Without the right restaurant manager, even the best food and location will not help an establishment to overcome this handicap. Any restaurant is likely to fail if they do not find the proper manager to run the place.
In the best run dining establishments, you will probably never even know who the manager is. However, they will be gracefully juggling all the responsibilities that fall on the manager’s shoulders. They will be constantly evaluating the staff. They will coach those who have potential but need a little extra training. They will also quickly remove anyone who is a problem. Bad attitudes can spread rapidly in a workplace, and in a restaurant they can bring the whole place down.
The manager will be making sure that the staffing is correct each and every shift of each and every day. When are the peak times? Are there enough people to cover those times? When is the place slow? Are there too many servers on the clock during those slow times? Too many servers working when the business is slow can result in unhappy servers making little to no money. This is something many managers fail to grasp. They will overstaff, and then cut servers as they are not needed, not even thinking that they just made an employee go through the time and effort needed to get ready and show up for work to only be there a couple of hours and not make enough money for it to have been worth their while.
The restaurant manager needs to maintain a tight leash on the inventory as well. Ordering too much food that does not get consumed, not only results in food being wasted, but it also wastes lots of money for the business, grossly cutting into profits.
On the flip side of that, not ordering enough food to keep the kitchen stocked will result in shortages and potentially unhappy customers that will never return.
There is a lot to juggle for a restaurant manager, which is why the good ones are worth every penny.