Discussion Guide
1. Bellwether's plan says labor is \$500,000. The schedule costs \$570,461. Which number should go in the business plan?
Listen for: students proposing to change the plan number to match. Push back — every projection in the document depends on \$500,000, and changing it moves the argument somewhere less visible. The strong answer keeps both numbers on the page and names the gap. Listen for the sharper insight, which usually arrives late: the gap is not a number to be resolved, it is a decision to be made, and identifying it before opening is worth far more than a plan that foots.
2. What is the actual difference between cutting slack and cutting product?
Listen for: concrete criteria rather than sentiment. Good answers propose a test — "does anything a guest can perceive change?" or "does this position produce something that is otherwise not produced, or does it produce it faster?" Push toward Case Study 2's pre-service half-hour: it looked like slack, and it was the quality-control system of a scratch kitchen. Ask what measurement would have told them apart in month 22. (Ticket times, comps, and departures on the same page as labor.)
3. The October Friday: the restaurant came out \$12 ahead on wages and the labor report improved. What should a manager be measured on instead?
Listen for: proposals for a composite scorecard. Good ones include ticket time, comps as a percentage of sales, hours-scheduled versus hours-needed by band, and unplanned overtime. Watch for students who propose measuring "staff satisfaction" without saying how — push for something countable and weekly. The best answer usually notices that the labor report is not the problem; using it alone is the problem, and the fix is four extra rows rather than a different report.
4. Three levers close the last 2.3 points: change the production model, cut the owners' pay, or sell 17% more. Which would you choose, and what does the choice say about the restaurant?
Listen for: whether students recognize that only the third makes the business bigger. Expect a split. The production-model advocates will argue that guests cannot tell the difference between a house stock and a good purchased one — engage that honestly, because sometimes they are right, and the question is which components carry the concept. The owner-pay advocates should be pressed on the exit: what happens the day you hire a general manager? Do not let the room settle on a single answer; a real operator picks a blend and writes down the blend.
5. Should Bellwether write the schedule it needs and miss the labor target, or write the schedule it can afford and miss the service standard?
Listen for: the recognition that this is a false binary presented as a dilemma. The real answer is that you write the schedule you need, run it, measure what it produces, and then have a specific conversation about which of the structural levers to pull — with data, in month three, rather than in month nineteen. Students who pick a side quickly usually have not noticed that the choice can be deferred at a known cost, and that the cost of deferring is smaller than the cost of choosing wrong.
6. Case Study 1 describes an industry that could not buy hours at any price. Case Study 2 describes an operator who could and chose not to. Which failure is more instructive for a first-time owner?
Listen for: students recognizing that the defenses against both are largely the same — cross-training, a menu a smaller line can execute, a retention record, a concentrated operating pattern. The interesting disagreement is about foreseeability: the 2021 shortage was exogenous, and Bellwether's gap is visible in the plan before the doors open. Ask which is actually harder to act on. Most rooms eventually conclude that the foreseeable one is harder, because nothing forces you to look at it.