MICHELLE: Welcome everyone to today's podcast. I have the amazing Christin Marvin with me today, who lives in Denver, Colorado. Here we are in Australia getting ready for a very hot Christmas, while she is sitting over there waiting for her beautiful first dusting of snow. I always think it must be wonderful to have a white Christmas.
We are speaking today about hospitality, because Christin is a renowned coach in the industry. Let me give you a little background before we get into our conversation.
Christin Marvin is a distinguished restaurant coach, author, speaker, and host of the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, who specialises in helping independent, multi-unit restaurant owners scale without losing their minds or their culture. With over 20 years of hands-on experience in both fine dining and high-volume growth concepts, Christin has established herself as the go-to authority for restaurant leaders ready to move from chaos to confidence.
She is the founder of Solutions By Christin and creator of the Independent Restaurant Framework (IRF), a proven system that transforms overwhelmed owner-operators into confident CEOs. Christin's approach is built on supportive tough love and real-world experience, having navigated her own journey from line cook at 15 to managing partner by 30. She understands the unique challenges facing restaurant leaders today.
Her vulnerability about struggling with burnout and using alcohol to cope has made her a trusted voice for leaders who need someone who truly gets it. Through her personalised one-on-one coaching, elite group programs, and leadership workshops, Christin helps restaurant groups build unified leadership teams, create culture-driven operations, and implement systems that actually work. Her clients don't just survive expansion — they thrive through it.
Christin is also the author of Multi-Unit Mastery: Simplify Operations, Maximise Profits and The Hospitality Leaders Roadmap: Move From Ordinary to Extraordinary. Welcome, Christin. It's lovely to have you here.
CHRISTIN: Thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you for the warm intro. Hearing that read back is pretty extraordinary.
MICHELLE: It is. In hospitality, it's moving so fast that we don't always stop to acknowledge what we've actually achieved. That's why reading a guest bio matters — it shows the audience that you have genuine expertise. You're not just telling people what to do. You've walked that trail yourself. So let's get into it.
Your journey from line cook at 15 to managing partner by 30 is incredible. When you think about those 15 years of climbing, what were some of the defining moments that still shape how you coach restaurant leaders today?
CHRISTIN: Before I jump into that, I want to share a quick story. I have a client in Sydney, Australia, that I started working with about nine months ago. During our first call, as I was understanding his challenges and goals, he kept saying, "I want to increase turnover. I want to increase turnover." And I was like, "What are you talking about? That's awful." Then I realised there was a language barrier — he meant turnover as in growing sales. In America, that means we're losing people.
MICHELLE: Oh yes! We all speak English, but the terminology is so different. He was probably thinking, "Why is she saying no to me?"
CHRISTIN: Exactly. Anyway, we had a couple of good laughs around that. There have been so many wonderful moments in my career, and I think when I was in it over those 20 years, I didn't really appreciate all of them or the people around me who helped me grow. I moved at a million miles an hour. I opened 13 restaurants, helped one company scale from two to seven locations in five years across all different concepts, and helped another group scale from six to 48 locations in seven years. It was flying at the speed of light.
Over the last three years as a coach, I've really taken time to reflect on my journey and practise more gratitude instead of being so self-critical. I've come to appreciate the people who took time to invest in me and have effective, supportive one-on-ones with me — and the understanding that leadership development is as much my responsibility as it is the company's.
The moments that really propelled me forward were when I sought additional support: hiring a coach, reading books like Setting the Table by Danny Meyer, attending conferences and seminars on leadership development, studying mixology, becoming a sommelier. When I sought those opportunities and challenged myself to learn and grow, I moved forward. The minute I stopped doing that, I started to get closer to burnout.
MICHELLE: I love that book — Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. One of my brothers bought that for me many years ago and I've still got it in my bookcase with every second page dog-eared and yellow tabs throughout. It gives you so much insight into the industry. But your own personal journey there, Christin, is so right. We can be so deep in it that we don't give ourselves the opportunity to look up, acknowledge what we've done, and see where we are and where we're going. Thank you for that.
