Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] We talk a lot about our people, right? How our people are our most important resource, which I believe they are. But how do we put our money where our mouth is? How do we take a new person who's walking into the door, a new employee, somebody coming into our culture, becoming part of our family? And how do we give them the training, the tools they need to succeed? How do we manage them and nurture them and develop them to become the leaders that we will eventually need them to be? On today's episode, I'm going to talk about how you level up your training. Specifically how you put a killer training together so you can have the best staff in your market. Don't go anywhere.
[00:00:41] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:12] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy Podcast dedicated entirely to the hospitality industry. Each week we cover marketing, operations and just about everything in between. I also leverage my 20 plus years in the industry to help you build a more profitable and a more sustainable business. I also work directly with operators all over the world through my group coaching programs to help you address and overcome the specific challenges that we all face in this industry. If you're curious to learn more, then please set up a free 30 minute strategy session by visiting restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule if you're ready for consistent, predictable profits, I promise this is for you. Level up. By surrounding yourself with other restaurant owners who are dealing with the exact same things you are. I can show you a better way to run your restaurant so you make more and work less. Again. To get started, set up a free strategy session. It's a coaching call with me. Visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com Schedule as always, you will find that link in the show notes.
[00:02:18] Now you work hard to make sure your restaurant moves like a well oiled machine. From managing staff to tracking food costs, your work is never ending. Especially when you're trying to improve your profit margin.
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[00:03:27] Okay, so when it comes to training our new employees, I believe we can do better. When it comes to developing talent, I feel like most restaurants don't even realize that they should be doing it. So again, like I said at the top of the show, our, our people are our most valuable resource. And I'm going to convince you today that they deserve to be trained better, managed better, and developed into the leaders that we need them to be.
[00:03:52] Most restaurants only do a certain kind of training, really the bare minimum. But I talk about three levels of training for simplicity sake. Let's call it Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3. Most restaurants again, only do the bare minimum. They do what I call level one and usually not very well. So we're gonna cover all three areas. Level one, level two, level three. I'm gonna explain what they are, why they matter, and an easy way for you to implement them in your restaurant. Again, you're gonna have to adapt these ide your restaurant because there is no one size fits all approach.
[00:04:27] But if you get good at this, if you do this, if you embrace this, if you acknowledge that this is something that needs to happen, I promise you, you will see a difference in your staff, you will see a difference in the culture, you will see a difference in your bottom line, which of course is the most important part. So again, we're going to cover all three areas. I'm going to explain how I like to do it, and then I'm going to show you how you can implement these ideas in your restaurant. Again, level one, level two and level three. Here's a quick, quick overview. Level one training is the first week of an employee's employment. Right? It's the first week that they arrive. It's, it's a matter of how do you get them to be good enough to take a station, Right. Good enough to ten bar for a night, Good enough to take four tables, good enough to work garment for an evening. Right. Level one training is the crash course. What do you need to do to get them from point A to point B as quickly as possible. To shove a huge am of information into their heads so that they can work a station because you desperately need more bodies. This is the danger. When we talk about level one training, we shoot them out of a cannon. There's something inevitable about that. You're not going to spend two or three weeks training somebody new. You're going to take a week, right?
[00:05:40] Don't skimp on this step. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Even though you got to do it quickly, you can do it thoroughly, you can do it the right way so that you're bringing them along. Because understand that in that first week of employment, right, people's, people's attachment to your restaurant is pretty fleeting. It's tenuous at best. They're trying to figure out if this is somewhere they want to show up to 30, 40, 50 plus hours every single week. So don't cut corners here. You've got to receive them well, you've got to train them well to make sure that they know they are supported and taken care care of. And this is a really important step. Sometimes we go through the interview and they say, yes, I'll take the job. And we're like, oh, thank God, finally we have enough people.
[00:06:29] And that's the wrong way of doing it, right? You don't know yet if this is going to be the right person. And they don't know whether you're going to be the right restaurant for them.
[00:06:38] So it's, listen, it's guilty until proven innocent. You got to imagine that they could stop coming after the first day, the second day, the third day of training. They could stop coming at any point, which I know many of you recognize that's certainly going on now, but that was going on pre pandemic. Let's not fool ourselves, right?
[00:06:55] So when we talk about training again, level one, level two, level three. We start with level one training. Level one is that first week of someone's employment, that time when you shoot them out of the can and give them everything they need to know to be good enough to take a station. Here's how we do this. Better than 99% of the restaurants out there. If you do this, you will beat all of your competitors. You will be a better run restaurant than just about anyone out there.
