Imagine the best dining experience you ever had in your life, where you were the guest. Now imagine that kind of experience happening in your restaurant. Does it seem realistic to think it can happen in your place? Could you do even better? The answer to the latter is no, even if the answer to the former is yes. Why no? Because you cannot execute a better service experience for your guests if you have never experienced it yourself. Now try to imagine the best service experience any of your 16 to 24 year old staff has been a part of. Getting the picture? Scary huh? Oh, but we train great service, you brag. If the operation that gave you your best experience opened next door to you, would you be scared? Why? And whats this got to do with managing employees? The answer iseverything! Lets get to the basics really fast. You dont manage people, you lead them. And how you lead your employees directly relates to how they treat your guests and your business. If you do not believe that now, call your attorney and begin the bankruptcy paperwork. Then call your old boss up from the ad agency or the insurance office or wherever you came from where people told you that you were a good cook and should open yourself a restaurant, cause youre gonna need a job. What business are you in? The food business? No. Retail? No. Its the people business stupid! And its all about relationships! Your vendors are people. Guests are people. Employees are people. There are people at the business next door to yours. Your accountant is people. Your attorney is people. (Well maybe not your attorney.) We as independent restaurateurs need to stop deluding ourselves that we can compete with anyone, including ourselves, (dont ask, thats another whole article!) without great talent in our stores. Only the best talent can give you the culture you need to succeed today - the best servers, cooks, HOSTS!!! (The verb not the noun!), bartenders, bussers, dishwashers and MANAGERS!!! Put anything short of the best talent on your floor or in your kitchen and you are asking for failure. And this is a NO EXCUSES situation. The 4-alarm bell is ringing in this country for great talent for this industry and YOU need to answer it. You need the will to win this. Remember the David Ambrose quote, If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you dont, you have achieved half your failure. Only A & B level talent for me!! Why? Because anything less than that will cost you so much money and lost opportunities that you wont win. And lets not kid ourselves, winning is everything! Besides, somebody is gonna get the best talent, why not you? You need the best talent to get the best guests (read loyal guests!) to create the best profitable restaurant. So you better start paying more attention to your talent than your guests! WOW! Did he really say that? Yes Mr. Miss. Mrs. or Ms Restaurant Owner. I did! 80% of guests, who say they have an enjoyable experience in your restaurant, will tell you that as they go across the street to the next great place with better buzz! Loyal guests are the most profitable ones to have. And in order to get more of them you need to fulfill their ever increasing demands. That starts with having the talent on the floor to satisfy those butts in your seats. Having C & D level talent will get you D & F level guest loyalty, and a P&L not worth spit! Knees knocking yet? If youre the owner of some of the restaurants Ive been in lately, they should be! It aint pretty out there! Service sucks! Turnover is atrocious! Prospects without great talent? Give me a break! Guests are getting even more demanding and have more options to choose from. Now is the time for you to stop hiring the untalented and the anti-service minded, and start filling your benches with superstars! First things first! Get your house in order! It may seem like a catch 22, you say. I cannot do this until I get A players, but you cannot get A players until you do it! Id rather run a business with 6 superstars and be shorthanded by 6 employees, than run one with a full staff of people from the Drivers License Academy of Hospitality! Get your systems down, processes down, cleanliness at the A level, and exterminate the C and D playersbefore you even attempt to take the first interview. Why? Because if Im a superstar I have my pick of employers and if you are disorganized, dirty, no rhyme or reason to whats happening, or you have slackers that I will have to work with? Then see ya! One last thingget back your passion! That is the great thing about getting out of bed in the morning. You have a chance to do whatever you want, the way you want. So why not do it best!' Shed the acceptance of anything less than superior work and put that smile back on your face that you lost because you are battle weary, and get better tools, get better supplies and get better soldiers! Remember, the first person you must lead is you! Get Em While Theyre Hot! The first place you start is with the A players on your staff now! Where are their A friends and relatives working? Talk about instant teams! At one