You Stupid Donkey!

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has built a reality-television empire with his abrasive style, ready arsenal of barbed insults and propensity for four-letter words. It all adds up to great television. But in the case of Kitchen Nightmares, which focuses on Ramsay's attempts to save failing restaurants, the entertainment is also packed with entrepreneurial insight.

"I like the show," says Janine Popick at the Vertical Response blog, "because he gets down into the inner workings of a small business and peels away the onion to find any issues that might be hampering the business from growing."

She finds six business lessons in the story arc of each episode. Here are some:

• Ramsay starts with an honest assessment of the situation. You cannot fix something until you know what's wrong, and he always begins by observing a typical lunch or dinner service. Most are, predictably, disastrous. "He also takes to the streets," notes Popick. "[I]n many shows he walks the streets of the town to observe other restaurants and he'll stop people and ask what they think about the restaurant he's trying to help."

• He then identifies, and tries to rectify, fundamental problems. A strong business is built on a strong foundation. Disturbingly, almost all of the restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares share one failure in common: filthy kitchens that must be cleaned before anything else can happen. Beyond that, Ramsay addresses the unique mix of issues challenging each restaurant—everything from poor leadership to overambitious menus to subpar chefs.

The Po!nt: Whatever you think of Gordon Ramsay, you just might benefit from his simple formula for jumpstarting a struggling business.

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