Jim Knight, former Hard Rock Cafe executive and now a renowned author and speaker, shares his insights on creating a rockstar team and a vibrant culture in the restaurant industry. In this episode, Jim discusses the importance of engaging employees, building strong relationships, and fostering a sense of belonging to enhance the guest experience.

Key Highlights:

Creating a Culture of Engagement (1:05)

“The biggest misconception is that culture is about perks; it’s really about the people.” – Jim Knight

Jim emphasizes that a strong company culture is driven by people and their connections. He believes that when employees feel valued and engaged, they can provide an outstanding guest experience.

The Role of Training and Development (4:15)

“Without the right training, you’re setting people up for failure.” – Jim Knight

Jim discusses how proper training and ongoing development are critical to ensuring employees have the tools they need to succeed. He advocates for clear expectations and support to empower teams to excel.

Importance of Leadership in Hospitality (7:45)

“Great leaders create great cultures; it’s that simple.” – Jim Knight

Jim highlights the impact of effective leadership on restaurant culture. He shares how leaders should prioritize communication and relationship-building to foster a supportive environment that drives guest satisfaction.

Aligning Values with Business Strategy (10:22)

“When your values align with your business strategy, magic happens.” – Jim Knight

Jim explains how aligning company values with business practices can create a cohesive and motivated team. This alignment not only improves employee morale but also enhances the overall guest experience.

A Special Thank You (14:10)

Jim expresses his gratitude to his mentors and team for their influence and support throughout his journey in the restaurant industry.

To follow Jim Knight and learn more about his work, visit Jim Knight’s website.

Transcript

00;00;00;04 – 00;00;22;14

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation and Operations and Guest Recovery Platform for Multi-unit Restaurants. That gives you all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions.

00;00;22;15 – 00;00;47;03

Zack Oates

Learn more at Ovation ABC.com. And today, I am so excited. We have Jim Knight with us who spent over 20 years of Hard Rock Cafe and has gone on to have a rock star career as a prolific author public speaker. He is a Guy Fieri meets Tony Robbins, a beautiful blend. It is the perfect combo. It’s like you didn’t know that you needed a peanut butter and pickle sandwich until you tried it.

00;00;47;06 – 00;01;05;09

Zack Oates

That is what Jim Knight is like. You’re like Guy Fieri and Tony Robbins, and you see him and you’re like, I get it. I love it. We met when we were speaking together at Kathleen Woods event in New York. And Jim, get this, he spoke at the event. He flew down to Florida. Was it?

00;01;05;12 – 00;01;06;05

Jim Knight

Yup. Yup.

00;01;06;05 – 00;01;23;17

Zack Oates

Orlando, Florida, to speak at another event. Flew back to New York to finish up the event. Anyway, so he’s a hustler, incredible speaker. And I really, really enjoyed. And I was like, Jim, I have your my podcast. And he was kind enough to come and grace us with his presence. So Jim, welcome to the podcast.

00;01;23;19 – 00;01;48;09

Jim Knight

Man Well, first off, thank you for inviting me and all the super kind words. It is good. I mean, I will start with just saying I was in awe of finally meeting a lot of great restaurant founders that were at that Founder’s Growth Summit. But I had known of you, you and I had never met the first time that we had met that I knew of you and I knew your brand that was lucky enough to meet your dad that day, which is was a real hoot as well.

00;01;48;09 – 00;02;04;28

Jim Knight

But, you know, I don’t mind the comparison between the Guy Fieri. What did you say, Tony Robbins I’m like, Yeah, I’ll take either of their modified now would be cool. But these days I really am resigned to just making peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. So that’s my life now. But honestly, thank you so much for having me on the show.

00;02;04;28 – 00;02;05;29

Jim Knight

This means a lot.

00;02;06;02 – 00;02;23;12

Zack Oates

Yeah, well, it’s amazing because I love your whole concept of how do you create a team that rocks, How do you create a culture? And maybe before we kind of jump, but I do want to talk about how this connects to the guest experience, but kind of give us a little bit about your theory. What do you speak about?

