I opened the first Nick’s Pizza & Pub more than 15 years ago in northwest Illinois. We now have two 350-seat restaurants in the Chicago area, each with around$3 million in annual revenue. The restaurant business took a significant hit in 2008, along with the rest of the economy, and both our locations started to feel the squeeze.
We needed to find creative ways to get more people into the restaurant. Rather than using a small management or executive team to generate answers, we turned to our employees — everyone from servers, to bartenders, to cooks. The resulting advice not only pulled us through the downturn, but has us looking to expand to a third restaurant within the next few years. Here’s how it worked.