Now, you created the Independent Restaurant Framework, built on people, process, and profit — and we do need profit. We build businesses, we employ people, we contribute to the greater community. Can you walk us through these pillars and why they're so essential for hospitality leaders looking to scale with intention, not just ambition?
CHRISTIN: I'll tell you about a client I'm currently working with in Colorado. They have two locations and are looking to potentially open one or two more in the next couple of years. The work we do in the beginning with clients who want to scale is to strengthen the foundation first and fill in any cracks.
That starts from the people perspective — understanding what the business needs in terms of leadership, and then where the current leadership team stands and how they measure up to what the business actually needs. From there, we can understand whether people need internal development to grow into the roles that will help the company scale, or whether we need to look outside to close the gaps. That is what the people aspect is all about. It's also about looking through every single department and every layer of your business to make sure the people on your team are coming in matching your culture, so you can keep that culture and those core values intact as you retain and promote them.
Once the people are solidified, we move on to process — nurturing and developing them, making sure everyone is aligned on where the business is going, has a very clear vision, and understands their roles and responsibilities. There is structured communication at all levels of the organisation so that teams can be more proactive with problem-solving and calm a lot of that chaos down.
When you've got those things in place, the profit flows. But you still need to understand what measurables — both leading and lagging indicators — you want to use for your business and have visibility over them. You also need to train your teams to understand why those matter. Teams want raises every year, they want bonuses, and they need to understand how small impacts in how they show up as engaged leaders — in productivity, food cost, beverage cost, and training — affect the bottom line. That's how they build great habits and repeat them.
MICHELLE: Thank you for explaining those three pillars. Each one stands individually, but they're all connected — without one, the other two don't stand. And they have to be done very methodically. In hospitality we find that a lot — a new person comes in and instead of giving them the six-step process, someone says, "Oh, you can do it in three." When we miss the steps, those key critical points are missed. That's where things can go wrong.
CHRISTIN: Absolutely. I was having a conversation with a client this morning about a team member using Gino Wickman's GWC methodology — Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it. The director of operations said, "This person gets it and wants it so badly, but they can't multitask. They can't take on multiple projects." That was a significant area of improvement we had to clarify and get to the bottom of — can this person be developed, or are they in the wrong role?
MICHELLE: As a hospitality business coach, a big part of your role is getting clients to think differently — which can be hard, particularly when we're all set in our ways or attached to our vision. What are some of the old beliefs or patterns that are holding owners back from building a thriving, scalable operation today?
CHRISTIN: One of the stories I love to share is from Setting the Table, where Danny Meyer talks about the salt shaker incident. He was so frustrated that he had to constantly go in and tell staff to put the salt shaker in the middle of the table. His mentor said to him, "This is your job — to constantly be moving the salt shaker back, working with the teams, calling it out when things need to be adjusted." Thinking differently and shifting even a very small perspective can really change the way a restaurant owner shows up.
I was having this conversation yesterday with a frustrated client. They said, "I've set these expectations, we just had a really hard review, and now another issue has come up." I said, "Are you looking at this as 'here's another thing I have to coach, another item on my to-do list' — or are you looking at it as 'here's another opportunity for me to support and develop this person'?"
There are two very different energies that come from those perspectives. One is frustration and anger. The other is, "Here's an opportunity for me to support and serve as a leader." That is what people's jobs are. The owners and operators who understand that coaching has never been more important than it is today, and that the people focus needs to be front and centre — those are the ones leading us into the future of what leadership looks like in hospitality.
MICHELLE: Very much so. It's going to be an incredible journey over the next few years and decades. We're seeing the changing of the guard as baby boomers move out and Gen Z moves into leadership roles far quicker than baby boomers did. They are not going to wait around until Jack or Mary finally retire after 10 or 11 years. Gen Z are looking for movement within the first few months.
CHRISTIN: Absolutely. And as owners of businesses, we've got to understand that's how they're seeing the world. It is moving quickly, and we do not want to lose great people.
MICHELLE: You're incredibly open about your own personal journey through burnout and looking at alcohol as a way to relieve the pressure. That vulnerability clearly resonates with many in the industry. How can hospitality leaders start prioritising wellness for themselves and their teams without feeling like they're losing their edge?
