One of the toughest challenges in our industry is staffing a year round operation with a short, very busy tourist season. There are seasonal challenges. It's necessary to grow the staff before the peak days for training purposes. Often the best staff from the peak season are asked to help either part-time or full-time in the decline. Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to cut battle tested help during the low months.
I have seen some excellent strategies in play at seasonal operations. The common denominator is a strong core staff onboard year round. Most of the top operators have a flex-staff available whenever they are needed. These part-time people are typically well compensated and fill in gaps at big parties or special events. A number of savvy operators take advantage of college internships when hiring for the peak season.
During this month, I have received quite a few emails from those who wish to remain anonymous. I want to encourage all readers to participate in this dialogue. Specifically, tell us what works and does not work in your seasonal staffing strategy.
We had to staff the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary to handle food service and housekeeping for the media and the Nordic athletes at Canmore. The two weeks took place during the school year and little help was available from local students. Housing of out-of-town help was cost prohibitive. Our contract specified top notch food service at each venue.
To give every detail of our strategy would take too long for this blog. We rented trailers used in the arctic to house personnel and borrowed old school buses from local districts to bus our help. The workers were recruited from all over Canada. Most of the staff would have been chefs at their normal workplace. These pros were happy to help out Canada in it's bid to host a memorable two weeks for the athletes.
The Nordic athletes like lots of carbohydrates. You can't offer too many grains and starches. Macaroni and cheese is a favorite. They really do not load up on sweets. The diet is very nutritious and I would imagine marathon runners would be at home in a Nordic camp.
Our chefs adapted rapidly to the demands and produced high quality meals which satisfied the athletes. Our team received accolades for the wonderful quality and attention to patron wishes. In the end, it was tough to see all the talented people leave our company and return to their positions around the country. Seasonal operators do this each and every year.
Click Here For More Information
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Pooling Tips - Team Building
Many of my clients have a policy of pooling tips. Does this policy reward mediocre performance equally with superior performance? Maybe. If you are a member of the wait staff in a pooled tip environment, when a customer requests attention you will be less likely to answer: "I'm not your waiter." If the entire staff really gets into the whole team approach, happier customers could be the result.
At the core of this policy is a sincere desire to force the wait staff to play team ball. Sometimes it works. I have observed fantastic team play in many dining rooms. When a team member wants to go along for the ride the formula can breakdown. Rarely will the POS system show the flaws.
Let's say I am an ambitious and lazy waiter and I want to maximize my income and minimize my workload. The easiest way to accomplish this goal in the pooled tip environment is to feed orders into the POS system. Since productivity reports are based on sales per clocked hour, I need only focus on persuading customers to order more. I would perform many of the other tasks less enthusiastically. My sole objective is to maximize a number on a report.
So now we have this super waiter with 20% more sales who may be neglecting basic customer care. I saw this in action at a highly rated restaurant with two small dining rooms. The restaurant is closed today. The infighters on Survivor were tame compared to those on this wait staff. Management praised the three people with higher sales per hour for superior technique with the clients. Fellow staff members despised these service laggards. Privately, they would complain about how they always have to offer the check, run the credit card, refill the water glasses, pickup orders, etc. for these sales wizards.
It would be great to have a POS system with fields for all the various activities involved in the client service puzzle. They currently do not report on many customer friendly activities designed to bring patrons back time and again.
In the restaurant I observed the initial impact on total sales was positive. It took slightly over one year of team dissonance to start the downward direction in revenue.
A much better approach to a tip pooling solution involves position. Designate extroverts to handle most revenue building activities. Make sure they are not focused only on orders. They should be handling all drinks including water. If the table opts out of bottled water, they should handle the tap water refills. I like one restaurant's policy of having an assistant manager present the check with feedback on the service.
Reward the quality control individuals who handle delivery tasks well. They can prevent many complaints from ever happening in the first place. They will point out hot items which are cold and sloppy plates. I'd have this group check on meat doneness and special requests. The POS system will point out voids, returns, etc. Have this group work to lower this activity.
Customer satisfaction is highly correlated to fast service, low returns and short waits for check and credit card approval. If you build a great team, tip pooling can be a windfall for all players. Higher sales will translate into lower food cost and higher profits.
Click Here For More Information
At the core of this policy is a sincere desire to force the wait staff to play team ball. Sometimes it works. I have observed fantastic team play in many dining rooms. When a team member wants to go along for the ride the formula can breakdown. Rarely will the POS system show the flaws.
