The Biases That Hold Us Back

I work with a wide range of restaurants: mom & pop concepts, small chains, large chains, hotels, resorts, fast casual, food trucks, and fine dining. It never ceases to amaze me of the "know it all" attitude so many restaurant owners, managers, and chefs feel they have to have. When I see that, I know that talking to them is a waste of time because they are not listening. They are stuck on cognitive biases that are holding them back. So what is a cognitive bias?

Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts we have developed that allow us to make decisions quickly. Some truly help us and sadly there are some that keep us stuck and limit our growth. 

While there are actually around 100 cognitive biases that we use,  here are the four I run into most often in restaurant consulting & coaching that hold restaurants back from reaching their potential.

Confirmation Bias

This occurs when you warp data to fit or support your existing beliefs or expectations. The effects are often found in religion, politics, and I see it prevalent in restaurants.

Why does that matter? Because an inability to look outside of your existing belief systems will vastly limit your ability to grow and improve, both in business and in life. We need to consider more possibilities, and be more open to other ways to do things. There are a lot of different equations that you can use to reach the end goal. Sure 50 + 25 + 25 = 100. They are also many, many other ways to get that same solution. 

The Dunning–Kruger Effect 

A cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. Basically, people think they are much better than they really are. Like the restaurant that thinks they serve great food, yet their online reviews tell a different story. There is a difference between being cocky and confident. Cocky people talk a good game while confident people deliver results. 

Status Quo Bias

The tendency to prefer things to stay the same. This is very similar to loss-aversion bias, where people prefer to avoid losses instead of acquiring gains. An example would be the restaurant owner who knows they should change their menu, however the fear of losing customers is greater than the gain of acquiring new customers and more business.

Zero-Risk Bias

The preference to reduce a small risk to zero versus achieving a greater reduction in greater risk. This plays to the desire to have complete control over a single, more minor outcome, over the desire for more (however not certain) control over an unpredictable outcome. In the restaurant world, this is the restaurant owner, manager or chef who thinks that by beating up a vendor on pricing is controlling their food cost. They focus on price because they feel they have control over that by getting the "lowest price". The reality is that they focus so much on a minor thing that they do not pay attention to their theoretical food cost (costing out their menu), production waste or doing a menu analysis to understand what the customer is really buying.

Many times the manager has never really been trained how to calculate food cost, analyze menus or manage food production, so they focus on the one thing they feel they have an impact on which is pricing (that is another bias called the Illusion of Control).

I think Shakespeare said it best, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." 

Donald Burns is The Restaurant Coach™. He is an industry expert for FoodableTV, a guest blogger for Toast Restaurant Management Blog, and the host of the weekly show The Restaurant Prescription™ Podcast.  Former member of the elite USAF Pararescue Teams. His mission: increase profits, build brands, strengthen teams.