[00:07:23] When they are hired, when they show up to their first day, you receive them with open arms, you create a packet, put a folder together.
[00:07:32] It's got all their onboarding Paperwork, right. It's got a service manual, it's got an employee handbook, it's got menu descriptions, it's got setup side worksheets, copy of the floor plan. Whatever they need in order to succeed, you give all of it to them right then and there. In fact, when I used to run restaurants, I used to create folders. I would have 10 or 15 of these already ready to go. They would be in a cabinet. So I knew exactly where to go. If I had somebody new starting, boom, I go right to the cabinet and I set it and I kept pars. We never, anytime we got down to 5, we re upped and we made sure we got back to about 10 to 15.
[00:08:15] We always had a packet of new hire paperwork. One packet for back of house, one packet for front of house that had everything in there that they needed. So I didn't have to scramble. I didn't have to think very hard about what they needed when they started. I know, okay, Joe is starting today. Joe is starting as a server. Let me go get a front of house packet that has everything that Joe's going to need to succeed.
[00:08:37] I have that packet in my hand and I would greet those new employees at the front door. I look them in the eye, shake their hands and say, I'm so glad to have you. Let's get started. The first thing we're going to do today is I'm going to sit down, we're going to get all your paperwork out of the way. Then I'm going to give you a tour of the property. And then here's your training. Here's your training schedule. This is really important, right? You handle their. You handle their paperwork right away. All their new hire paperwork, everything you need to get from them. Make copies of everything you need them to fill out.
[00:09:08] Then you're gonna give them a tour. It only makes sense. It's the same thing you do with your friends or your family. You get a new apartment, a new house. Let me show you around. This is gonna be their home. They're gonna spend more time here probably than they're gonna spend at their own places. So let's show them around. Let's make sure they know where everything is. Let's get them comfortable.
[00:09:27] You're gonna tell them we're gonna do paperwork, then I'm gonna give you a tour. And then you are going to do fill in the blank that is found in your training schedule.
[00:09:38] Every position should have their own training schedule. So a server, a busser, a runner, a bartender, a porter, a line Cook, a chef, a manager, everybody, there is a set schedule, things that they need to accomplish. On day one, you do the following things. On day two, you do the following things. On day three, you do the following things. Whatever you need them to do. And here's the beauty part, right when, when I talk to my coaching clients, we always start with, we're results orient. We say, right, it's all about progress. We start with the end in mind. So you gotta figure out at the end of the first week, let's say, or the end of five days, you need these people to be good enough to take a station.
[00:10:17] So what do you need to teach them? What are all the things they need to learn in order to be good enough by the end of the first week to take a station? And then you fill out your training schedule accordingly. You don't have to do the training schedule the way it's always been done. You don't have to do it the same way that you did it at your last restaurant. You don't have to do it the way that your owner tells you, right?
[00:10:39] You do it so that it makes sense, so that you can bring your people along so you can get them where they need to go at the end. This is very, very important. When we're talking about level one training, again, this what we typically in the restaurant call training. And I'm going to show you how. This is just the first step of training. It's what today's episode is all about. But level one training is that first week, and it begins on the very first day. You know when they're supposed to arrive on that first day, make yourself available, grab that packet, stand at the front door and greet them when they walk in. Give them a handshake, look them in the eye, tell them how glad you are to have them here. Explain what's going to happen. So they sit down and do their paperwork. You give them a tour. And then maybe on the first day, you're going to pass them off, you're going to get them a locker and you're going to pass them off to one of your senior captains, let's say one of your senior servers, who's going to show them around and they're going to, and they're going to, you know, do an observation with that person over the course of that day. Maybe that's day one for Joe, our brand new server. Here's a really important thing. Every single day, it's outlined in the training packet. This is what you're going to do when you're going to do it. This is what you should be learning by the end. Here's something really important that I always recommend when it comes to level one training.
[00:11:55] Make sure at the end of every night you give them a little quiz.
[00:12:00] Not as a gotcha, not to test, and make sure that they're gonna pass and move on. What you wanna do is make sure they're digesting, absorbing the information that you need them to absorb. So by the end of the first day, for example, for Joe the server Joe, you need to know the phone number, the website, you need to know the general manager's name, the chef's name, you need to know all the table numbers and the position numbers. Maybe that's all we need Joe to learn by the end of the first night, but by the end of the first week, we need him to know a huge amount of information.
