The owner was the bottleneck at the register
At a small izakaya (a casual Japanese pub), I asked for the bill and the staff member told me, "Only the owner can do the checkout." So I waited a few minutes. Orders were kept on paper slips, and the owner, who both cooks and runs the whole place, was the one who checked the final quantities and set the total.
Looking at the process alone, this is a textbook case of one person being the only one who can do a job.
Write the order on a paper slip
→ The owner checks the slip
→ The owner works out the total
→ If the owner is busy cooking, checkout stops
The fixes are easy to come up with.
- Install a POS (a digital register system)
- Standardize the price list and the slip format
- Let the staff handle payment, too
- Set rules for freebies and discounts
- Write a short checkout procedure
Japan's Small and Medium Enterprise Agency also notes that more businesses are seeing gains in efficiency, cost and staffing once they move from paper-based work to digital management. Going digital with ordering and purchasing is also expected to cut work time, reduce human error and make records easier to search.[6][7]
If you apologize every time, shouldn't you just fix it?
As a customer waiting a few minutes, it's natural to think, "If you're sorry every single time, just fix the process." But if the place is booked solid and even a solo diner could only squeeze into a gap, the owner's decision looks a bit different from fixing a process at a company.
The owner isn't only comparing waiting time. They're weighing things like these:
- The cost of buying a POS system
- Training people to use it
- Updating it whenever the menu changes
- The risk of cash discrepancies or theft
- Judgment calls on favors for regulars
- The speed they've gotten used to with the current paper routine
- Customers who actually walk away because of the wait
If the wait at the register is short, customers put up with it and the seats are full anyway, the financial incentive to change is weak. An inefficiency can exist without being the owner's top business problem.
A company's one-person dependency isn't the same as a small shop's
Here we need to separate the harmful kind of "only one person can do it" at work from the kind a small shop can live with.
The harmful kind
- Nobody can cover, so the employee can't take time off
- It leads to mistakes or safety accidents
- It pushes big losses onto customers or coworkers
- The person hides the problem with overtime and weekend work
- Nothing gets fixed even after people quit
The acceptable kind
- The wait is short
- The owner is willingly carrying the load
- Customers accept it, along with the prices and the atmosphere
- A replacement system would cost more than it's worth
- Quality and safety don't suffer much
Even when "only one person can do it" is true in both cases, how you judge it depends on who pays the price and how big the loss really is.
Decide by whether a fix is worth it, not whether you can do it
People who are good at improving processes want to fix a bottleneck the moment they see one. But running a business isn't about wiping out every inefficiency. Any improvement comes with setup costs, learning costs, a shift in how the place feels, and new mistakes of its own.
Here's what to check:
- How often do the waits or mistakes happen?
- How much do they affect sales, repeat visits or safety?
- Is there a risk of having to close because nobody but the owner can handle it?
- How many years will it take to earn back the cost of the fix?
- Will the shop lose its charm or flexibility?
At this izakaya, customers waited a few minutes on a full night, and the owner said a quick "sorry for the chaos." Customers accepted it, along with the low prices and the feel of the place. So at least that night, it wasn't a "serious flaw." It was an imperfect balance that a busy little shop has chosen.
Being able to spot a bottleneck is one thing. Deciding that every bottleneck must be fixed is another.
