>> The most critical components of my approach to managing the restaurants are feedback loops because that's where we get our information. There's a million things going on within this company every day at once and I can only see one thing at a time. My name is Scott. I'm the COO for Barcelona Restaurant Group. The more information I can get, the better. I actually rely on technology. You know emails, texts, video cameras, secret shopper reports that get emailed to me. All of these things are my fingers on the pulse. I mean when I get out in the stores Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights or randomly on a Tuesday night and see it, feel it, touch it, I see 20 other things that need to get fixed.

>> People say to me, well the restaurant business, that's a tough business. 80% of restaurants go out of business, isn't that true? My answer is that 85% of restaurants are run by people who really have no business running a restaurant so that your odds are actually quite good if you have something of a clue what you're doing. We invest all of our resources in controlling quality. There's really nothing else we do except, you know, fix broken refrigerators. My name's Andy Pforzheimer, I'm the owner of Barcelona Restaurants. I can't tell you how many places go out of business with everybody involved saying "I don't get why they went out of business. They were always so popular. Their food was great. Ah, every time I went in they were crowded." And the chefs and the owners themselves, they have no idea. "I don't get it. We were doing everything right. People just stopped coming." This is a very common thing you hear in the restaurant business. And what that tells me is there's a lack of self knowledge that comes from two things. One, really probing, and two, wanting to know. So from a very, very early point we made it clear that we wanted to know and that's one of the primary focuses of the secret shopper report is to put a number on something that's difficult to quantify.

>> Saw some better shops coming out this week. Thank you Stamford. Thank you Greenwich. I was not happy with the shop out of West Hartford on Sunday. Did you see that?

>> No.

>> I forwarded it to you guys.

>> When?

>> So bad.

>> Terrible shop. They love Barcelona but they said it just didn't feel like Barcelona to them. I also looked on the camera system at 7:30 on Sunday. We could've had more staff. We've got sagging Sunday Monday sales. I've got two bad shops from D.J.

>> I've been impressed with his ability -- I think it's me leaving him short.

>> Every Wednesday we have what we call the war room where all of the general managers and the chefs come in and we have a meeting. We review numbers. We review shoppers' reports. We interact about what our managers are hearing from the guests and it's also sort of a great chance for one restaurant to learn from the other.

>> Aaron's missing --

>> Aaron's rarely missing and I have to say best food cos -- I went through probably 600 comment cards yesterday, best food comments in the company bar none.

>> I've been getting some from [inaudible] lately.

>> Bar none.

>> A lot.

>> So. New Haven 20 --

>> 29.38

>> 29.38.

>> 27.15.

>> That's?

>> Stamford.

>> Stamford.

>> 29.15.

>> Adam, that's you. Total food?

>> 27.66.

>> Okay. Versus last year?

>> 25.88.

>> Those two points represent about 8,000 bucks.

>> That sucks.

>> Our meetings get intense but we also try and support them when they're doing well, when they admit what they've done wrong, when they're willing to look at it, when they're willing to have sort of a collaborative attitude towards how we're going to fix it.

>> [Inaudible] How many ounces did you portion [inaudible]?

>> Seven.

>> Seven ounces?

>> Seven ounces.

>> With bone or without?

>> Without.

>> You're taking it off the bone?

>> Um hum.

>> Okay so it's $11 with bone, your yield minus bone is what? What do you lose on the bone? 30?

>> 70%, yeah.

>> So how much does a seven ounce portion cost?

>> 9 bucks.

>> About right, okay. So you're trying to run a 24% food cost?

>> No you're right.

>> What do you need to charge for it?

>> 28, 29.

>> 37, 38.

>> Yeah.

>> Oh sorry you're right. Okay.

>> Now, there's a bunch of worksheets that these guys have been working on for you to try and remedy these because if you don't price it right and you don't cut it right, then all your budget's going to tell you is you're out of money. The real fine line that we walk is how can we give the very best product and the very best service and still make a good profit? Financially the chefs are not bonused in this company. Some they are. We choose not to bonus them because we don't want them chasing the dollars and squeezing the pennies because we think that that could affect the quality of the food. We have two ways that we really manage the chefs and manage the food costs. One, the general manager runs the store. It's his shop. It's his bonus. He's making money so at the end of the day he's the boss. The other thing that we do is we have the meetings and in the meetings, you know the chefs are looking at their costs all together. They're looking at their labor costs, they're looking at their food costs comparatively. And they are the most competitive when it comes to beating out the other chef. They're artists. They want to be the best. And so they are chasing everything from quality to numbers as -- the more I can put them in a room together, the better.

>> Well I mean anybody who's eaten at an Outback knows that you can make a lot of money not paying all that much attention to quality. Half of it is the expectation that we've built. So whatever business you have, you've created an expectation. So your quality expectation might be here, it might be here, but we've built our business on this so if it goes to here, we've, you know we've disappointed our core customer which you never want to do. That will kill your business. So that's half of it. The other half I think is what's at stake is my willingness to come in to work in the morning. It's not a particular easy or lucrative line of work and I think if we didn't, if we didn't want to provide the best possible experience just because that's who we were, we couldn't do this. You couldn't pay me enough to do this if I didn't actually care that everybody who walked out the door had a great time, or as great a time as possible. So what's at stake is my business to some extent and my self respect to some extent.

This is the video transcript and here are the questions

questions.....

1. Describe the leadership styles of the Barcelona Restaurant Group's owner, Andy, and the Group's Chief Operating Officer, Scott.

2. What is the purpose of control at Barcelona Restaurant Group?

3. How does attention to strategic control separate Barcelona Restaurants from competitors?

4. What role does each restaurant manager play in the control process?