[00:12:30] So let's put it in bite sized pieces. So that's what we need Joe to learn by the end of day one, by the end of day two, we're gonna need Joe to know a whole other set of things. And day three and day four and five and on and on. However long your training is, four, five, seven, 12 days, whatever it is, it needs to be long enough so that they feel comfortable, needs to be long enough so that they have time to absorb. Cause it's again, a huge amount of information.
[00:12:56] But on that training schedule, you outline what they're going to do, when they're going to do it, what they need to be responsible for at the end of the shift. Again, not pulling any punches, but just saying there's an immense amount of information we're going to need you to know by the end. And we want to make sure that every single day we bring you closer and closer to the destination, closer to where we need you to get to. So we give them their training schedule, we put them in good hands. At the end of every training shift, we give them a little quiz, right, little 8, 10 question quiz that quizzes them on the things that we knew we needed them to learn, like the phone number or the chef's name or whatever it is. And then I always recommend you sit down with them or one of the management team, someone from the management team sits down. This is going to be a really great time to check the temperature of the water.
[00:13:46] Right, what did you think? Were there any questions you had about what we do, how we do things?
[00:13:51] Are you enjoying things? What concerns do you have? How did tonight's shift go? It doesn't have to Be a half an hour. In fact, it should only be about five, maybe 10 minutes at most. Honestly, five minutes is probably more than you need. But you're going to tell them a couple of things, you're going to ask them a couple of questions, you're going to get a sense of whether they're coming along, whether they're your kind of people.
[00:14:13] Because you go through an interview and you can only learn so much. You'll learn a lot more from seeing them on the floor, seeing how they, how they hold themselves, how they are at the table with the other staff members.
[00:14:24] That's going to be your time to see if these people can really, can really fit in. So that quiz at the end of the shift is really important and that check in at the end of every training shift is really important and it shouldn't be any more than five minutes. I promise you, you will retain more staff through the training period that first week. If you do this, you do these nightly check ins.
[00:14:46] So again, someone shows up, you greet them at the front door, you shake their hand, you look them in the eye, you thank them for joining you, you tell them what they can expect over the course of the week. At the end of that week, right, that level one training, before they take a station, you need some way to confirm that they've absorbed all the information you need them to absorb. Now, that could be something as simple as a server test or a food test. That could be you observing them on the line in the station for half an hour or 45 minutes, whatever it is, I want to urge you to take the time to do that. You will save yourself so much stress. Because, for example, if you take a cook, you put them on the line, you think they're all ready and then you see on their first night that they're not, that they're sinking, they can't keep up with the pace, that they're making mistakes. What happens and is you're going to start pissing off guests, you're going to start pissing off other cooks, other servers, the managers, they're going to make mistakes, you're probably going to be wasting food, they are going to cost you way more than if you just nip that in the bud at the end of day five or six or seven, you gave them a test, you observed them in the heat of the moment and you saw that they weren't ready. Then you can go back and you can outline some further training, some further development so that you can get them to where you need them to be or if maybe at that point you feel like they're never going to get to where you need them to be, you can cut your losses then rather than costing the restaurant money or, or burning equity with your guests. So at the end of that week, at the end of level one training, before they go out on their own, you need some way to confirm that they know what they're doing, that they're competent enough to be a staff member, to be on the floor, to be on a station, right? So again, if that's a server test, if that's you need the bartender to make you five drinks rapid fire, if you need them to tell you about the wine, you need them to prep their station as if they were getting ready, make sure all their mis is ready. Whatever you need to do, I gotta urge you to take the time to do it there. You will thank me. Too many restaurants. I'm amazed too many restaurants don't do this. They've got a really scattershot approach to this training, right? So to come in, they pair them with somebody, server, some senior server, they kind of show them where everything is or the way we like to do things. But oftentimes they train with one person. One night, they show them one way of doing things, they train with somebody else. There's another way of doing things. That's why we do the employee handbook, that's why we do the service manual, for example. That's why we give menu descriptions with pictures and outlines and recipes. Whatever they need, this is what we do. This is how we do it. This is why it matters that we do it this way. If you can create the kind of place that does that, you'll be better off. And no, this is not just for fine dining. I come from the fine dining world. And yes, this is absolutely required for those kind of restaurants. But I'm telling you, for your sub shop, for your sushi place, for your pizza place, you do this in whatever way makes sense for you.
[00:17:52] You're gonna thank me. It's gonna be so much better. And you know what, at the end of the day, you think that too much rigidity is going to scare people away and actually does the opposite. People go, whoa, they know what they're doing, right? By people, I mean a new employee, they say, whoa, they know what they're doing. They're structured, they're organized, they mean business.