of my restaurants, I had hired a mother, her two children and their best friends. Instant core! Instant team! No discipline required, all I had to do was reward them as they helped push us to new levels. It was amazing. Now lets talk about what happens if you have to go outside to get a team. If you are doing the same old newspaper ads, placemats, signs on the reader boards and doors, etcthen Heaven help you. Given that our workforce now gets their news from the likes of Jon Stewart, talks to their friends in chat rooms on THE INTERNET, (hint), downloads MP3s into their iPods from THE INTERNET, (hint, hint), while doing homework in virtual classrooms via THE INTERNET, (hint, hint, hint), how do you think traditional methods are going to attract the talent you need? You need to get creative by incorporating THE INTERNET (didnt see that one coming did you?) in your staffing campaigns. And guess what? If you can land a couple great prospects, chances are you will get access to their great friends too! Talent travels in packs. A and B talent hangs out with A and B talent. Moreover, just the opposite is true also. If you hire slackers and goof offs, then those slackers and goof offs friends will apply also or wait in you dining room hoping their slacker friends will slip them some free stuff! So heres another candid question. What are you doing to attract great talent? What do you have to offer them? And dont say a paycheck. That worked for me and you, but not todays talent! OMG! They want more!! (Check out www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset) Is it all about the bling bling? First off they want a cool place to work. Are you cool? Does your staff have fun? Do you have fun? Do they have cool uniforms to wear? Cool benefits? Cool tools? Do their cool friends get to work with them? Are you a cool enough boss to work for? And dont give me crap about how serious you are about your food or business and therefore dont have time for cool. Supply cool and youll never have to run another campaign for help ever again. Even guests want to experience cool. Cool Is As Cool Does! Cool is having complete and realistic job descriptions for applicants to read over so that they know exactly what they are getting themselves into, and neither of you get surprised by talent leaving you because the work wasnt what they expected after your super duper sales pitch. This happens to be the number one reason people will leave you. Do on-the-job work experience if they have never worked in a restaurant before. Bring them in for a day to shadow one of your best and brightest so that they see everything involved. Yes, you have to pay them. Better they leave knowing, than to have them leave 30 days or more into it! Cool is also offering cool incentives for your current A players to refer their A friends to you. CDs, MP3 players, DVD players, movie tickets, gift cards to their favorite stores, etc Cool stuff! Oh and do not forget to allow your coolest players to interview potential teammates. They can sniff out fake cool anywhere faster than you ever thought about. More cool tools! DO REFERENCE CHECKS!!! Did you hear me? DO REFERENCE CHECKS!!! No job history? Ask for teacher references. References from any adult leader of any school activity they participate in, church leader, etcand get three! Dont have three? Why not? Red flag!!! My daughter is 14 years old and has a 3 page resume!!! She has references from her softball coach, soccer coach, babysitting jobs, honor roll, basketball coach, Bible school leader, and that was just from last summer! Talent is active. And please for Petes sake, make sure they are service minded! Ask them questions directly related to serving others. Nextcool training! Oh yeah! Youre going to be training your buns off! Although videos of some 1970s shot training guide for the lame and the brain dead wont do it. Think interactive!!! CD & DVD training or better yet virtual training online! (See www.pencominternational.com) Give it to them in a medium they play with all day and you will have better execution. DOH! The flipside to cool training is cool coaching. Todays talent wants the why before the how, so give it to them. This may mean you have to get some coaching to give some coaching. So you better get your brain and heart wrapped around this fast. (www.rainmakerthinking.com). Mentoring. Dont forget the mentoring. Get them paired up with another superstar who will be available for anything. Before, during and after their initial training. Mentoring is also your best opportunity to keep them if they feel they have a best friend at work on whom they can count on for support outside of the owner/manager. What does prepared look like? They want feedback. And tons of it! You have to drive a culture of intense feedback and coaching. This includes getting input from the same talent you are about to coach or critique. Hold leaders in you restaurant accountable for exemplifying those behaviors critical to your success.! Dont be stingy either. Reward great behavior! Share the wealth! Pay them for the