00;02;23;15 – 00;02;43;23

Jim Knight

Yes, I mean, you’re already hitting on it right now, I think, because of my music degree when I was in college, the fact that I was a middle school teacher for six years. But definitely there’s no doubt, like you said, the two decades I has been at Hard Rock International, which to me is probably even though they struggle in some areas, is one of the greatest brand in the history of brands.

00;02;43;23 – 00;03;03;25

Jim Knight

And so I was lucky enough to be there during some very tough but phenomenal times as well. And if you know anything about that particular company, their attention to detail, their sense of urgency, their ability to get the staff that these hard rockers to fall madly in love with them. But then also they parlayed that over to the guest.

00;03;03;25 – 00;03;28;10

Jim Knight

I mean, they’re treating guests like they’re true rock stars. And it’s easy to do, I guess, if it’s in a music environment and there’s cool stuff on the walls and it’s loud and crazy and fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it really is about this relationship that I think almost every single restaurant tour or you would like to think that he or she have hired the right people to develop this emotional attachment with their customers.

00;03;28;10 – 00;03;48;18

Jim Knight

And so although I will probably be forever known about, you know, at least in my industry, the culture guy, I speak quite a bit, not just on organizational cultures, but on customer service, on building rock star teams, on leadership. So of course, are all branded. You already started saying a culture that rocks Service at Rock’s leadership. The Rock’s building a rock star team.

00;03;48;20 – 00;04;06;26

Jim Knight

I’ve used every iteration of the word rock and roll that you can probably think of, but that’s the game. I mean, it’s really, I guess is some of it soft skills, if you have to use those words. But I do get a chance to dabble in the things that I have some expertise and definitely some experience. I don’t think those things are going away.

00;04;06;26 – 00;04;15;05

Jim Knight

Everybody could get better with their culture, with their service, with their leadership, and surrounding yourself with an army of giants to go out there and fulfill the mission that you want them to do.

00;04;15;12 – 00;04;36;00

Zack Oates

And I think that is something that’s so powerful because one of the things we talk about is the employee experience cannot exceed the guest experience. And I actually remember in Hard Rock Cafe when I was a little kid, that’s where I learned the YMCA. Yeah. And, you know, I remember our waiters getting like on a chair and doing the YMCA and then grabbing my arms and teaching me how to do the YMCA.

00;04;36;03 – 00;04;55;29

Zack Oates

And it was like one of those moments of I think about that quite a bit. And I was just so young. It was like one of my very first memories. What a powerful experience, because they trained and got the right people there. And so when you look at the guest experience, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

00;04;56;02 – 00;05;29;22

Jim Knight

Well, you’re already hitting on it, and I may have even said it coming right out of the gate. It really is about the humans. It’s the people. I guess there’s a litany of things that you could do. And I’ve taught creating a new service program. And here are the tactical nuts and bolts that you could do. But at the end of the day, if I hired somebody who is just completely gaga about being around other people, being a servant leader and other humans, if I had somebody who had the juice running through their veins to say, I know that I can rock this person’s face off in this short period of time that I have,

00;05;29;24 – 00;05;55;15

Jim Knight

if I could get more of those people, it’s got to completely blow the roof off the joint. When it comes to the experience, I still got to pay attention to product. I got to pay attention to the atmosphere in the environment. I got to pay attention to the price per value. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the end of the day, I think by a landslide and all the work that I ever did with the National Restaurant Association, all the data I would ever see proved that service trumps everything.

00;05;55;22 – 00;06;15;14

Jim Knight

It trumps product price, convenience team, you name it. And so when I look at service, what’s the root cause? What’s the common denominator? It’s all about human behavior. And so, you know, it sucks for, you know, an entrepreneur, a restaurant tour, a general manager when they’re out there looking because some of that stuff is really hard to train.

