When Cash Slows, Capacity Becomes Currency

We share why a substitute teaching plan got scrapped and why we doubled down on B2B trade. We unpack the empty lunch rush, tipping fatigue, and how restaurants use vouchers and breakage to turn quiet hours into revenue.

• credit-hour roadblock ends sub teaching plan
• recommitment to trading network and podcast marketing
• signs of recession and local gym closure
• fading lunch rush and shifting diner habits
• frustration with forced tipping screens at checkout
• why restaurants thrive on controlled barter
• using gift certificates to manage trade flow
• capturing breakage and small cash add-ons
• prospecting insights from strip malls
• winter strategy for restaurants to fill seats

If you're a restaurant, consider joining a trade organization in your area. Now might be a good time to consider joining a trade organization in your area.

Chapters

• 0:02 Welcome And Show Focus
• 0:29 Sub Teaching Plan Falls Apart
• 1:50 Doubling Down On Trade
• 2:34 Coughs, Edits, And Authenticity
• 2:53 Restaurants Join The Barter Network
• 3:16 Local Closures And Recession Reality
• 4:09 The Vanishing Lunch Rush
• 5:31 Tip Fatigue And Checkout Screens
• 7:20 Nostalgia, Donuts, And Coffee Math
• 10:57 Why Barter Works For Restaurants
• 11:29 Gift Certificates And Breakage
• 12:03 Pot Pies, Pasties, And A Fun Myth
• 14:22 Final Advice For Restaurants

