How to Turn Restaurant Core Values Into Actionable Team Behaviors

We are thrilled to welcome Kate Cayanni, owner of Good Smart Funny, as a returning Guest Coach in The Walk-In: a 6 month group coaching program to become the leader you’ve always needed in this industry.

Kate has a background in hospitality, HR, and executive coaching. She specializes in helping leaders turn big ideas, like restaurant culture and values, into practical tools teams can actually use. At Good Smart Funny, she supports restaurant owners and food business leaders in building strong, values-aligned teams.

Members of The Walk-In benefit from coaching support from experts like Kate during the program, giving you a place to ask your burning questions about topics like, HR, management training, marketing, and team dynamics.

In this blog on turning your restaurant’s values into observable behavior, Kate shares directive, clear, and compassionate guidance to turn that conversation you're avoiding with a team member about what’s missing from their performance into a connection point you can look forward to.

We hope you learn as much from this article as we did.

Alison & Kimberly

Restaurant Core Values That Show Up on the Floor

By Kate Cayanni, Good Smart Funny

If you’re leading a food business, chances are you’ve heard yourself wonder:

• “I feel like I’ve explained my expectations 100 times, but my team is just not getting it. What am I doing wrong?”
• “How do I give honest feedback without upsetting the person receiving it?”
• “Everyone knows what our restaurant core values are, so why aren’t they being followed?”

Questions like these create confusion, frustration, and fear in the leaders who think them and often, those emotions drive you to either avoid giving your team feedback or giving it in a way that they can’t hear.

If this is resonating with you, read on.

The missing piece of the puzzle might be taking the time to operationalize your restaurant values so that you have a clear, shared language for communicating expected behaviors to your team that they won’t take personally.

In this article, I’ll cover:

• What it means to operationalize your values
• How restaurant values make culture and accountability actually work
• How to turn giving feedback from criticism to clarity and kindness
• Scripted language you can adapt to use with your team

Let’s get started with a real story from one of the leaders I work with that I bet will sound familiar to you.

I was on a call with a client, and he was telling me about their newest hire.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “We’ll see how it works out.”

That caught my attention. Usually by this point in the story, restaurant leaders have already decided how they feel, even if they are pretending they have not. So, I raised an eyebrow and asked him to tell me a little more.

“Well,” he said, “the interview went really well. She has great experience. She shows up on time, gets the work done. No issues there.”

I leaned in a little, waiting for the meh part.

There was a pause.

“Kate,” he said, lowering his voice slightly, “she just doesn’t smile.”

Not in an obvious way. Not in a rude way. Just neutral. Focused. Flat.

Guests were not complaining exactly, but there was a subtle lack of warmth. The kind that is hard to point to but easy to feel, especially in a customer-facing role. At one point, someone on the team half-joked about “resting bitch face,” then immediately tried to walk it back. Everyone knew that was not really the language they wanted to use. And also, that it captured something real they did not know how to name.

The leader was not trying to micromanage someone’s personality. He was not looking to nitpick or control how someone expressed themselves. He was genuinely stuck.

“It feels obvious,” he said. “We’re in hospitality. Smiling feels like part of the job. But I don’t know how to say that without sounding unfair or personal. And honestly, I’m not even sure what I’d be asking for.”

This is the part of leadership that rarely makes it into articles about the culture of a restaurant.

The moment when something feels completely self-evident and completely unsayable at the same time.

On one hand, of course warmth matters in a restaurant.
On the other, people are not performers. And “smile more” carries a lot of baggage.

So, the leader did what a lot of thoughtful restaurant leaders do when they do not have clear language. He hesitated. He waited. He hoped it would resolve itself.

It did not.

 

Where Restaurant Values Often Break Down

What made the situation so sticky was not the behavior itself. It was the ambiguity around it.

Was this about smiling?
About tone?
About guest experience?
About personal style?
About unspoken expectations no one had ever actually articulated?

Everyone had a different interpretation, which meant no one felt confident addressing it. The leader worried about being unfair. The team member had no idea anything was wrong. And the tension quietly lived in the space between them.

As we talked it through, what became clear was this. The problem was not the hire. It was the lack of shared language around what hospitality actually meant in practice.

And this is where restaurant core values tend to break down.