[00:18:10] They care about this place. They're asking me to care about this place. This is where these people are counting on money, right? They're working this job so they can make money to pay their bills, to support their families.
[00:18:21] Right. That's no small thing. And it shows a certain degree of respect for our people if we can do this thing. So if there's just enough structure, it'll make them feel. It'll make them feel really good, really coddled, supported, which it should. So again, we're talking about training our staff. We've got level one, level two, and level three training. That's level one, typically what we call training in the restaurant. And that's really just the beginning of training. So let me talk to you about level two. If level one is about training somebody, giving people enough knowledge that they're good enough to survive on the floor to take a station, Level 2 asks the question, how could you get these people to be as good as your best person at the end of 90 days?
[00:19:08] When you do that, it changes your perspective. It's not good enough to just have somebody that's good enough to take a station. And so it blows my mind that as restaurateurs, as operators, that's. That's our training, that's our methodology. We say, well, let's just get them good enough to take. To take a station. They're a warm body. We're grateful for a warm body. That's not enough.
[00:19:30] It's not. It never was, and it's certainly not now. What we need to be doing is saying, how can we get them to be the best employee we have at the end of 90 days? You're going to answer that question differently. I'm going to use a story, going to use an example from the very first restaurant that I ever worked at here in New York City. I worked at a restaurant called Bluefin. It was right in the heart of Times Square. It was part of BR Guest Restaurants. It was a big restaurant group here in New York City. And then they expanded beyond. It was owned by a guy named Steve Hanson. Steve, if you're listening, you are very difficult to work for. And. And you are absolutely crucial in my development as a restaurant professional. And I'll tell you why. And I think he probably knows this. This is why he did this. He was not an easy guy to work with. He was very, very difficult.
[00:20:16] But he understood structure, he understood systems, and he understood how to get a lot of green employees, of which I was one. He understood how to get a lot of green employees up to par and to be as good as they possibly could be relatively quickly. So I was a server in his restaurant, Bluefin, and it was sort of a, you know, Fine dining restaurant. I was straight off the bus from suburban Philadelphia. I didn't know fine dining. I certainly didn't know wine or spirits or beers or anything with food, right? And we had, and we had oysters and caviar and we would have truffles and all kinds of, you know, great. It was a seafood restaurant, so we'd have all kinds of seafood and sushi. And I didn't know any of it.
[00:21:01] So what they did is they made all new servers, everybody who started as a server. For the first 90 days they had mandatory classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It was an hour on Monday, an hour on Wednesday, an hour on Friday. And I forget the exact thing. It was like food on Monday, spirits bar on Wednesday and then wine on Friday.
[00:21:23] Because they realized that's where all of our revenue was going to come from. Food, spirits and wine. So let's play the odds. And so over the course of those 90 days, three months, it's 12 Mondays, 12 Wednesdays, 12 Fridays. And they basically had 12 food classes, they had 12 spirit classes and they had 12 wine classes. The idea being, right, it all happened at like between 3 and 4 o' clock or 3:30 and 4:30, in between lunch and dinner service.
[00:21:51] And what happened is the chefs would cook and they'd bring out food. So one week it would be, hey, we're going to talk all about raw bar. We're going to talk to you all about oysters and cherry stones and little necks and mussels and ceviche and crudo and caviar. We learned all about that because that was one of the products that we had to sell.
[00:22:09] Most of us, I don't know, being 21, 22 years old, not born to wealthy parents, we didn't eat a lot of oysters and caviar and things like that.
[00:22:20] So one week it would be raw bar, the next week it would be appetizers, next week it would be sushi, next week it would be our entrees, next week it would be desserts. Next week, on and on and on. So again, over the course of those 12 food classes, we got to know our menu really, really well. Much more in depth than we could certainly get to in a six day training or a seven day training.
[00:22:42] Then on Wednesdays we'd go through spirits because again, there's a lot to know about spirits. You know, clear spirits, you got gin, you got rum, you got vodka, right? Then you've got tequilas, you've got the silver, you know, unaged, unoaked. And then You've got the anejos, the reposados. There was a lot to learn there. You know, whiskey. Understanding the difference between scotch, you know, Irish whiskey, bourbon, other American whiskeys. Right. Japanese whiskey. There was a lot to learn there. And on and on and on. So we learned about cocktails. We learned about, you know, the flavor profiles and sort of what you're looking for in all of that. What matches well, what pairs well.
