How to Retain Great Staff and Cut Costs from a Co-owner at Monteverde

For hospitality operators, the day rarely ends when the last guest leaves. When it’s time to rest and recharge, business owners are still thinking about how to keep evolving in an industry that’s more complex and competitive than ever before. Counting sheep can get replaced by counting food costs.

While there’s no shortage of information out there for managers to scroll through for potential solutions, what’s often most valuable is hearing directly from the people who’ve been through it themselves: the operators, leaders, and experts who understand the realities of the business firsthand.

That spirit is what inspired What Keeps You Up At Night, a series where we bring real Resy operator questions to the industry leaders that make up the American Express Global Dining Advisory Board. Whether you’re looking for ideas, reassurance, or simply the knowledge that others are working through similar challenges, our goal is to create a space where industry folks can learn from one another and hopefully get some much needed (and much earned) rest.

Want a chance to have your question featured in our next edition of What Keeps You Up At Night? Just fill out this survey¹ to share what’s on your mind.

For this second edition, we spoke with Rob Mosher, co-owner of Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio, to answer operator questions on retaining great talent and finding creative ways to cut costs.

Finding and keeping great people is still tough at my restaurant. What’s working for you when it comes to building a strong team culture and retaining talent for the long term?

– Anonymous

Mosher: Restaurants are first and foremost a people business. Providing true hospitality is the number one thing we do to keep guests coming back, making employee culture paramount. If we don’t have happy employees, there is no way they’ll provide genuine hospitality. There are a few key bedrock tenets to this:

1. Great Managers: Having managers who believe in our vision is key to ensuring that everyone working for them, and us, remain happy and focused. We’ve worked hard to find managers—importantly, across both FOH and BOH—who truly value the guest experience. Our managers are the hardest working people in the building, and we do our best to treat them as such. They each get the same two days off in a row every week, generous PTO, competitive salaries, true bonus potential that ties their efforts to the company’s goals, and fully paid PPO healthcare. Beyond that, we strive to offer meaningful mentorship and a path toward upward mobility both in salary and responsibility. Our best managers have often risen through our ranks with a true understanding of what makes the restaurant tick before moving into a managerial role.
2. HR Training: Managers oftentimes don’t want to step in and discipline employees who aren’t doing what they should—they’re nice people, and they can shy away from conflict. We’ve therefore invested in an excellent HR consultant who really understands the challenges inherent to our industry and is able to provide our managers with one-on-one guidance on how to handle difficult situations, but also how to reward great behavior.
3. The Importance of Being Heard: Everyone wants to be heard and to feel valued as part of the team, so the simplest thing sometimes is just to listen to our employees. We regularly sit down and discuss job performance with our employees and allow them the opportunity to share their experience. We encourage our managers to have open and honest conversations with their team members daily and to incorporate ideas they may have as appropriate. It isn’t hard to listen to your employees, but it does require taking the time to do so.

With costs still on the rise, where have you been able to cut costs or work smarter while still investing in the experience and qualities that make your restaurant stand out?

– Anonymous

Mosher: Our budget is written to be fair, and we strive to run a business that is sustainable. Above all else is the guest experience: if we don’t allow for the proper food cost that lets us use great product, or the appropriate labor cost to staff the restaurant correctly, we’re lost. While we do need to be profitable, we know that we can only remain profitable if our sales numbers stay as high as possible. Without guests dining and coming back, those sales numbers fall and then everything else on the P&L is simply a percentage of nothing. The key to profitability is sustainability and a great guest experience.

That said, there are three key things we’ve done to focus on working smarter and keeping costs in line:

1. Hiring a Dedicated Purchaser: Having someone whose sole focus is managing vendor relations has been crucial to building a strong financial foundation. They not only watch what’s coming in, but how the team is using each item to minimize waste and ensure proper FIFO procedure. They’ve also helped implement a composting program to ensure that the waste we do create is being disposed of properly.
2. Financial Transparency: It’s important for managers to know how the business is performing, and we share a Daily Flash Report showing sales data, food & beverage costs, labor costs, and operating expenses. These are the key controllables over which they have direct impact, so by seeing this data daily, they know how they are performing against budget and where things need to be tightened up.
3. Providing a Manager Bonus Structure: On top of their competitive salary, we offer a bonus plan that aligns our business goals with their own. By achieving or exceeding the budgeted numbers shared with them in the Daily Flash Report, they have the opportunity to earn up to 10% or more of their salary as a yearly bonus. This gives them some skin in the game and provides them the opportunity to benefit from their hard work.

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