CHRISTIN: It's 100% difficult to make leadership look attractive — or it has been in the past in our industry. This vulnerability is brand new for me. I was the type of leader who was trained to leave personal issues at the door, come in and be professional, never let them see me sweat, and have thick skin. I was never vulnerable. I never wanted to talk about anything going on outside of work. I wanted to be fearless for my team and never let anything bother me.
That came at a cost. It cost me depth in my relationships with my team. Because when you show up always positive, in the back of your team's mind, they wonder if they can trust you. They wonder what you're hiding. I wasn't hiding anything, but I wasn't being as human as I possibly could be.
My coach three years ago, when I said I was going to write a book, said, "I want you to lean in really hard and be more vulnerable than you've ever been before." And I went for it with The Hospitality Leaders Roadmap. The response and support I received was absolutely eye-opening. It has shifted who I am.
To answer your question: prioritising wellness is the edge that owners and operators need. When they start to become aware of what personal wellness means to them, they show up with more clarity, more engagement, more intention, more energy. They are more present with their teams and able to solve problems quicker, create long-term lasting solutions, and achieve greater success.
I chose to lean into alcohol because I was burnt out and didn't want to admit it. I had lost sight of my core values — I didn't even know what they were until I was 40. I didn't know what I was connected to any longer, with growing and scaling as fast as I was. The minute I took a moment to slow down and give myself that mental space and clarity, everything shifted.
If owners and operators can truly take one to two days off a week — I spoke to an operator this morning who's been in the industry 20 years. She said, "Christin, I have been taking Saturdays off consistently since we started working together a year and a half ago. I don't check email. I completely unplug. And it's been magical." That was a huge step for her.
When people can start to take those tiny steps and set boundaries for themselves, they will understand the true importance and the impact it can have — and they can start leading by example for their teams.
MICHELLE: That boundary setting is so important at every age. I'm finding that Gen Y's in middle management roles right now don't have any boundaries — they don't set them, they don't inform others, and therefore they don't keep them. They burn out. And then the team looks at them and thinks, "If that's what leadership looks like, I don't want that role." When we offer them the opportunity to step up as a team leader or supervisor, they say no — because they can see what it's done to the person above them. Your raw honesty shows others that it is achievable to come out of that dark space.
CHRISTIN: It's so true. I have a client in Australia who unfortunately has not prioritised wellness and is trying to do so now, but his body is completely breaking down. He's been in and out of hospital due to stress, has reached the point of burnout and exhaustion, and is now looking for an exit strategy — and we're two to four years away from that being realistic.
For anybody listening: if you are having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, if you're not looking forward to going in, if you feel like you can never disconnect or unplug — burnout is staring you in the face. I don't care what's happening in the restaurant. Take some time off. Take a week. Take three days and unplug completely, and kick in the 72-hour effect. There is nothing more important than your health. My mother-in-law has told me that for 20 years, and the older I get, the more I realise it's true.
MICHELLE: If you've built up a good team, trust them. When you don't show up for work, the business is not going to collapse. If it does — you haven't built a business. You've built a noose around your neck. So take that realisation, step back, and have the day off. Like that lady taking every Saturday off — you're giving your team the opportunity to shine. Let them do that.
They're never going to do it exactly the same way as you, and they may not do it as fast, but they will learn and you will get your health back.
When you said about finding those core values — I'm very values-focused. Working with businesses that are congruent with your values matters. Maybe not every single value will be totally aligned, but the majority have got to be. I always say: if you walk into an organisation and get that funny, yucky feeling in your stomach — it's just not congruent. Don't work there. Your values have to be lived by the leadership team, not just written on the wall in the staff room.
CHRISTIN: One hundred percent. When we work with clients, we ask them: what are your core values, where do they live, when did you last look at them, and are they included in your hiring processes? Nine times out of ten, people say, "What are you talking about?" So we lean in — we design interview questions around those values and pull them through coaching, performance reviews, and team communications to keep them top of mind.
