I just wrapped a two-day leadership retreat with one of my clients. We spent two full days off-site with their entire leadership team—no distractions, no walk-in repairs, no guest complaints interrupting us. Just focused, strategic work on their 2026 plan.
And something remarkable happened.
On day one, the team walked in scattered. Each manager knew their location's problems intimately but had no idea what the other locations were dealing with or what the company's bigger vision was.
By the end of day two? Complete transformation. Each leader walked out of that room knowing:
- Their exact role in achieving the company's goals.
- The three big priorities for 2026 and why they matter.
- What success looks like in their specific position.
- The quarterly milestones they're accountable for hitting.
One of the GMs told me, "This is the first time I've actually understood where we're headed as a company. I finally know what I should be focusing on."
That's the power of a well-facilitated annual planning session.
But here's what I want you to hear:
It's mid-January, and if you haven't held this meeting yet, you might think you've missed your window. You haven't. What you've lost is a few weeks of momentum—but that's nothing compared to what you'll lose if you skip planning altogether.
Here's what happens when restaurant groups operate without a clear plan for the year:
- Your leadership team spends Q1 (and beyond) guessing what matters most.
- Priorities conflict across locations.
- Everyone's busy, but nothing actually moves the needle.
- Your managers keep asking, "What should I focus on?" because they genuinely don't know.
By Q2, you're exhausted, frustrated, and wondering why your team isn't executing. The problem isn't your team. The problem is they're working without a roadmap.
Let me be brutally honest about something: The restaurants that will dominate in 2026 didn't wait until January to create their plan. But the restaurants that will struggle are the ones who never create a plan at all. You still have time to course-correct. And if you facilitate this planning session well, your team will be aligned and executing by February 1st. That's a hell of a lot better than wandering through the entire year without direction.
Why Annual Planning Meetings Matter (Even When They're Late)
Most operators think annual meetings are just "nice to have." They're not. They're the difference between a team that executes your vision and a team that constantly needs you to direct their every move.
When you don't hold annual planning meetings, here's what actually happens:
- Your managers work in silos, each focused on their own location's problems without understanding how their work fits into the bigger picture.
- Your initiatives die in Q2 because no one was clear on ownership or milestones.
- You spend all year firefighting instead of building.
- And worst of all? Your best people get frustrated and leave because they can't see where the company is headed.
A well-facilitated annual planning meeting changes all of this. At the retreat I just facilitated, I watched this shift happen in real time. On day one, when I asked the team about their biggest challenges, everyone pointed to different problems. The kitchen manager was focused on food costs. The GM was worried about staffing. The training manager wanted better onboarding systems. None of them were wrong—but they weren't aligned.
By day two, after we mapped out the company's three big goals for 2026, something clicked. They realized their individual challenges all laddered up to the same strategic priorities. Food costs matter because they impact profitability (one of the big goals). Staffing matters because you can't scale without strong teams (another big goal). Training systems matter because consistency across locations drives guest experience (the third big goal). Suddenly, everyone understood how their work connected to the bigger picture.
That's what a great annual planning session does—it creates alignment and clarity.
Here's what needs to be on your agenda.
1. Review 2025 Wins and Challenges
Start by looking back before you look forward. This isn't about dwelling on the past—it's about learning from it. At the retreat, we spent the first two hours reviewing 2025.
Ask your leadership team:
- What were our biggest wins in 2025?
- What made those wins possible?
- What systems, behaviors, or decisions created success?
Then, address what didn't work:
- What challenges did we face last year?
- What did we learn from those challenges?
- What do we need to stop doing, start doing, or do differently?
This part of the meeting builds trust because you're acknowledging reality—both the good and the difficult. Your team needs to see that you're willing to examine what's broken, not just celebrate what's working.
2. Set 3 Big Goals for 2026 (Not 15 Vague Initiatives)
Here's where most annual meetings go off the rails:
Owners try to set 10-15 goals because everything feels urgent. But when everything is a priority, nothing is. Your team can't focus on 15 things at once. They need three big, clear goals that everything else ladders up to.
Here's the framework I used at the retreat.
