There are few TV shows that actually pass out good business lessons today – by my estimation, only Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares and Bravo’s Tabatha’s Salon Takeover really teach useful, practical, everyday things. (I’m holding my breath on Undercover Boss.) Last week’s Kitchen Nightmares was a great example of how much business information is hidden in this show. If you’re running a small company, you could use to watch and learn. If you haven’t seen Kitchen Nightmares, celeb chef Gordon Ramsay stops by a new, failing restaurant each episode. There’s a first act, in which Gordon discovers how bad things are and why they’re broken; a second act, in which he tries to get the owners’ and staff’s buy-in to his changes; and a third act, in which they re-launch the restaurant with a new menu, new décor, and new attitude. Presumably, the big changes lead to success. Last week, Gordon visited a local restaurant, Lido de Manhattan, in pretty, sunny Manhattan Beach. The restaurant’s revenue is off and customers are not returning. Ramsay comes in and uncovers a litany of problems. The one that stood out from a business point of view was an early revelation: the décor and menus hadn’t been updated in more than five years. This is more than an operational problem: it’s a problem of not being in touch with customer needs. That’s something I see with a lot of clients that have had their revenues stall: they’re competing on what they think is important, not on what their customer thinks is important. In this case, customer tastes in atmosphere, ingredients, flavor profiles, and portion sizes have all changed over the last five years. Ramsay responded by identifying a particular need within Lido’s customer base: a trendy wine bar, which, surprisingly enough, isn’t available in the area. Ramsay made over the menu to better fit this market and changed the restaurant’s look to complement as well. This is exactly the right approach. I actually ate lunch at Lido di Manhattan about two weeks after Ramsay came by, and had a great meal at a place that looked trendy and seemed to run like clockwork. If you’re looking to do the same thing for your company, you just need to reconnect with your customer. What are the trends in the industry – not from your point of view, but from theirs? How are they responding to them? How are your competitors responding to them, and how does this affect your customers? What gaps does this leave? Look particularly at what your customer can afford to spend and how they prefer to spend it. This is just one of the business lessons I’ve seen in Kitchen Nightmares. I wouldn’t be surprised if I write about them here soon.