macs. Yet in none of these updates have they added to my spell check dictionary words like “Barack Obama, Al Qaeda, or Facebook.” If they do implement this change they can use this […]
- The Greatest Customer Complaint Response Ever September 23, 2010
- Why Not To Date Co-Workers August 14, 2010
- Serving Sober October 14, 2010
- My Response: 25 Things Chefs Never Tell You September 16, 2010
- My New Blogroll February 4, 2011
- The IRS Did Not Ban Automatic Gratuities January 1, 2014
- Introducing Best Restaurant Blogs April 15, 2013
- JJ’s February 20, 2013
- Tips For Proposing At A Restaurant February 12, 2013
- Do I Have To Tip? January 21, 2013
- Abel Perez: I am a server and this helped me alot. Thank you...
- MikeQ: Great industry stories, David. You wear so many h...
- MikeQ: What a lucky day it was when I found your blogs, D...
- MikeQ: Damn, David ... your new design makes The Majestic...
- David: That is a good idea I hadn't thought of. I am no...
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About The Author
David Hayden was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He took his first serving job in 1996. Since that time, he has worked for over a dozen different restaurant companies. He has held both hourly and salaried positions at independent and corporate restaurants. He has waited on over 100,000 guests and trained hundreds of servers. He has been named "Best Server in Kansas City" the last three years by the local weekly paper.