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew. Hello, welcome back to the Trading Post. I'm your host, of course, TraderStow. All right, quick update here. I am I'm unable to go do the part-time substitute teaching that I thought I wasn't going to do for a couple days a month or whatever like that. I found out that I went to Baker College and they have quarter hours, and my associate degree does not add up to 60 credit hours, which is the state minimum, to be able to substitute teach. And they were like, Well, you can go around and harvest your other credit hours and try and make up the extra. I forgot I was short by like I think 16 or something like that. I forgot how they did the math and they multiplied it by 0.67 or something. Anyway, I was short 60, and they're like, Well, did you go to school anywhere else? And then I was like, Well, yeah, I could go and look around for Ambry Riddle and God, where else did I go? Northwestern, I think it was Florida, which at the time was Okusa Walton County College, and then I went to Thomas Edison State College. And, you know, I'm just not gonna do all that work for something that was supposed to be fun. It's just sounds so I'm like, nah, cancel my application. This is after I did all the CRM stuff. I went to the couple hour training thing at the school, and I did this and that. I'm like, you know, you think you should vet all of that stuff before, you know, you let people do all the class. Oh, whatever, it doesn't matter. And obviously, I can't I can't bus drive because I couldn't pass the physical for that. And so yeah, no, I'm full time in again just doing the trade thing. So that's what I'm into, and of course, the podcast here, but I was gonna do something different just to try it out and kind of diversify my portfolio a little bit just in case things go down, because every day it looks like something else is happening around the world, and I don't think that we are in the States sheltered from any of the chaos that is ensuing. It's just a matter of time before it comes across the pond and and hits us. So, anyway, that's all I was doing for that. Just uh just a little CYA, you know. That's all that was. What else we gotta talk about here? Oh, I started the stupid cough. So I keep coughing in the mic, and I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to find a cough trap. Here we go. I could edit that out, but you know what? Then that kind of takes away the whole the deal, right? So here I am, you know, a cough drop here. All right. What else? Okay, in the trade world, what's happening? Oh, barter, whatever we're gonna call it. The restaurants are picking up. Like I am signing up tons of restaurants right now, and I I know why. I'm out and about, if I'm out like kind of door knocking, as I call it, or prospecting, you know, I'm in these trip malls and driving around. And by the way, holy crap, alley LA Fitness just shut down by me. Brand new, brand new building. They put it up, I think, two years ago, maybe three. And on the corner of Van Dyke and yeah, in 16 mile home depot parking lot. That's gone. I I was there the other day doing some member calls, and I was like, what that the building looked, you know, there was no they took the sign off, right? So I'm like, what is that all about? So yeah, no, we're not in a recession. Nah, not at all. Because LA fitness can't can't make it in a very busy location. Although I gotta say, I always thought that was a weird spot for a gym. I just I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it just I didn't think that that was a a spot to put a gym, but whatever. What else? Oh, restaurants. Yeah, so you know, I don't I hate I hate kind of hate to say this, but gone are the days of the lunch rush, it seems like. I don't know. Like, except for if you're at a fast food place, like I know Taco Bell by us is busy here in Rochester because of school, though. See, they have the high school right across the street, and they I think they have an open campus or something because they get busy at lunch, but that's the only place that I see that actually has a line for lunch. People either well, I got it's a combination, right? We're in a recession, let's just say it. They don't have the money, and then the everything's gotten more expensive to go to restaurants. And I went into this place to get mochi nuts, Van Dyke, and they have one of those things with the iPad, and it kind of ticked me off that it forced the tip on me, and by the time I realized it, it was like a buck and a half, whatever, more expensive than I thought, because it tacked on a 15% tip on there. Did I see it? The screen, yes, I saw the 15, 20, 25 tip. However, I didn't really notice it looked like it was highlighted, but also I didn't push anything to highlight the 15. I just thought it was kind of grayed out, and I thought I hit the skip button, like not the tip, because the guy did no work except for his job and behind a counter, making probably minimum wage or whatever. And I just didn't think that throwing three donuts into a into a cardboard box warranted a 15% tip. But lo and behold, I tipped it 15% like a fool. So people were getting burned out with this forced tipping culture as well. I think. Uh, I'm not not, I think, I know, and it's making them a ton of money, of course. Like, I wish that was out when I was in those kinds of roles. I'm sure that they make, you know, I don't know if it's a sizable income. Because again, I was the only person in the store as I and it was the morning, it was the morning of Veterans Day. So I don't know. It's weird, dude. It's scary out there. It's a ghost town. All these restaurants are dead. Like that used to be I have a line, like this place is a donut shop on the way to work, right before years ago, whatever, there was always a line at donut shops to pick up donuts for the office or the shop or whatever you're going into. I remember we had a rule when I was working in in the Air Force and I was a mechanic. If you were gonna be late, you had to pick up donuts. You know, I don't know if you had to, because that sounds like yeah, you had to. Let's just call them like I see them. You know, be like back then it was different. I don't know what they did. I don't I never got written up for being late, but one time I uh I got in a fight, a legal fight, uh in a boxing match, and I probably got a concussion because me and this dude was wailing on each other, and I woke up at noon. I came in, I came in the the shop at like lunchtime, and Sergeant Sergeant Diaz goes, dude, Aldrich, where have you been? Have we been here all morning? I'm like, What what yes? He's like, No, you haven't. I was like, Yeah, I know you're right. I just walked