Most restaurant leaders I work with care deeply about culture. They have put real thought into their restaurant values. They believe in them. They talk about them in interviews and onboarding. They might even have them printed on the wall.

But values are often written at such a high level that they are almost unusable in moments like this.

Take hospitality.

Most restaurants name it as a core value. But hospitality can mean a hundred different things depending on who you ask.

To one person, it means being upbeat and chatty.
To another, it means being efficient and unobtrusive.
To someone else, it means anticipating needs without being asked.

None of those are wrong. But when they are not named, they become personal preferences instead of shared expectations.

And that is when leaders get stuck.

Because you cannot coach a vibe.
You cannot give feedback on a feeling.
And you cannot hold someone accountable to something you have never clearly defined.

 

Turning Restaurant Values into Real, Observable Behavior

At a certain point in the conversation, I asked the leader to slow down and imagine something specific.

“If I were standing in your dining room for an entire shift,” I said, “what would I actually notice if someone was doing hospitality well?”

Not what it means.
Not what it should be.
What I would see.

He thought for a moment.

“Well,” he said, “I’d notice eye contact. I’d notice someone acknowledging a guest when they walk up, even if they’re busy. I’d notice a tone that feels open, like the guest isn’t interrupting them by being there.”

That was the moment the air shifted.

Because suddenly, we were not talking about smiling anymore.

We were talking about behavior.

Hospitality, it turned out, was not about forcing a facial expression. It was about how guests experienced the interaction. And once we named that, everything got clearer.

We also asked the flip side, gently and without judgment.

“What would I notice if hospitality was not happening?”

He did not hesitate this time.

“No eye contact. Short answers. Guests standing there unsure if they’re in the right place. A feeling of being in the way.”

None of that had anything to do with personality.
All of it had to do with how the work showed up on the floor.

This is where restaurant values stop being aspirational and start becoming useful.

 

Why Operationalizing Values Makes Accountability Kinder

Once the value was grounded in observable behavior, the leader finally had language that felt clean enough to stand on.

The conversation did not sound like:

“Can you smile more?”

It sounded like:

“One of our restaurant core values is hospitality. For us, that shows up as eye contact, acknowledgment, and helping guests feel oriented when they approach. I want to check in with you about how that feels in practice.”

That is a very different conversation.

It is not about fixing someone.
It is about aligning on expectations.

Alignment is almost always received better than correction.

What struck me most was the leader’s relief. He had not been avoiding the conversation because he did not care. He had been avoiding it because he did not yet have words that felt fair. Once the value was translated into behavior, the conversation stopped feeling loaded and started feeling supportive.

I see this pattern show up again and again across restaurant culture.

Sometimes it is about warmth on the floor.
Sometimes it is about communication, how information gets shared and when.
Sometimes it is about a high performer who brings in money but quietly drains the team.

Different situations. Same stuck point.

Values that have not been operationalized leave leaders guessing and teams confused. Everyone is doing their best, but no one is quite sure what “good” actually looks like.

Behavioral clarity changes that.

It gives leaders a shared reference point, something to point to rather than something to point at. Feedback becomes less about opinion and more about alignment. Expectations become visible instead of implied.

And the culture of a restaurant stops living in people’s heads and starts showing up on the floor.

 

The Practice: Operationalizing Restaurant Core Values

What we did in that conversation was not complicated. But it was intentional.

We took a value the restaurant already believed in and slowed it down long enough to ask:

• What does this actually look like in real life?
• What would someone notice if it was happening?
• What would tell us it was not?
• And how do leaders reinforce it, especially when things get busy?

This is the practice of operationalizing restaurant values.

It is the work of turning words like hospitality, communication, or sustainability into shared, observable behaviors your team can actually aim for. Not so you can control people, but so you can lead with clarity.

When restaurant values are operationalized:

• Feedback gets easier
• Accountability feels fair
• Tension becomes talkable
• And restaurant culture stops depending on who happens to be on shift

This matters in restaurants because so much of the work happens under pressure, in real time, with real humans. Values that only live on paper do not survive a slammed service. Values that live in behavior can.

By the end of our conversation, the leader said something I hear often when this clicks.

“I thought this was going to be a harder conversation,” he said. “But once we named it this way, it actually felt kinder.”

That is the quiet truth about operationalizing restaurant core values.

