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Immediately leaping as quickly through the chain of command as you can isn't necessarily helpful. It can actually just make things more confusing and amp up something small into something big.

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One thing you keep assuming for some reason is that the owner isn't readily accessible and/or very hands-on.

A friend's father ran a very high-end Italian joint here in town for upwards of thirty years and he was the host on average of six nights a week.

Another friend of mine was a bartender here in town who bought a sports bar with a friend and fellow bartender. It was a busy place but they would put themselves on shifts behind the bar several nights a week.


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Wow, a whole several nights a week? Pretty impressive. A business as big as a bar, you say. Whew!

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I can't tell by your tone what you mean by this. I'm just talking about when they put themselves on the schedule. In both restaurant instances the owners would usually come in at 9AM or 10AM or whatever to manage the books, deliveries, payroll, back-office type stuff. Then they would often work the evening.

We're on a bit of a tangent, but a lot of very successful bar/restaurant managers are control freaks who invest huge amounts of time in their businesses. Whether they're also successful outside of their work who knows, but I don't think it's at all unusual for an owner to be so hands-on in a floor level situation at a moderately sized restaurant.

EDIT: Basically, what guids said upthread about owners either being very hands-on or very hands-off.

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My tone was just being playfully as*holish. It was making fun in a snotty way, but I hope I explained why in the rest of the post.

The tldr is: owners often work when they don't have to, and should fix it so their business doesn't go belly up if they get sick for a while, etc. Cuz sooner or later, it's gonna happen. And if it doesn't, they'll probably have heart attacks, become drunks or drug abusers, swallow a gun, divorce their wife, whatever.

Also, that some businesses by their nature cannot be run by having the boss jumping to put out every little fire. They're either too big or too complex or both. Or maybe even they're small but the boss is needed elsewhere. The whole point of hiring people to run things is to have them actually run it.

So the boss always being there is often far from a sign that a business is being run well.