Let's say I am an ambitious and lazy waiter and I want to maximize my income and minimize my workload. The easiest way to accomplish this goal in the pooled tip environment is to feed orders into the POS system. Since productivity reports are based on sales per clocked hour, I need only focus on persuading customers to order more. I would perform many of the other tasks less enthusiastically. My sole objective is to maximize a number on a report.
So now we have this super waiter with 20% more sales who may be neglecting basic customer care. I saw this in action at a highly rated restaurant with two small dining rooms. The restaurant is closed today. The infighters on Survivor were tame compared to those on this wait staff. Management praised the three people with higher sales per hour for superior technique with the clients. Fellow staff members despised these service laggards. Privately, they would complain about how they always have to offer the check, run the credit card, refill the water glasses, pickup orders, etc. for these sales wizards.
It would be great to have a POS system with fields for all the various activities involved in the client service puzzle. They currently do not report on many customer friendly activities designed to bring patrons back time and again.
In the restaurant I observed the initial impact on total sales was positive. It took slightly over one year of team dissonance to start the downward direction in revenue.
A much better approach to a tip pooling solution involves position. Designate extroverts to handle most revenue building activities. Make sure they are not focused only on orders. They should be handling all drinks including water. If the table opts out of bottled water, they should handle the tap water refills. I like one restaurant's policy of having an assistant manager present the check with feedback on the service.
Reward the quality control individuals who handle delivery tasks well. They can prevent many complaints from ever happening in the first place. They will point out hot items which are cold and sloppy plates. I'd have this group check on meat doneness and special requests. The POS system will point out voids, returns, etc. Have this group work to lower this activity.
Customer satisfaction is highly correlated to fast service, low returns and short waits for check and credit card approval. If you build a great team, tip pooling can be a windfall for all players. Higher sales will translate into lower food cost and higher profits.
Click Here For More Information
Friday, April 21, 2006
Do We Count The Employee Purchases?
During my college years, I worked in a variety of hotel and restaurant positions. There were plenty of jobs available in the Saratoga Springs, NY area in summer. I worked as cook, cashier, bellhop, busboy, night auditor and desk clerk. When the summers ended, I would continue my night auditor job on weekends during the school year.
As I gained more of the innkeeper's trust, he gave me other reports to review. Eventually, I was given the weekly food cost report and the supporting documents. The single issue I had with the entire food cost calculation was the lack of accuracy.
At this same hotel, cash was always tied to the penny. Every desk clerk and night auditor had a personal money drawer in the safe. Shift changes were never a cause for shortages. Each clerk ran a tape and counted their cash drawer before the deposit in the safe.
In stark contrast, the food inventory figures were often way off. Certain middle pages would be loaded with obvious errors like flour at $20/pound and dry spices improperly extended at ten times the correct value. These errors forced me to devise a simple way to expose obvious mistakes. I created a set of summary figures with totals for each page and category.
One night as I arrived for work a truck was making a delivery. As I parked my car, the delivery truck was moving from the dock. The driver stopped his truck near the assistant innkeeper's station wagon. Soon the back door was open and four cases of meat were loaded into the rear storage area.
The food cost week ended the same day and the inventory was taken the next morning before breakfast. I came on later in the night and the documents were in a big envelope as usual. Before I began work, the innkeeper asked me to come in his office. He told me the costs were quite high and he was very interested in locating the problem. We arranged to have a meeting in the morning just after my shift ended.
My summary numbers quickly pointed to a high meat cost. As I reviewed the invoices, I noticed the previous day's bill from the meat supplier. Since there were only ten items on the bill, I decided to go out in the coolers to count the meat. There were no big events during the day and the dinner was slow.
Virtually all of the meat on the previous day's invoice was gone.
In the morning meeting, I asked the innkeeper: "Do we count the employee purchases?"
He asked me to explain and I told him of the late delivery and the special drop in the station wagon. He asked me to stay quiet regarding what I had seen.
The next week, a trap was set and the thief was exposed. He resigned and the food cost dropped 2 points. The summary statistics exposed the meat problem since there was no longer a hiding place in the spices and flour.
Click Here For More Information
As I gained more of the innkeeper's trust, he gave me other reports to review. Eventually, I was given the weekly food cost report and the supporting documents. The single issue I had with the entire food cost calculation was the lack of accuracy.
At this same hotel, cash was always tied to the penny. Every desk clerk and night auditor had a personal money drawer in the safe. Shift changes were never a cause for shortages. Each clerk ran a tape and counted their cash drawer before the deposit in the safe.
In stark contrast, the food inventory figures were often way off. Certain middle pages would be loaded with obvious errors like flour at $20/pound and dry spices improperly extended at ten times the correct value. These errors forced me to devise a simple way to expose obvious mistakes. I created a set of summary figures with totals for each page and category.