00;06;15;15 – 00;06;40;23

Jim Knight

You can do it if there’s some raw commodity there, but it’s probably easier if I can just hunt for them. They’re out there in the public domain. They’re probably working for somebody else right now. But you got to go out there and have the eyeball constantly looking. Who is the most interesting? Perhaps a little bit irreverent, unpredictable, authentic person I can find to put them into my world because I know that unique people create unique experiences.

00;06;40;23 – 00;07;03;07

Jim Knight

So when you ask me the broad question about guest experience all day long, it’s going to be who I surround myself with. Who do I go out there and hire? Because if I hire some lip sinker, they’re going to be revealed there. You want to be a master, just one to the motions to put in the time and cut corners and punch the time clock and go out and do whatever they’re going to do on their own time.

00;07;03;07 – 00;07;34;15

Jim Knight

But if I can find the right people that are so completely passionate about the business as close as I can, to me, being the owner of the thing, they become brand ambassadors. They will talk about you, they will get more people to come in. They’ll probably attract more people like them. So I think until we get into cloning, you’re yeah, well, they’re in mind for some people but at the heart of the guest experience and listen, I’ll put a bunch of stuff in my book I’ll talk about a lot of things in my talk, but you’re going to hear a red thread throughout the whole entire thing.

00;07;34;22 – 00;07;44;06

Jim Knight

It is about the humans. If I get the right people, maybe I just start with a couple rock stars. I think that I could probably produce some world beating results.

00;07;44;09 – 00;08;09;12

Zack Oates

And I think in theory that makes a lot of sense. Now there’s the reality of number one, I’m already squeezed on margins right now. I mean, my prime costs are hurting. My end of day profit is single digits. My traffic count is down. I’ve taken price as much as I can. How do I afford more people? And then from the tactical side, how do I train the people I have?

00;08;09;17 – 00;08;25;12

Zack Oates

How do I like, create the culture that rocks, create the kind of culture that let someone get up on a chair and teach a kid how to do YMCA? How do you work with what you got? If you can’t afford the A-plus talent.

00;08;25;16 – 00;08;42;24

Jim Knight

You have the toughest industry to be in. Is that because of the margins? I mean, you really have to have a love for it. I don’t think people go and tell you I can’t do anything else. I think they really love the industry and they want to make a go at it. And some people want to do multi-level nations and some are mom and pop and they’re just they want to try and crush it with their one.

00;08;42;24 – 00;09;01;06

Jim Knight

It doesn’t matter to me. What I learned is that you look at a panel and it’s so easy for us to measure all the different things that jump off of a panel. I can see when a numbers off, whether it’s cost of sale or labor cost or food production leverage, I can make some adjustments on that where I think we falter.

00;09;01;06 – 00;09;20;29

Jim Knight

And there are some companies out there like black box intelligence who used to be part of people report. And it’s exactly the way I think there is a people report if you actually look at the people that you have currently on board, here’s where I think you could afford to actually not necessarily bring on more people. I know that’s not your intent when you worded it that way.

00;09;20;29 – 00;09;41;23

Jim Knight

I’m saying have the right people, I think probably will spend more money there. Monumental pain in the butt. You might have to do some customized benefits. You’re going to have to love them some more. You’re going to provide them some more development. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that stuff has. But I think if you could reduce turnover, turnover in my mind is almost the root of all evil in the restaurant industry.

00;09;41;23 – 00;09;59;00

Jim Knight

If I were to sit down, let’s just say 5%, there’s a ton of money that’s out there that I could put into the rock stars. Am I going to have the perfect crew? Will I have the right staff? 100% rock stars now. But let’s say I can get to 20, 25% of them, you know. So now you’re looking at sort of the 8020 rule.

