Why a Failing Restaurant Is Almost Never a Food Problem (And what Rajiv Dinakaran fixed instead)

A failing restaurant is almost never a food problem. Rajiv Dinakaran bought one where the food and location were fine and nobody cared.

Rajiv Dinakaran is President and Chief Operating Officer of Georgia Foods, the family owned Bojangles franchisee his father started. The group runs 46 restaurants across Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Workstream's On the Clock 2026 billed him as President & COO, Georgia Foods / Bojangles.

I built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations, then sold it. At Workstream's On the Clock 2026 in Atlanta, I hosted the speaker interviews. Rajiv told me the story of one store, and it is the cleanest turnaround story I heard all week, because the fix cost him almost nothing.

The food was fine. The location was fine.

His father was a Bojangles franchisee in North Carolina. The family was looking for room to grow, so they went looking in Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.

What they bought was a store in Milledgeville, Georgia. They took the restaurant and the rights to build in that area. The restaurant itself was in a good spot. It was also badly run.

Rajiv says he worked out what was wrong very fast.

"The food was fine, the location was fine. The only issue was the people just didn't care."

Rajiv Dinakaran

He is specific about what not caring looks like from the floor. The food does not taste as good. The drive through does not move as fast. The restaurant does not get as clean. On a report, those three look like a food problem, a speed problem and a cleaning problem. All three are really about people.

That is a harder problem than a broken fryer, because there is nothing to buy. You cannot order better people the way you order new equipment.

So his first move was not a hire, a firing or a refit. It was to care about the store himself, in front of everybody, until the crew could see it.

"I had to show them that I cared." The crew watched him do it. He says that once they saw the owner cared, they started to care as well.

He asked the people who already knew the answer

Most new owners walk in with a plan. They have already decided what is wrong, usually from a spreadsheet, and the first week is spent announcing it.

Rajiv did the opposite. He called a meeting with the crew and the managers and asked them one question.

"Tell me what I need to do as the owner of this business to turn this business around."

Rajiv Dinakaran

He was honest with them about his own position. He was not from the town, he knew nobody there, and the people in that room were the only people he knew.

They answered him. They wanted the schedule changed. They wanted more staff on the floor. They wanted the building fixed. They wanted more marketing behind the store.

In his words, "I just listened to them. It was as simple as that."

Then he did the same thing on the other side of the counter. He was working shifts himself, which is the only reason the customer conversations happened at all. An owner who sits in an office never gets into those conversations.

So he asked the customers. What can I do to improve this business? They told him the biscuits were not what they used to be, and the drive through was too slow.

He went back through the biscuit process. He put enough people on to move the drive through. Both problems were named by customers, not by him. "It made the whole business win."

With no money to spend, he gave people time off that mattered

This is the part I keep coming back to. At that first store there was no spare cash. He could not overpay anybody and he could not add big benefits.

So he did the small things, and he did them fast.

Someone's wedding anniversary landed on a Friday. That person had the Friday off. Someone's child was graduating the next week. That person had two days.

"If that's important to you, it's important to me."

Rajiv Dinakaran

The order matters. Better pay and better benefits did arrive at that store, but they arrived later, once the business could carry them. What came first was the part that was free.

A day off for a graduation costs an owner one awkward schedule to rewrite. It does something a raise cannot, because it shows you were listening when the person told you about their life.

Money would not have fixed it anyway

I asked him whether the fix was really as simple as caring, or whether there were tactical changes underneath it that he was being modest about.

"You really can't throw money at the problem."

Rajiv Dinakaran

He walked me through the expensive version of the same turnaround. Hire a star general manager. Buy the marketing tools, the tactics and the tricks. Give the food away until people come back. His view is that none of it lasts if the people in the building do not care, and none of it lasts if the owner does not care either.

Operators argue with this, and I understand why. Spending is the move that looks like progress. A new sign is visible. A new manager is visible. Caring does not show up on a profit and loss statement for months.

But every item on the expensive list is something you do to a store. The cheap version is something you do with the people already in it.

Attention is the one thing you cannot buy, so protect it. Rajiv fixed that store by listening, which costs nothing except a manager's evening. Workstream's all-in-one hiring, payroll, and HR platform takes the paperwork out of that evening, so the listening can actually happen. Explore All-in-one →

Customers can taste the difference when the crew cares

Rajiv is precise about how caring turns into money, and it only takes two steps.

"When people care about what they're doing, they produce at a higher level." That is step one, and everything else follows from it.

Step two is that the work changes in ways a customer can feel. "People can taste the care in the food." They taste it in the quality. They see it at the window when somebody smiles at them and means it.

He describes the morning better than I can. You are on your way to work and already stressed. You pull up, somebody is genuinely glad to be there, and then you get a warm biscuit and a hot coffee. You drive away in a better mood than you arrived in.

At Milledgeville the customers worked it out before anybody told them. The way he remembers the reaction is "Something's different here."

So I put it to him plainly. You are not really in the food business.

"We just happen to serve chicken."

Rajiv Dinakaran

What this means if you run two locations, not 46

Rajiv had one store and no budget when he learned this. That is closer to most operators than 46 restaurants is.

• Name the broken thing before you spend. Food, location, people. One of the three is your problem, and only one of them is cheap to fix.
• Ask the crew in week one. They already know what is wrong. Nobody has asked them, which is part of why they stopped caring.
• Write down what they say and do the first item. Listening that changes nothing is worse than not asking.
• Ask ten customers the same week. They will name a product problem and a speed problem. Both are fixable and both are specific.
• Start with what costs nothing. A day off on a day that matters to the person is worth more than a small raise on a random day.

None of that needs capital. It needs an owner who is in the building often enough to be asked a question, and honest enough to act on the answer.

The reason this story stays with me is that the answer is uncomfortable. If the food and the location are fine, the problem is the culture, and the culture is the owner's job. Nobody can be hired to do it for you. Workstream's breakdown of the real causes of high employee turnover lines up closely with what Rajiv found in one store.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you turn around a failing restaurant?

Start by working out which of three things is broken: the food, the location or the people. Rajiv Dinakaran bought a struggling Bojangles in Milledgeville, Georgia, and found the food and the location were both fine. That left the people. He fixed it by showing the crew he cared, then acting on what they told him to change.

What should a new owner do in their first week at a store they just bought?

Call a meeting with the crew and the managers and ask them what needs to happen. Rajiv Dinakaran did that in his first week. The crew asked for a new schedule, more staff, repairs and more marketing. The people on the floor already know the answer, and the new owner is usually the only person who does not.

How do you improve morale when there is no money for a pay rise?

Use the things that cost nothing, starting with time off on a day that matters to the person. Rajiv Dinakaran had no capital at his first store for higher pay or benefits. So he gave one person a day off for a wedding anniversary, and another two days for a graduation. Better pay arrived later, once the business could carry it.

Can customers tell when restaurant staff do not care?

Yes, and they usually notice before any survey does. Rajiv Dinakaran says people can taste the care in the food, and see it at the window. At the store he turned around, customers started saying something was different. When people care about the work, he says, they produce at a higher level.

Is spending money the fastest way to fix a struggling location?

Spending is usually the slowest way, because it treats the store instead of the team. Rajiv Dinakaran could have hired an expensive general manager, bought marketing tools and given the food away. His view is that none of it holds while the people in the building do not care. Asking the crew and then acting cost nothing and moved the same store.

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About the author. Wilson K Lee built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations and sold it. He now runs wilsonklee.com, where he publishes real numbers and playbooks for food and beverage owners, and he hosted the speaker interviews at Workstream's On the Clock 2026.