One night as I arrived for work a truck was making a delivery. As I parked my car, the delivery truck was moving from the dock. The driver stopped his truck near the assistant innkeeper's station wagon. Soon the back door was open and four cases of meat were loaded into the rear storage area.
The food cost week ended the same day and the inventory was taken the next morning before breakfast. I came on later in the night and the documents were in a big envelope as usual. Before I began work, the innkeeper asked me to come in his office. He told me the costs were quite high and he was very interested in locating the problem. We arranged to have a meeting in the morning just after my shift ended.
My summary numbers quickly pointed to a high meat cost. As I reviewed the invoices, I noticed the previous day's bill from the meat supplier. Since there were only ten items on the bill, I decided to go out in the coolers to count the meat. There were no big events during the day and the dinner was slow.
Virtually all of the meat on the previous day's invoice was gone.
In the morning meeting, I asked the innkeeper: "Do we count the employee purchases?"
He asked me to explain and I told him of the late delivery and the special drop in the station wagon. He asked me to stay quiet regarding what I had seen.
The next week, a trap was set and the thief was exposed. He resigned and the food cost dropped 2 points. The summary statistics exposed the meat problem since there was no longer a hiding place in the spices and flour.
Click Here For More Information
Monday, April 17, 2006
The Chemistry of a Bid Team
In Canada, executives wear more hats than their American counterparts. Due to the lower population density, headquarters staffs need to be more flexible. It is common to find managers assigned to specific zones with regional support staff in relation to the business level. These managers typically handle almost all tactical decisions. Corporate staff positions often involve dual responsibilities.
In the contract feeding business, the top regional executives are brought together with key HQ staff for major contract bids. In our group, we had a union contract specialist, a staffing wizard, a team of vendor negotiators, and our corporate chef. On remote site projects, our chef would determine the food cost per manday. This one number would normally determine the probability of winning the contract. There was always plenty of discussion and vendor analysis before this decision was intense.
Shortly after I was hired, I was honored with an invitation to join the bid team on a crucial project for our lower 48 division. There were people from Alaska, Vancouver, Edmonton, Denver and New York. This project required water treatment and we had a specialist from Toronto to handle this activity. As the junior member of the group, it was my job to extend manning charts and check all calculations. Two other people were available for similar work.
The team was housed in the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver and we had most meals delivered to a dining area we setup in a suite. We had 5 days to digest project specifications, size up the competition, review notes from the orientation meeting, solicit quotes from dozens of local vendors, review contract menus, analyze housekeeping standards and forecast occupancy levels by season and construction phase.
We stayed up most nights until 2 AM. The night before bid submission, a group of presentation pros arrived and started merging the dog and pony with the financial data. Everyone stayed up all night the final night checking for typos.
During that hectic week in Denver, I saw the absolute meaning of a crisis. The winning bidder's staff would all get promotions and new responsibilities. Losing companies would regroup and hope for better luck in the future. For the locals, this bid meant their jobs were on the line.
Being part of a winning bid team is an exhilarating experience. For four of us, this project literally launched our careers with Sodexho.
There are very few people who are adept at both purchasing and production. Fewer still are pros at market timing and staff management. Even the tiny group with highly developed skills in timing, negotiation, forecasting, menu analysis, scheduling, management, and food production have a rough time trying all these activities at once.
Find out what you are best at and become a specialist in at least two areas. Make allies in your company and collaborate whenever possible. Team building is an inexact science. Timing is important.
Click Here For More Information
In the contract feeding business, the top regional executives are brought together with key HQ staff for major contract bids. In our group, we had a union contract specialist, a staffing wizard, a team of vendor negotiators, and our corporate chef. On remote site projects, our chef would determine the food cost per manday. This one number would normally determine the probability of winning the contract. There was always plenty of discussion and vendor analysis before this decision was intense.
Shortly after I was hired, I was honored with an invitation to join the bid team on a crucial project for our lower 48 division. There were people from Alaska, Vancouver, Edmonton, Denver and New York. This project required water treatment and we had a specialist from Toronto to handle this activity. As the junior member of the group, it was my job to extend manning charts and check all calculations. Two other people were available for similar work.
The team was housed in the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver and we had most meals delivered to a dining area we setup in a suite. We had 5 days to digest project specifications, size up the competition, review notes from the orientation meeting, solicit quotes from dozens of local vendors, review contract menus, analyze housekeeping standards and forecast occupancy levels by season and construction phase.