00;09;59;00 – 00;10;21;27

Jim Knight

I’m going to focus on the ones who can absolutely produce the result, knowing full well the ones that aren’t, they’re going to come and go. I probably can pay a little bit less. These awesome rock stars will run the others out. They’ll vote them off the island. For me, I don’t have to manage the process as much and all of a sudden I see less accidents, less incident report, I see less people complaining.

00;10;21;27 – 00;10;43;18

Jim Knight

From a guest standpoint, there are so many things that people just don’t look at the quantifiable metric. What they’re doing is looking at their traditional PNL and the people side sort of gets pushed aside. Everybody wants an awesome group. I get that. But I think if you look in terms and go, Let’s see where we could actually save money so I could put it in to the ones because they probably are going to cost a little bit more.

00;10;43;24 – 00;11;08;21

Jim Knight

But I would rather get rid of two people that are just mediocre. Too bad to find the one rock star. I’d rather pay that person a lot more. Now, having said that, there are companies now they don’t think in those terms and they’d rather replace the people. So you’re getting into kiosk, you’re getting into automation. As A.I. and robotics come along, you’re going to have to make some tough decisions and there will probably be fewer people on any given shift.

00;11;08;23 – 00;11;23;25

Jim Knight

So if you’re a brand that had 20 people and now you’re going to get down to ten because you can you’re going to spend the money on all this other stuff for the long haul, Well, then those ten ought to be the absolute best you can find in the industry. And you can no longer tell me there’s not good talent out there.

00;11;23;25 – 00;11;47;26

Jim Knight

I don’t care what generation you want to look at. There are awesome people. They just happened to be out there working for somebody else and you got have to pull them off from those particular brands. So I’m not resorting. I hear what you’re saying. I’m not going to come off of my opinion. I think if more companies focus on the people and surrounded themselves with that, you will absolutely produce these Herculean results year on year, not just in a one time year.

00;11;48;04 – 00;12;12;18

Jim Knight

I think the trajectory looks like the hockey stick. And I’ll end with this too. I think there’s too many companies out there that swear now. The only reason they are where they are is because of their culture. And when you really ask them, when you deep dive and go and look underneath the hood, what they’re saying is my people, you can copy my product, you can copy the environment, you can come in here and steal everything that I have.

00;12;12;20 – 00;12;26;17

Jim Knight

But if you can’t get my people, you’re never going to be able to recreate my culture. And there are too many companies like the Cheek Blades of the World or Southwest Airlines. If we’re coming out of the industry, that will go as long as I have these cool kids, You’re not going to be able to do what we do.

00;12;26;17 – 00;12;31;12

Jim Knight

Go ahead and copy everything else we do, but good luck with that until you get the right people on board.

00;12;31;15 – 00;13;01;09

Zack Oates

I love that concept of getting the right people on the bus. And and I think a lot of it is putting them in the right position. And sometimes what I found is making sure they have the ability to succeed. I think this is something that us as leaders so often forget. It’s hard to be perfect at it, but in order for someone to be a rock star, they need to know what song you’re playing and it’s really tough when you get out there and you’re like, Okay, go put on a killer performance.

00;13;01;11 – 00;13;27;16

Zack Oates

And yet, like you didn’t do the marketing to get the people at the venue. You didn’t tell them what the play the setlist was, you know, didn’t let them practice with their band and then they don’t do a good job. And we say, Man, that person sucks. And it’s like, I think there’s some accountability there in terms of are we one setting the right expectation that from the beginning they understand what the success look like, what this done look like and Ember to do.

00;13;27;16 – 00;13;53;22

Zack Oates

They have the tools and timeline and training enabled to get them there in three. Do they have the systems and processes that they could be held accountable for that and that you could help them through that to ask them questions? They feel like without that expectation, without the tools and timelines and without the systems, we need to, we need to look at ourselves before we say, we hired the right person, right.

00;13;53;24 – 00;14;17;15

Jim Knight

Now, 100%. Yeah. So my background as we talked about, was running training in development. So you’re speaking my language because I think there should be a system in place for every single area of the employee lifecycle. How you even think about going out and finding them, recruiting them, interviewing them, hiring them, onboarding orientation, communicating, training, developing, rewarding, recognizing even terminating them.