It is not about being stricter.
It is not about controlling people.
It is about giving everyone the same map, especially when things get busy.

 

Bringing This Work into Practice

I will be digging into this practice more deeply in my upcoming guest coaching session with Salt & Roe’s The Walk-In. We will walk through how to identify your core restaurant values, translate them into daily behaviors, and use them as a tool for feedback, decision-making, and leadership that actually works on the floor.

Because the goal is not to have better values.

It is to have values your team can see, feel, and live, even on a Friday night.

 

About the Author

Kate Cayanni is the founder of Good Smart Funny, a leadership coaching and people-systems practice that supports restaurant owners and food business leaders in building strong, values-aligned teams. With a background in hospitality, HR, and executive coaching, Kate specializes in helping leaders turn big ideas, like restaurant culture and values, into practical tools teams can actually use. She is a returning guest coach with Salt & Roe’s The Walk-In.

 

FAQ’s

Answered by Salt & Roe

 

What’s the point of naming my restaurant values?

Values sound kinda woo, kinda soft and fluffy, and I promise you, they’re not. So let’s get real about what you stand to gain from naming your restaurant values and using them to guide your team.

I bet you crave more confidence in your leadership, more clarity about when and how to give your team feedback, a system for making that feedback less personal and more practical, and a clearer system for making hard decisions with clarity. I bet you want those things because it’s what every restaurant leader wants!

The work of getting more of all of those things is about defining the core commitments (these are your restaurant values!) you and your team must honor in order for the business to be at its best. Once you have defined filters for making hard decisions and guiding the behavior of your people, you’ll be released from self-doubt, confusion, and the avoidance that can come from feeling that way.

But, the work doesn’t stop with naming your restaurant values. You have to operationalize them too.

Can you share an example of a Restaurant Core Values list to help me think through my restaurant values?

Your values belong to you, and there are truly no limits in terms of what words you might choose to name as core values for your restaurant.

At Salt & Roe, we invite our clients to choose at least 2 and no more than 4 core values in support of actually use these words to guide your decisions and behavior. We find that once you’ve got more than 4 values leading the way, they become harder to remember and put to work in your daily leadership life.

If you’re looking to follow our guided process for getting to the bottom of the question of, “What are my restaurant values?”, download our free guide to creating Statements of Intent for Hospitality Businesses & Leaders here.

When we ask our clients this simple question: “What commitments are you in alignment with when you’re at your best?” these are some common values we tend to hear most often:

• Hospitality
• Quality
• Integrity
• Teamwork
• Collaboration
• Consistency
• Community
• Sustainability
• Accountability
• Growth
• Respect
• Creativity
• Passion

We offer these as examples to help you get your wheels turning!

What does it mean to operationalize my restaurant values?

Operationalizing your restaurant values is all about taking these big, often nebulous words and defining them using tangible, observable behaviors.

This is about taking the values you’ve chosen to define the culture of a restaurant and slow down long enough to ask:

• What does this actually look like in real life?
• What would someone notice if it was happening?
• What would tell us it was not?
• And how do leaders reinforce it, especially when things get busy?

This is the practice of operationalizing restaurant values.

What is the culture of a restaurant?

If you’re here, you care deeply about the culture of your restaurant. You know that it’s the single most valuable piece of your business because nothing impacts the guest experience more than the culture your team lives and breathes.

Problem is, the culture of a restaurant is hard to define, isn’t it? If you’re anything like me, you might think of it as a vibe. Collective energy. This intangible thing that’s either humming and thriving or not. But what IS it, actually?

Culture is what happens when no one’s watching.

And what you need to make sure that you’re team shows up in ways you’re proud of when no one is watching is operationalized values. Some people describe the culture of a restaurant as the invisible architecture of a team and we disagree.

The work of leaders who care about culture is making the architecture visible so that everyone knows what’s expected of them.

How does individual leadership impact the culture of a restaurant?

If you lead a culture-driven restaurant, you are a critically important model for your team members. It’s your job to lead by example AND to clearly communicate how you expect each team member to follow that example.

We see so many leaders like you drown in resentment because you’re showing up in all the ways you’re hoping your team to without directly telling them what’s expected of their behavior and performance. A huge part of impacting the culture of a restaurant is by not leading by example alone.