We stayed up most nights until 2 AM. The night before bid submission, a group of presentation pros arrived and started merging the dog and pony with the financial data. Everyone stayed up all night the final night checking for typos.
During that hectic week in Denver, I saw the absolute meaning of a crisis. The winning bidder's staff would all get promotions and new responsibilities. Losing companies would regroup and hope for better luck in the future. For the locals, this bid meant their jobs were on the line.
Being part of a winning bid team is an exhilarating experience. For four of us, this project literally launched our careers with Sodexho.
There are very few people who are adept at both purchasing and production. Fewer still are pros at market timing and staff management. Even the tiny group with highly developed skills in timing, negotiation, forecasting, menu analysis, scheduling, management, and food production have a rough time trying all these activities at once.
Find out what you are best at and become a specialist in at least two areas. Make allies in your company and collaborate whenever possible. Team building is an inexact science. Timing is important.
Click Here For More Information
Thursday, April 13, 2006
The All Star Team
Just a few years ago, I was asked to assist a high profile chef in pricing a new menu for a hotel restaurant in New York. My initial impression still remains with me and I believe there are several points to take from the experience.
When I entered the office area (in a small building across the street from the construction) the place was like a beehive. People were going in every direction and there seemed to be endless distractions for all. It was difficult to determine who made decisions and it may have been a committee.
I was asked to wait and I was assigned a seat next to a woman working the phones tirelessly. During my two hour wait, I observed her phone conversations. She was phoning top flight restaurant personnel from across the country. There was a chef skilled in Japanese cuisine, a maitre d'hotel from a world famous hotel. All the waiters were working at well regarded and highly rated dining rooms in New York and elsewhere.
The one thing which seemed lacking was focus. With weeks to go, the menu had not been finalized and the purveyors had not been selected. I was finally introduced to some top notch purchasing managers for both food and beverage. Both had just been hired and this was their first day. They apologized for the chaos. I told them I was used to it.
As the weeks passed and the restaurant opening was days away, some of the all star team had developed strong dislikes for other team members. There were three camps and each had a separate agenda. Each leader had a rapport with the consulting chef and mornings were spent complaining about the idiosyncrasies of the other groups.
To add to the frenetic pace, the same management group was starting work on a second hotel restaurant all the way downtown. Hours and days would go by with many key decision makers waiting for final approval. Often, a decision was made by one top executive only to be rejected by someone slightly higher in the chain of command.
Despite the stellar credentials of the well trained members of this all star team, the company failed and declared bankruptcy. It was surprisingly fast. As a tiny creditor, I received less than 30 cents on the dollar for my final invoice. Fortunately, I had persisted in getting paid as the contract progressed and I only suffered a tiny loss.
When people talk of some of the disappointing performances in the Olympics of the professional teams sent by USA and Canada, I always bring up my experience.
Click Here For More Information
When I entered the office area (in a small building across the street from the construction) the place was like a beehive. People were going in every direction and there seemed to be endless distractions for all. It was difficult to determine who made decisions and it may have been a committee.
I was asked to wait and I was assigned a seat next to a woman working the phones tirelessly. During my two hour wait, I observed her phone conversations. She was phoning top flight restaurant personnel from across the country. There was a chef skilled in Japanese cuisine, a maitre d'hotel from a world famous hotel. All the waiters were working at well regarded and highly rated dining rooms in New York and elsewhere.
The one thing which seemed lacking was focus. With weeks to go, the menu had not been finalized and the purveyors had not been selected. I was finally introduced to some top notch purchasing managers for both food and beverage. Both had just been hired and this was their first day. They apologized for the chaos. I told them I was used to it.
As the weeks passed and the restaurant opening was days away, some of the all star team had developed strong dislikes for other team members. There were three camps and each had a separate agenda. Each leader had a rapport with the consulting chef and mornings were spent complaining about the idiosyncrasies of the other groups.
To add to the frenetic pace, the same management group was starting work on a second hotel restaurant all the way downtown. Hours and days would go by with many key decision makers waiting for final approval. Often, a decision was made by one top executive only to be rejected by someone slightly higher in the chain of command.
Despite the stellar credentials of the well trained members of this all star team, the company failed and declared bankruptcy. It was surprisingly fast. As a tiny creditor, I received less than 30 cents on the dollar for my final invoice. Fortunately, I had persisted in getting paid as the contract progressed and I only suffered a tiny loss.
When people talk of some of the disappointing performances in the Olympics of the professional teams sent by USA and Canada, I always bring up my experience.
Click Here For More Information
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Restaurant Data Pros