00;14;17;22 – 00;14;43;10

Jim Knight

There should be a system in all of these. And I have become a system guy. In fact, working for hard rock, we operated in the gray quite a bit like it was T-shirts and burgers and rock and roll, and you open the door and whatever happened happened. And then something happened along the line where I started to see a lot of these sayings that these awesome rock stars were putting into place managers and staff that I could systematize the thing.

00;14;43;10 – 00;15;03;04

Jim Knight

And I just said in my mind, why not make that a part of the training? So when I first started with that particular company, there were only 12 locations. When I left there were like 250, and then there were the hotels and casinos and like music and everything else. But that stuff didn’t happen by accident. And I think part of what you’re talking about is there is nothing worse.

00;15;03;04 – 00;15;22;27

Jim Knight

I almost equate it to the same as a yes. There’s nothing worse than somebody in marketing spending a ton of money, commercials, billboards, social media beating on our chests. Look how often we are only to put people into an environment that it’s not that awesome, it’s just met at best. I equate it the same way from an internal standpoint.

00;15;22;27 – 00;15;43;23

Jim Knight

My entire career has been below the surface, not focusing on the gas, but focusing on the team member. And I’m going, Man, if I could not just have a really good orientation, which by the way, Zach, I got to be honest with you, the more times I spend with restaurant companies, I think they’ve gotten better. But for so many, they’re doing a pretty piss poor job of orientations.

00;15;43;23 – 00;16;16;21

Jim Knight

I see sometimes two or 3 hours they kind of tell the story. But then outcomes the handbook of what you can and can’t do and what will get you fired. And now let’s do a tour and let’s have an employee meal and in the afternoon, here’s the spatula. Get to work like that in their mind, half day orientation is good enough and I think you’re missing the boat and there are too many great, awesome companies again in this industry that are spending sometimes an entire day on just the story, the mission, the values in what you were just talking about, the service philosophy.

00;16;16;26 – 00;16;34;02

Jim Knight

If I never tell you what the service philosophy is other than a sentence or two in a manual somewhere, and I never measure against it, I never talk about it again. It isn’t a part of our value orientation. I’m not doing it in our stand up three shifts or whatever it is. I think I’m missing the boat on all that.

00;16;34;04 – 00;16;53;04

Jim Knight

I think if you hire some phenomenal people in lieu of leadership, I’m going to do the best I can. And if I’ve got a great rock star out there, they’re going to do it the way that they want to do it. And it might be contradictory to what I was planning and their idea might be good. But now, like you said, we’re not on the same sheet of paper.

00;16;53;07 – 00;17;10;21

Jim Knight

I’m telling you, we need to be heading in this direction and this really good person is doing the best they can because I have an informed doubt. Shame on me as a leader. But the reality is we probably hire some pretty good people out there. But we as leaders are not spending enough time and energy saying this is what I want to have happen.

00;17;10;21 – 00;17;29;10

Jim Knight

Or even better, let’s have some discussions. I’m going to have an hour workshop around table 36 on Thursday. I need all the servers, bartenders, whatever we’re going to talk about. What is it that we’re trying to do here? And I’ll listen. People have a voice, but at the end of the day, I need this to push back from the table going this is our true north.

00;17;29;10 – 00;17;52;21

Jim Knight

This is what we’re going to do to rock people’s world. And if we don’t do that, then I think you have to just assume you’re going to get the same results that you’ve always been getting. So I think there’s a lot with communication ongoing, not just the first day one and again, hoping that you’ve hired the right people, but we as leaders, you’re right, have to provide them with the right tools, have to communicate with them on a regular basis, have to hold them accountable.