[00:23:22] That's what. We did 12 spirit classes, and then on Fridays, we did wine classes. And this was again, for. We had, I don't know, over a thousand bottles on our wine list. And asking some kid who's 22 years old, who's never really had wine, let alone decent wine, to ask them to sell wine at the table when there's really only one sommelier or, you know, a wine director and an assistant sommelier, they can't possibly get to. Get this. There was 400 seats in that restaurant, not including the two bars and the two lounges. So 400 seats plus two bars. Each bar had, I don't know, 20 seats at them. It was a huge place. As you can imagine, the wine director and the assistant sommelier couldn't possibly get to all of these tables. We, the servers, had to do a fair amount of selling.
[00:24:05] So without that level two training that that restaurant instituted, right, without that level two training, I would have had my level one training, my seven days. I wouldn't have known anything about spirits. I would have known just a base amount about the food, and I wouldn't have known anything about wine.
[00:24:21] So how could I have sold? How could I have been a good salesman? Again, Steve Hanson, who at the time owned BR Guest restaurants, he understood this. He said, in order for us to make money, we need to give them the education, right? Because I don't know, we had 70 or 80 different servers on the schedule. We had 24 or 25 stations on the floor. The restaurant was that big. So how do you get 25 stations on the floor to be selling as much as they possibly can? Right, because that's what we are. Servers are salespeople. They're your frontline sales. They're the ones responsible for guiding the experience, taking the orders, upselling, you know, getting those additional items on there, you know, getting better bottles of wine on the check.
[00:25:07] How do you do that in a. In a systematic way? It was. They didn't call it this. This is my name for it. But it's level two training. The idea is, over the first 90 days, they're going to get me pretty good, pretty knowledgeable about all of this stuff. And let me be really clear, way back when, I fought it for a couple of weeks because I just thought, oh, I'm already working so much. I can't believe I have to be here for three additional hours. And then when I stopped and I thought I said, it's three hours, who cares? And they're giving me all this food and wine and spirits, not only the education, but the product. I actually got to taste a lot of this stuff. It's incredible. So I put this back on you. What would you need to do in your restaurant to make it so that your new server was not just good enough to take a station, but by the end of three months was as good as your best server?
[00:25:56] What would you need to do? What sort of program could you institute? How would you systematize that effort? Right. How would you systematize that training program? That's your challenge. So we gotta move beyond just this four day training process shot out of a cannon. Let's teach them everything. Let's, let's have them trail, have them take a small station, have them take a big station. They're good enough. Can you work Sunday brunch? It's just not good enough.
[00:26:23] And so we talk about our people, we talk about investing in our people. This is how you invest in your people. We talk about how you, how you get more from your people, how you come to expect more from your people. This is how you start to do it. It doesn't happen by accident. It happens by putting a program into place. So level one training, I already taught you about how I think we can level up and make that as good as it can be. Now we talk about level two training. I'm going to guess that most of you out there do not have it. Because I've worked with hundreds of restaurants over the course of my career and 99.9% of them did not have a program like this in place. Every restaurant that I open, every restaurant that I run has a program like this. And the clients that I coach, I help them implement a program like this.
[00:27:10] But again, you're giving people marketable skills, skills they can use to generate more sales, which is going to be good for you, it's going to be good for them because they get 20% of all the revenue that they generate. So it's a win, win. And then again, these are marketable skills that when it's time for them to move beyond you, they're going to go on to other restaurants. I got to tell you, all the places that I worked after Be Our Guest, they looked at me differently because they knew that I had a base level of training, that there's a lot of development and nurturing that happened in that organization. And then incidentally, on the side is when I went to help them open a bunch of restaurants, which I did over the course of the five years that I worked for that company.
[00:27:50] I'm forever indebted to them because they taught me things like the two minute drill and how to spot critics and, and other food writers and what we do to get a restaurant ready, to get the staff ready within that restaurant to succeed. And it was life changing. It was really key to my development as a manager, as a restaurant professional. But it really started because they understood that they had to go beyond just the first seven days.