awesome job they do. Offer cash incentives and bonuses for superior work. Have a server have 3 guests call you back after their experience and praise them to no end? Hand them $50 (in front of their peers!!!). Create that culture of great rewards for great behaviors. Try finding something cool about them every shift that they do to make your operation successful instead of the gotcha mentality so many of you have now. And the greatest thing you have to do, no matter what get rid of underperformers! This goes for even those superstars you have that know every position on the line, yet cant seem to ever help you get to the next level because they sit in the back and stab you with every new-hire you get by bad mouthing your every effort to change for the better. A & B players will leave you faster than anything if you surround them with slackers. Then they will tell all their A friends that you suck as an employer! Try working through that. And forget about getting their families business or any of their families friends business, and so on, and so forth. Cool Opportunities! The next cool thing is to have more cool opportunities for them to grow into! You have to have some or you will never have some. This means actively discovering what talents lie inside your staff and utilizing them to their fullest. Have a marketing major on staff as a server? Use their classroom knowledge and passion for their field of study to help you in your marketing efforts. Design majors? Business majors? Heaven forbid Hospitality majors'? Use your business to build them experience and they will use that experience to build your business. PROMOTE FROM WITHIN! This will also show them how much you value their contributions, as well as making them feel like a part of a really cool organization. Can you say Maslows hierarchy of needs? Give them the 411!! Share with them how much profit, per dollar the business generates and why! Let them know how many lasagna plates it takes for them to sell to make up for the one dropped appetizer plate or drinking glass. Reward them for digging silverware and ramekins out of the trash and remind them how that contributes to the team. I go so far as to bonus my cooks on a given area of food cost. I put one cook in charge of each food cost area, i.e.produce, meat, dairy, etcand post their results on a large blackboard in the kitchen to track their progress. Celebrate Good Times, Come On! We celebrate everything we can think of. We start by doing pizza day the first Tuesday of every month to celebrate any birthdays or anniversaries that month. That way everybody gets to be there and participate. The staff plans it and carries it out. If we achieve a sales goal or break a day or week sales record for a shift, we celebrate that too by having each team member on that shift wear a specially made t-shirt. We recognize graduations, grades, kids birthdays, new cars, you name it! Pre-shift or post shift meetings are perfect for this. The Ultimate Cool! The coolest thing you can do or be for these potential superstars? Build relationships with them! Start by believing in them, even before they have shown you any results. As hard as that may seem, they need to know how much you care before they care about what you care about. Then it becomes a matter of support for them and they feel like they can do anything because you believe they can. Then you have to build in successes for them along the way to develop their own self-confidence. Talk to them daily. The first 30 minutes of each of my days starts by walking around and just saying hey to everyone and catching up with them from the last time I saw them. I ask about their kids ball games, dates, classes, family events, movies they saw, just everyday stuff that tells them I care. Guess what the last 30 minutes of my day consists of? Exactly! Saying goodbye to each team member. Thanking them for a great job and making sure I know when they work next. And I tell you, you will come to love these moments with you staff. Even when you do not feel like getting out of bed in the morning, they will pick you up and put you in a higher place. If one of them performs below standard, all I have to do is look at them and they know immediately what they did and how to correct it, and I know they know, and their look tells me they wont let it happen again. Can you guess how low my turnover is? OK, you hired great talent, given them some really good, cool training, now what? Give them responsibility! Trust them to do the job you trained them to do. Empower them to make decisions. REAL DECISIONS! Give them input into operational processes and change! After all, they are the ones doing the job every guest, every table, every shift. The last thing I can say is this, excuses and vacillation will not get the job done. Business, or life for that matter, wont wait around until you get your act together. Life is happening now, whether youre ready or not! Get positive. Get pro-active. Get in the game. Have Fun Today! Jeffrey Summers, Head Coach
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