MICHELLE: You've helped dozens of clients cut turnover, improve leadership, and save six figures in labour costs — which is phenomenal. What are a few small but powerful changes operators can implement right now to start seeing those kinds of results?
CHRISTIN: And just to be clear, when we talk about turnover here, we mean staff leaving — not sales.
I'll tell you about a client in Arizona. They have three locations and are opening one a year. One of the first things we did was get into a conference room with their executive leadership team — the owner and a 24-year-old regional manager we had taken from AGM to GM to regional. She's extraordinary. We whiteboarded where the organisation stood in terms of leadership and what it needed to grow — financial expertise, HR, marketing, and operations.
What I find with many independent operators is that when they're growing, they start promoting people who are loyal or hardworking and giving them salaries because they're afraid to lose them. This organisation had ended up with a completely different number of managers at each of their three locations — not based on sales, but because someone had worked hard and asked for a promotion. Their busiest location had two managers, and their middle location had six.
We looked at the organisation from an operations perspective and asked: what roles does a manager actually need to fill in each location, and what does the sales volume actually support? We then realised those extra managers didn't even want to be managers. We transitioned them back to hourly roles, removed those manager salaries, and built very clear career paths. When a team member now says, "I want to grow," there's a clear answer: you'll be a shift lead, then an AGM, then you can work towards a GM role.
Instead of the panic of "I'm going to lose this person, I need to give them more money," you avoid the dangerous cycle where fairness and legalities become issues. You might be rewarding someone with money when what they actually want is a role they're better suited for. Loyal people can still be in the wrong role. That goes right back to Gino Wickman's GWC — do they get it, want it, and have the capacity for it?
I've been on both sides of that. As a managing partner for a group with seven completely different concepts, I was adding on as many roles as possible because in the independent space, we wear a lot of hats. I was spread very thin and wasn't necessarily an expert in any of those areas. Nobody really knew exactly what I was doing.
Then I worked for a company that was incredibly structured and ready for growth — from six to 48 locations in seven years — because we knew exactly what experts we needed in each area and how to stay in our lane. One environment was very chaotic; the other was much calmer despite the high-volume growth. Step by step, not picking from everywhere. And that makes the outcome so very different.
MICHELLE: You've said that restaurant owners can't be in survival mode anymore — they need to step into actually being a CEO. What does that shift look like in practice, and how does someone begin making that mindset change? Particularly for those smaller restaurants where a wonderful chef goes from being on the pans to running the entire business.
CHRISTIN: I love this. I don't think people who are specialised in their craft always fully understand everything it takes to run a really smart business. When people come to me saying they want to open a restaurant, I tell them I'm going to try to talk them out of it first. Then we build a map of what the next 18 to 24 months looks like, because this is not going to happen in six months the way they imagine.
If they look at that map and say, "I've got the talent, the skill set, and the money to do it, and I want to design this kind of life for myself" — go for it. But the industry has never been more complex. From a financial perspective, you've got to be on top of all your numbers and have strong visibility. You need smarter, more diverse marketing than ever before — social media, nurturing existing guests, driving new traffic. The HR component is more important than it's ever been.
Having a CEO mentality means understanding that you have a team of people you're delegating to. You are the visionary of the company, and you've got implementers helping you execute that vision. The owners who think they can do it all on their own will burn out, or they'll be unhappy, and they'll lose a lot more — including their health.
I had a conversation with an owner last week. He's been in business for one year, wants to open four more locations in four years, and has a two-year-old and a four-year-old at home. I said, "Is what you're doing sustainable?" He started laughing and said, "Absolutely not." I said, "Okay, then before you look at location number two, you've got to understand what you actually need."
A lot of people say they can't afford another salary. But fractional roles have always existed. I worked for a group where we had servers who were part-time marketers, part-time community managers, part-time baristas who also handled HR. Now there are fractional CFOs and fractional HRs you only pay when you need them. And there are so many wonderful AI tools to help owners. But they can't go at this alone — as hard as they try, they will burn out.
MICHELLE: My father always said, "Michelle, you have to spend money to make money." Whether that's spending on marketing or on employees, you have to invest because the return comes back to you.