[00:28:20] They had to get further. Now, today's episode of Restaurant Strategy is also brought to you by seven Shifts. Seven Shifts is a team management software, a platform built specifically for restaurants. Great restaurants are built by great teams. And seven Shifts is your secret weapon to better understand your restaurant to hit labor targets and keep your entire team connected with drag and drop scheduling in app communication, task management, tip management and more. It makes restaurant work a whole lot easier from back of house to front of house. Managers, franchise owners, and even larger corporate teams. Seven Shifts has benefits at every single level. Plus it integrates with other systems that your restaurant already uses, like your POS system and your payroll. Turn your team into your competitive advantage. Restaurant Strategy podcast listeners get three months absolutely free. Get started at 7shifts.com RestaurantStrategy. Again, that's the number 7s-h I f t s.com RestaurantStrategy to get three months free and join over 30,000 restaurants using 7shifts. Today, as always, you're gonna find that link in the show notes. Okay, so today we're talking all about training. How you create a killer training program so that you develop and nurture your team. And so you're better than any other restaurant out there. Better meaning the. You're going to be the kind of place that people want to come work for, right? They want to come work at. And you're also going to be the kind of place that generates more revenue because you're training your people better, right? You're not losing money because of high churn, high turnover. You're developing your people so that you can promote from within. You can create leaders because you have leaders within your midst, right? And I'm talking about how level one, level two, and Level three leadership. Level one, we know it's the first week, how do you get people good enough to take a station?
[00:30:07] Level two is that first 90 days. How do you get people to be as good as your other best people by the end of the first three months? Here's a really important thing, and I didn't say this, I want to mention it now.
[00:30:20] When we talked about level one training, we talked about those nightly check ins. I think it's absolutely crucial when it comes to the level two training. You need monthly check ins and these should be more formal at the 30, 60 and 90 day mark. This is really, really important. I want to make sure that this lands.
[00:30:39] You have to set up just a quick check in again. It doesn't have to be more than five or 10 minutes. At the end of their first month, you're going to sit down and say, hey, this is what we're witnessing, this is what we're seeing. That's really good. This is what we're seeing that you, that you still need work on.
[00:30:55] We want to see you develop in the following ways. This is the kind of support that we're going to give you to help you get there, right? And then you're going to turn the tables on them, say, how's it going for you? What are you liking? What do you not like? What can we do better? How can we help you succeed in this place, right? And then you come up with a bunch of action items. This is the stuff they need to do and this is the stuff you're gonna do.
[00:31:17] You do that for every new person at the end of 30, 60 and 90 days, I promise you, you will retain more people than any other restaurant out there simply by virtue of the fact that you're taking the time to look them in the eye, shake their hands, thank them for being here, thank them for their hard work, taking the time and care to tell them how they can be better. And then just simply by listening, by listening to what they have to say, you will change the relationship.
[00:31:46] So it's really important. That's the one piece I left out when we talked about level two training earlier. And it's absolutely crucial. Those monthly check ins at the 30, 60 and 90 day mark, now all of that's great, right? The level one, level two training, I hope that helps so far. But the real key, the real thing, the thing we suck at in the restaurant industry is what I call level three training. Level three training is about staff development.
[00:32:13] It's about identifying talent, nurturing that talent, and then Developing them for bigger things, Developing them, getting them ready for promotions.
[00:32:24] And this is really, really crucial. This is something we do not do well in the restaurants, right? I've said this before. I'll say it again. Right? How does the new manager get their job? Well, the new manager gets their job when the old manager does something stupid on a Saturday night and has to be fired Sunday morning. And then we need somebody to manage the floor. So we simply look at the person who's been around the longest or our best server and say, hey, what do you think? Do you want to be a manager? And maybe that's right. Maybe that person is ready for management.
[00:32:52] Maybe they're right for management. But I'm guessing because I've worked in enough restaurants and I've worked with enough restaurants, I'm guessing that they're not ready for that step, not ready in the way that they should be, because we haven't talked to them. We haven't talked to them about their goals and made sure that our goals align with their goals, right? And we haven't developed them, meaning given them tools, so that when the time comes, when we tap them on the shoulder, that they're ready for that. Right? So I'm a baseball fan. I think about baseball a lot. Baseball has this whole farm system, right? We don't just draft kids and put them right in the majors. No, they go to single A, then double A, then triple A in the minor leagues because they're getting better and better and better. We're giving them tools that they're going to need to succeed at the major league level, right? They got to be able to hit a slider. They got to be able to pick out a curve. They've got to be able to steal. They've got to. They've. They're.
[00:33:44] They're tangible things they need to be able to do in order to succeed at the highest level. And the same thing is true with you. You need to teach them the things that they're going to need in order to succeed. Because in an emergency when you just got to plug them into the new position, there is no time. There's so much to teach them in their level one training for their new management position that again, we're going to apply. So let's say your top server gets promoted to be the manager because your existing manager did something stupid and you had to let them go and you needed to plug the position quickly. Well, now your best server, who's excellent at her job, now has to go through the level one, level two and level three training of being a manager. Again, they start back at level one training. So how do we teach them in the first week to be the best manager they can be?