Each goal should have:
- A clear, measurable outcome (not "improve culture" but "reduce turnover to 40% by Q4")
- An owner—one person who's accountable for driving that goal
- Quarterly milestones so you know if you're on track
- Resources needed (budget, time, people)
This is where operators make a critical mistake: They set ambitious goals without asking if their current systems can support them. You can't scale to six locations if your training system can't onboard managers consistently. You can't increase sales by 20% if you don't have the labor systems to handle higher volume. You can't improve culture if you're not meeting with your managers regularly.
Goals without systems fail every single time.
3. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
Your managers need to walk out of this meeting crystal clear on:
- What they own
- What success looks like in their role
- How their work contributes to the 3 big goals
This is where you eliminate the confusion that kills execution.
At the retreat, we created a simple chart showing each leader's primary area of ownership and how it connected to the company goals. The kitchen manager owns food cost management (directly impacts profitability goal). The training manager owns consistency across locations (directly impacts guest experience goal). The GM owns team development and retention (directly impacts scaling goal).
When everyone can see how their role matters, they stop waiting for you to tell them what to do. They start owning their areas of responsibility.
4. Establish Your Meeting Cadence for 2026
Goals don't get achieved in one annual meeting. They get achieved through consistent check-ins and course corrections.
Define your meeting rhythm now:
- Weekly leadership meetings to track progress on key initiatives
- Monthly financial reviews to ensure you're hitting profit targets
- Quarterly goal check-ins to assess what's working and what needs to change
When you establish this cadence upfront, your team knows when and how you'll measure success. It creates accountability without you having to chase people down for updates.
5. Get Buy-In and Commitment
Here's what separates a good annual meeting from a great one: Your team co-creates the plan instead of you presenting it to them.
At the retreat, I didn't tell the leadership team what their goals should be. We built them together. When your managers help shape the goals, they become invested in achieving them. When they identify the challenges and solutions, they own the outcomes. This isn't a meeting where you talk at your team for three hours. It's a strategic conversation where everyone contributes.
Ask questions like:
- What obstacles do you see in achieving this goal?
- What resources do you need to be successful?
- What would have to be true for us to hit this target?
The more your team participates in building the plan, the more committed they'll be to executing it.
What This Meeting Is NOT
Let's be clear about what this meeting should NOT become:
- It's not a place to solve operational problems ("the walk-in is broken again").
- It's not a venting session without solutions.
- It's not a one-way presentation where you do all the talking.
Save the tactical, day-to-day issues for your weekly meetings. This meeting is strategic. It's about setting direction, creating alignment, and establishing the systems that will carry you through the year.
The Real Cost of Skipping This Meeting
I've worked with restaurant groups who skipped annual planning. Here's what happened:
- Their teams spent the entire year unclear on priorities.
- Initiatives started and stopped without anyone really knowing why.
- Managers got frustrated because they didn't understand what they were working toward.
- And the owners? They burned out trying to hold everything together without a clear plan.
By the time they came to me for coaching, they'd wasted six months and thousands of dollars on misaligned efforts. Don't let that be you.
It's Not Too Late to Get This Right
Yes, the ideal time to hold this meeting was December. But the second-best time is right now. Your team is waiting for direction. Your 2026 doesn't have to be a repeat of the chaos you experienced last year. You can create a clear plan, align your leadership team, and start executing with focus and intention. But only if you actually facilitate this meeting and do the work.
The restaurants that will thrive in 2026 are the ones whose owners said, "We're not winging this year" and created a strategic plan to follow. Be one of those restaurants. I’ll be cheering you on.
Christin Marvin is a distinguished restaurant coach, speaker, and host of The Restaurant Leadership Podcast. She is also the author of Multi-Unit Mastery: Simplify Operations, Maximize Profits and Lead with Confidence, and The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary. She specializes in helping independent multi-unit restaurant owners scale without losing their minds or their culture. With over twenty 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's 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 personalized 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).
If you're running a multi-unit restaurant without a clear strategic plan, you're managing chaos instead of leading growth. To get personalized help aligning your team and executing in the next 30 days, BOOK A CALL HERE.
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