What I see in the hospitality industry that really disappoints me is that as soon as things get tight, board members or senior management immediately say, "Cut the staff." But what you're doing is cutting the experience. We all know what it's like to go to a restaurant or bar where one or two people are trying to serve everyone and struggling. Customers walk out disappointed and hungry, and they'll certainly tell others not to come back. That knee-jerk reaction of cutting staff isn't a strategy for growing your business — it's a way to destroy it very quickly. The owner thinks they'll step in and cover it, but they're also supposed to be out the back ordering, doing invoicing, doing everything else. It just becomes a downward spiral.
CHRISTIN: It's so true. That old method of "cut labour, cut labour" just doesn't work. It never has. What I work on with clients is asking: are you scheduling based on a labour percentage or based on hourly sales? Ninety-nine percent of them are still scheduling off a labour percentage. When we sit down and look at it properly — making sure labour is in the right place based on when guests are actually coming through the door — and we trim 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, we immediately start shaving percentage points off labour. There's a way to save on labour and be smarter about where you deploy your people.
MICHELLE: And you can see the businesses that do it well. They have a solid team, but they might have one versatile team member on the night shift who moves from place to place — at the foyer greeting guests during peak arrival, then in the bar, then clearing plates in the restaurant, then in the coffee shop. That one extra body who spots where they're needed relieves the stress that builds up in particular areas and ensures the experience is memorable for all the right reasons. Can you really afford it? You cannot afford not to. And if you've got someone available to slide into any position at any time, you can guarantee the business is fully staffed every day of the year. That's enormous value.
Looking forward — what should hospitality organisations be doing right now to prepare for a powerful 2026? Is it too late to reset and start building a better path forward?
CHRISTIN: Make sure you've got things in place to help you when distractions come up. I had a call with a client yesterday who said, "I'm really distracted. I've had all these fires come up. Can we talk today about what I should be focused on this quarter?" We had a laugh about it, but there was a lot of truth in it.
This is what coaching does — we spend an hour every other week together, we slow down, we stop, we strategise, we celebrate the wins, and we get back on track. I reminded my client of the 2026 vision we created together at the start of the year — all the things they wanted to accomplish, and the three quarterly goals we designed. I said, "Pull that back out. That's what you told your teams to focus on. That's what they're spending their weekly ops meetings measuring. Go back to that tool."
MICHELLE: It's so important to have something that keeps you grounded and focused — something you can return to when things feel unclear, rather than scrambling through page 20 of a booklet or a piece of paper buried in a drawer. And rely on your team. Get their feedback. Being the owner doesn't mean you have to have all the answers.
CHRISTIN: Not at all.
If you are having quarterly meetings with your leadership team, an end-of-year meeting where you celebrate the wins and figure out how to build on them, and you're creating space for your teams to be open and honest about what's not working — you're creating a safe space where trust and vulnerability can become really present. And that is where progress comes from.
MICHELLE: It certainly does, Christin. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I know my listeners will have gained some real nuggets of gold from you today.
I know they'll be wondering how they can get in contact with you and what to expect when working with Solutions By Christin.
CHRISTIN: I would love to offer anyone listening a complimentary coaching session. Please feel free to reach out — let's dive in and strategise what your dreams are, what your challenges are in your business, and give you some actionable items to walk away with. You can reach me at [email protected] or at christinmarvin.com/contact.
What you can expect is clarity and focus as you continue down your path of ownership. Right now we are working with 10 clients all over the world — helping them craft their exit strategy, develop their people so they can live the lives they want to live instead of being chained to the business, and helping people scale from one to three locations with a strong team that can run the business for them. We are helping people build the life of their dreams.
MICHELLE: And where can they find your two books?
CHRISTIN: At christinmarvin.com/books. And the Restaurant Leadership Podcast is available on all platforms and on the website as well.
MICHELLE: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today, Christin. I know my listeners will have gained some real gold from this conversation. I wish you and your clients an amazing 2026.
CHRISTIN: Thanks, Michelle. I appreciate it.