[00:34:36] So that they can take a station, so they can run the floor on a busy Saturday night. But that doesn't mean they're going to be the best manager you have or the best manager that exists. That just means they're going to be good enough to be able to take the floor. Right? And that's an important step. But again, applying this Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 framework to it, they're starting off back at the beginning, their new beginning.
[00:34:59] So how do we make sure the person is ready for that next step? Step? It's about identifying talent and nurturing that talent. So let me, let me explain what that means. When we talked in level two training about how you do a 30, 60 and 90 day review, you have to, have to, have to, at the very least do annual reviews, annual sit downs with every single staff member on your team. If you want to do it twice a year, even better. But at the very least, bare minimum, you need to sit down with people once a year.
[00:35:30] There's something really important that we just gloss over way too much in this industry.
[00:35:36] Our professional lives, for all of us, our professional lives exist to support our personal lives.
[00:35:45] Think about that. Again, I want to repeat that our professional lives exist to support our personal lives. I'm going to guess that if most of the people in your restaurant were independently wealthy, they didn't need to work because they had enough money sitting in the bank to pay all their bills for the rest of their days.
[00:36:03] I'm guessing they wouldn't be in your restaurant. I'm guessing they might be somewhere more exciting, more exotic, more interesting. They might be doing something more fun than bussing tables. They might be doing something more fun than mixing cocktails all night. I could be wrong. There are certainly outliers. But I'm going to guess 99% of the people who work at your restaurant work at your restaurant because they need the money to pay for their personal lives, to pay for their apartment, their mortgage, their car, groceries, vacations, things like that.
[00:36:36] This is a really important point, and I know it seems overly obvious, but our personal lives are being supported by our professional lives.
[00:36:45] So when we talk to our employees, we exist with them in a professional setting. You have to understand more about their personal lives. Now, I'm not talking about getting personal. I'm not talking about getting into the private details of their lives. I'M saying you have to understand what they want out of this job and how this job helps them achieve their larger goals.
[00:37:08] There's a professional way of doing this, but I think if you. If you look people in the eye and ask them what was going on, how's life? How are you liking the job? Is this job helping you achieve everything you want to achieve in your personal life?
[00:37:22] Meaning, are you making enough money or do you have enough free time? Is there something else? Are you satisfied? There's plenty of people who are just bored in their job. A lot of our jobs are boring. When you do it for 2, 3, 5, 10 years, it can get boring.
[00:37:36] So how do we continue to nurture and develop that talent? It begins by understanding what they want out of the job. And when somebody takes the job at the age of 25, let's say their priorities have probably changed by the time they're 28 or 29 or 30.
[00:37:53] Certainly my priorities in life were different at 25 than they were at 30 and 35 and 40.
[00:38:01] Our lives change. We change. That's the best part about being, about being alive, is that the things we want change.
[00:38:09] What we do changes.
[00:38:11] What we expect, what we. What we want out of. Out of a job, what we want out of a relationship, what we want out of our lives. That's okay. It's okay if the things that brought them to this restaurant are different than the things that they now want from this restaurant. In fact, that's great. That's exciting. And we will keep more people, retain more people, and develop more people by understanding what they want. And I'm telling you, 99.9% of the restaurants out there are not having these conversations. They're not thinking.
[00:38:45] They're not thinking about how a person is continuing to develop and change.
[00:38:52] But you can have a different kind of restaurant if you build this kind of relationship with your people. It begins by doing an annual review or a semiannual review, right? At least once or twice a year, you got to sit down with your people and say, hey, this is all the good stuff we're seeing. These are the places for improvement. Right? Let's put a, you know, a performance improvement plan together.
[00:39:12] These are the areas where I think you can continue to. To get better.
[00:39:16] This is how we can support you in that growth.
[00:39:19] And what do you think?
[00:39:22] How are you enjoying the job?
[00:39:24] Is what you wanted last year when we had this meeting the same as what you want this year? Great. Has it changed? Great.
[00:39:31] By understanding your people better and understanding what they want you can better serve them. The only reason people change jobs is if they're not making enough money, they're not feeling supported, they're not seen, they're abused. Right.
[00:39:44] Simply put, the big umbrella, the overarching thing there is that the reason people change jobs is because this job no longer works for them. They need something else that this job can't provide. So here's a crazy, novel idea.
[00:39:58] What if we always were able to provide the thing that our employees needed, meaning they wouldn't ever have to go anywhere else?
