We missed the most obvious hook
This piece was originally shared on LinkedIn in response to recurring conversations with founders and leadership teams around this topic.
I’m publishing it here as part of an ongoing body of thinking around restaurant strategy, market entry, and operational decision-making.
At Tao Group, we originally designed One More Cocktail to drive average spend across our UK venues. Training, incentives, gamification, the lot.
Then we rolled it out company-wide, including the US.
And realised we’d missed one key difference between the two markets.
In the US, tips are a huge part of the model. Grow the average check by 10%, and tips have gone up by 10%. And 10% more tips is a big chunk of income.
We’d engineered the programme for a UK structure, focusing on bonuses and prizes. That would work incredibly well in the UK, but missed the real opportunity overseas.
As soon as we fixed the missing element and adjusted the focus, everything changed.
We set up weekly calls with every venue. Bill brought his trademark energy to those calls. People started competing – regionally aligned, full-fun competition, fighting to be top of the leaderboard.
It was a real reflection of the culture. The home of entrepreneurship and positive competition. There’s no shyness about pushing to win - not to the detriment of others - just to do the best you can.
The US often seems similar to the UK, but key differences like these create different motivators. Understanding these details in new markets can have a big impact on your success.
Since first sharing this, I’ve seen the same issue surface repeatedly — particularly with businesses entering new markets or scaling too quickly. The underlying challenge is rarely strategy itself, but how early decisions constrain execution later.
Andrew Jobes is the founder of Jobes & Co., a Dubai-based advisory working with restaurant and hospitality businesses across the Middle East and international markets.