The best meal I had in Vienna was at an Italian restaurant (you can only consume so much schnitzel).

The place has a 4.6 average rating on Google. Sure bet, right?

There is no website or menu.

It took us 10 minutes to be seated, even though the restaurant only had 10% of the tables already taken.

It took us 25 minutes to get wine. Dinner, over an hour.

We watched other would-be-patrons sit, wait to place an order, and wait and wait and wait and eventually just leave.

That explains reviews like this:

What Robin B failed to realize is that the waiter was not arrogant, he was just also the host, the chef, the dishwasher, the prep cook, the busboy, the cleaning staff, and the owner.

He ran a one-man show.

So you waited 25 minutes for your wine because he was in the kitchen literally making the fresh pasta for the only other table with the wisdom to wait around.

It’s not that he was arrogant, it’s that he invented the menu every day and only could handle making 4 entrees so no you couldn’t sub the chicken for meatballs.

That pasta! I will be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

The lemon creme brulee🤌🏼

This is what craft looks like.

When it came time to pay the bill, he literally wrote it up by hand, doing old school math to get my total. I tried to tip 20% but he refused, only taking an extra 5 Euros and told me to “keep the rest for a cappuccino after church tomorrow morning.”

Then he sent us off with his homemade limoncello.

He worked as efficiently as possible, while still providing the care necessary to ensure an extremely high-quality meal. Which is why most of his reviews are like this:

When you focus on the customers who respect your craft, you don’t have to worry that 90% of your tables are empty.

You wouldn’t be able to serve them all with the same level of quality.

You have a natural carrying capacity. There’s only so much work you can take on.

Unless you wanna rush your process, do a half ass job, cry, sweat, and burn out.

The trick – what this owner/chef/busboy mastered – was resisting the urge to make everyone happy.

Working within your natural carrying capacity means you’re gonna lose some potential business. You’re gonna get a 1-star review.

But you can’t care.

You have to stay focused on taking care of yourself. And the patient pasta lovers.

You can increase your carrying capacity.

You can hire staff to seat the customers and wait the tables. You’ll also have to hire more chefs to handle the increase in orders.

You’d spend less time with your customers and more time training staff to your quality expectations and dealing with who wore pajamas to work and who is sleeping with who.

I totally get why the single employee of Restaurant Stella Marina worked alone. Management is not everyone’s skill set.

It might be yours. You might have the talent to be a great boss.

Your team will still have a natural carrying capacity and it’ll be your job to identify it so you know when to turn down work instead of pushing everyone harder.