00;17;52;23 – 00;18;10;01

Jim Knight

If you’re talking about these things and it’s never it might be in the job description, but they don’t put it really in the performance appraisal. The performance appraisal becomes a fuzzy thing and they’ve been here another year and they got to get a little bit more money. I don’t even like appraisals anymore. I like performance discussions and it should be around what you’re doing for the gas.

00;18;10;01 – 00;18;11;24

Jim Knight

What are the end result that we’re trying to get here?

00;18;12;00 – 00;18;27;23

Zack Oates

I love focusing it on the gas that makes so much sense. And from beginning to the end of we start with the guest and even performance is all based on the gas and just powerful man. So, Jim, I know we’re at a time here, but who is someone that deserves innovation in the restaurant industry?

00;18;27;25 – 00;18;45;22

Jim Knight

man, this is Gilman’s. I have a local one here called Yellow Dog Eats. They’re amazing in central Florida. Very eclectic. It’s really because of the owner. This guy almost has no filter, which is hilarious on its own, but he sort of has allowed his team to take on those personas. And the product is great, the environment’s awesome.

00;18;45;24 – 00;19;07;11

Jim Knight

I get bummed out when I’m not having an emotional attachment to people whenever I go in there, but I think from a national standpoint, I have become really big fans of a couple big chicken, if you’re familiar with them, Josh Alfred of them, Shaquille O’Neal, I think they’re really starting to hit it really well. I’m a huge fan of Bonefish Grill.

00;19;07;14 – 00;19;27;07

Jim Knight

I don’t know. They get around forever, but I find them extremely consistent. Again, not just in the quality, the price point, the food and beverage from the people like these people know my name and I sometimes won’t go in there four or five months. They still know what I eat, what I drink. They know my first name. It’s not just this one particular Bonefish Grill.

00;19;27;07 – 00;19;28;20

Jim Knight

I’ve seen it a lot.

00;19;28;23 – 00;19;33;27

Zack Oates

But also think, Jim, that’s partially you. You are a memorable guy.

00;19;33;29 – 00;19;53;19

Jim Knight

Yeah, maybe. But hey, there’s mistakes being made all the time out there. I’ll say one more, Brian to it. It’s in your world. Let’s talk pizza for a hot second, too. You know, I write about it and talk about mod pizza. I really like those guys. I think they might be struggling right now, but from a culture standpoint, I really dig what the founders have done.

00;19;53;19 – 00;20;14;05

Jim Knight

But I’m starting to like the number two fast casual out there. Blaze Pizza I’ve been going into a lot and whatever they’re doing from a training standpoint, I’m getting direct eye contact, I’m getting a lot of smiles, I’m getting people bending over backwards sense of urgency again. There’s a couple that I can go through, whether it’s on the high end or fast food.

00;20;14;08 – 00;20;23;14

Jim Knight

And what you did with me when those happened is loyalty. I’m going to come back, spend more money and talk about you positively. And Zach, isn’t that what every restaurant or I think wants, right?

00;20;23;21 – 00;20;28;03

Zack Oates

Amen. Love that man. Well, Jim, where can people go to follow you?

00;20;28;04 – 00;20;46;01

Jim Knight

Yeah, they can check me out at my website. It’s probably the best place all roads lead to night speaker dot com. So night my last in k and I t Speaker dot com and I do weekly videos and monthly blogs and I’m doing all kinds of stuff out there if you’re interested. But thank you so much for Abby on the show man.

00;20;46;01 – 00;20;50;16

Jim Knight

I can’t wait till we get to hang out and have a few laughs again in person at some point.

00;20;50;18 – 00;21;02;00

Zack Oates

I love that. Jim Looking forward to do. And for giving both my hair volume and public speaking something to look up to the these ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us and giving ovation Jim.

00;21;02;03 – 00;21;04;19

Jim Knight

I love that you are the best exact.

00;21;04;22 – 00;21;26;10

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at Ovation.

00;21;26;10 – 00;21;27;06

Zack Oates

Upcoming.