in. He was like, Where were you? I said, I slept in. He goes, slept in, dude. I was not sleeping in when you're supposed to be here at 7 a.m. I think we started at 6 or 7, you know. I think it was 7. And uh I was like, Yeah, well, I think I got a concussion. I probably shouldn't have drove home. We used there was this thing called fight night at this nightclub called Nighttown in Dustin, Florida, and you could sign up and just fight, and that's what I did. I mean, this guy, he was like a brick, you know, brick, you know, you know what house, you know. Like this guy was corn fed, dude. This guy was a farmer, and there was a golden gloves champ that was my friend, my buddy's friend. He was like, dude, I wouldn't get the ring with that guy. That guy is not the weight he said he was. Because before this night, you just told the fight people what your weight was, and they just paired you up, right? So I said I was whatever, you know, at the time 180. And this guy was probably 200 pounds, you know, he probably had 30 pounds on me, which is a lot, dude. Especially this guy was all muscle. And I was like, ah, what's the worst that's gonna happen? And we're wearing headgear and we're wearing one pound gloves or whatever it was. He's like, dude, you're gonna get rocked. And so I kept up the first two rounds, and the third round, I just got winded, and and he just like laid it on me, dude. The ref was like, yeah, thing, you know, I don't know if he had to cut it because this guy was just he fought for a living. Anyway, I dug your ass, it was fun. I had to get I'm laughing about it, but you know, probably got some brain damage that night. Anyway, what is I going with this? Oh, yeah, people not getting stuff on the way to work anymore. No, there's no the coffee shops. There used to be a line at McDonald's and Tim Hortons. Timmy Hose had a line out to the road. I remember going over to my old shop in Madison Heights, and Timmy Hose would have a line out to the turn lane. People were like blocking traffic to get their coffee, and I'm like, dude, buy a coffee machine. I don't know. That's I have a coffee machine at home. I spent good money on it. It was like, I forgot now, hundreds of dollars, maybe four. It was like crazy. I was like, and my wife was like talking me into it. She's like, You're gonna you you drink two mugs of coffee a day, like you use it every day. Get a nice coffee machine. My god, you know, it grinds it and it's got the gold standard anyway. And I do, I use it every day. And I don't know. If you do the math at four or five bucks a coffee, if you do that, I don't know, every day. You don't take long to divide that by 400 and you pay off your coffee machine. I mean, just think if you go like 20 times a month, that's a hundred bucks a month you're spending on coffee, four months you pay off. I don't know. That's just how I gotta do things. That's how I do the math. So God, I am all I so I haven't I didn't record an up upload uh yes uh last week, and I'm playing catch up now. I got I got sidetracked with the whole craziness of it all, and trying to figure out what that what I'm gonna do with my life, but so now I'm back and yeah, I kind of missed this. Anyway, it's kind of like talk therapy, except for y'all get to hear me. So anyway, restaurants doing great with it with the trade and barter, whatever, because if they have excess capacity, the waiters and wait staff, whatever waitresses are already there, you might as well bring in some more people through the door, otherwise, the food goes bad, so you might as well take some trade. The other thing that's cool is I just signed up another place that does forget their name right now, but it's a brunch house. And to control the trade, because he doesn't want to get overwhelmed. We did gift certificates, which is great for a restaurant because you you get the breakage, right? So if I sell you, if they come in with a$10 gift card and their brunch is$15, then you get the five bucks cash because they overspent their trade, and they give you the trade voucher of which he already got paid for because we buy the vouchers up front. So we did like$500, and then we make the$500 in vouchers, and then bada boom, bada bing, you know, we sell them for them, and that's it. So and what else? Oh, I did I just signed up a pot pie place too. I love pot pies. So we used to have a pasties, or is it is it pasties or pasties? Pasties are for the girls, I think it is how you say it, paste, because you paste, paste uh the pasties on, and then the pasties, yeah, pasties, because you gotta say that like you're from Michigan. Because pasties, if you don't know this, I think they were, I don't know if you call them invented, but they were for the miners that were doing the copper mining up in the UP of Michigan. And the women would make the pasties, and it was a hearty meal for the the miners, right? So it had your potatoes or rutabagas or turnips, whatever, whatever you're using for your carrots, and then it had a meat, you know, potatoes, whatever, and then gravy, corn, or whatever you're putting in this thing. It's like a pot pie, handheld pot pie. Think of that. If you've never had a pasty, and they're good, and then you know it's got the the crust that encapsulates it all. It's like a handheld pot pie, right? So there's another, there's like a myth of the pasty, what's it called? There's the trolls. I was like, I'm looking this up right now, the pasty crust thrown out for the trolls, and they they found out that these guys were holding the ends of the pasties, right, by the crust. And the guys didn't eat the that part that they were touching. They thought that they would if they threw the pasty crust for the trolls, it would keep them safe. So it was a superstition, of course, and about dirty hands. So what they found out was is that it kept them safe because when they were mining, they were getting lead on their hands, and if they would have ate all of that, they would have got lead poisoning. So really, it was the myth did keep the miners safe because they ended up throwing away the piece of crust that was contaminated with the lead from their hands, and then you know, allegedly that's the superstition of the trolls and under the bridge. Fun fact. Anyway, what else? That's it. Quick update, and uh restaurants are doing well. If you're a restaurant, consider joining a trade organization in your area. And night now is the quiet time for winter coming up. I think we're already in winter, it's snow on the ground here in Michigan anyway. So if you're slowing down when your job, now might be a good time to consider joining a trade organization in your area. So think about that. Alright, that's it. Be good, be good at it.