[00:40:09] Yeah. Maybe they get bored. Maybe they want to change a pace. Okay, fine.
[00:40:13] We're going to lose some people for sure. There's going to be natural attrition.
[00:40:17] But I'm guessing you could keep 70, 80, maybe as much as 90% of your people if you just listened to them, if you made sure their professional lives could continue to support their personal lives.
[00:40:29] Now, that's the beginning of this conversation. You've got to get to know your people better. Again, it's not about going on vacation with them and all that. It's just understanding them better and understanding what they want, what they need, and how you might be able to provide them with what they need.
[00:40:44] So it starts there, and then you continue that by putting a development plan together. Right. So I'm going to use another example from that exact same restaurant group that I worked with. Again, I worked with Bluefin. It was part of Be Our Guest restaurants. It's now been sold and chopped up, and it no longer exists in the way that it existed back 20 years ago when I moved to the city. But one of the things they did really well, and I'll give you one small example of this, is that again, they had, I don't know, 10, 12 restaurants all around the city.
[00:41:15] And one of the things they would do is they would identify talent, identify people who had a passion for something. A passion for wine in this example.
[00:41:24] So I had a passion for wine when I was coming up, right. I realized how much there was to learn about wine, how exciting it was, how new and it was. It was great.
[00:41:33] I really got absorbed in wine early on, and I still. I'm still really into wine. I find it fascinating. Very enjoyable. Right. One of the things this company did is they approached people like me and said, hey, you got a real passion for wine. You've got a real drive to do it. Your wine sales are great.
[00:41:49] I don't know if you have ever had any desire in becoming a wine director or sommelier or sort of going down that Path into beverage management, but we'd like to give you a chance to look at it. So here's what we can do. Right.
[00:42:03] One of the things they offered was basically being a seller. Rat. It's a really awful way of saying you helped learn how to check in wine stock wine and manage an inventory in exchange for that. Right, which they paid me for.
[00:42:17] But in exchange for that, they would then give me one or two shifts a week on the floor as a sommelier.
[00:42:25] So they said, hey, put on a suit and you can walk around selling wine for the night. Here's the genius of that, is that I got to put myself in my boss's shoes. I got to do what I watched them doing, which at the time was really exciting, especially being a server on the floor. Oh, man. I get to put on a suit and just walk around and sell wine. And I'm also retrieving wine and opening wine and pouring wine, but mainly selling wine.
[00:42:49] So I can do that for a night, a week. And they paid me, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars to do that for the night. And guess what? It was a win win. Because what they realized is that by having a suit on the floor selling wine, even if it was somebody sort of green, not as good as their regular wine director, they discovered that they sell, that they had higher wine sales just by putting somebody on the floor in a suit than they otherwise would have. So it made good business sense. And then from a staff development sense, they were showing me respect. They saw me. They saw where my passions were, and they gave me a chance to develop those passions in a new direction. Right. To continue my development.
[00:43:30] What a super easy way to both drive more revenue, nurture, develop your staff to keep them engaged and occupied. And I wasn't the only one who did this. Again, this was sort of an informal program, and they did this about. They did this with about half a dozen of us who are working all throughout the company, people who showed a drive and a desire to do this. And again, it was a win. Win.
[00:43:55] So when we talk about staff development, how do you start identifying talent and then nurturing them down that path? Now, ultimately, I didn't go the path of. Of beverage management, of being a wine director or a bar director or sommelier. I didn't. Because eventually I realized that wasn't where my passion lie. My passion was really in service and really in the numbers, really, you know, overseeing a place and making sure it was as profitable as possible. And then I got really interested in the marketing side of Things, all of which is what I do now. So my. My sort of passions and creativity were fostered in another direction ultimately.
[00:44:30] But this is one small example of how this one restaurant or this one restaurant group was able to develop their people so that they had. What I always talk about, again, to use the baseball analogy, you need a deep bench.
[00:44:44] You need people on your bullpen who you can call upon at any point should you need them.
[00:44:52] So if a wine director or sommelier got sick, they got the flu, they got hit by a car, and they were out for a week, guess what? There were six or seven of us across the company who could very easily put on a suit for a week and go run the program at that other location. And guess what? We knew enough about ordering, about, you know, logging in deliveries, and enough about maintaining cost and sellering that inventory that we could also do that.
[00:45:18] The property probably couldn't run unfazed for months and months and months. But for a couple of weeks, it absolutely could run with then the support and the oversight of the corporate wine director.
[00:45:31] So, yeah, if somebody. If somebody was out for a week, which happened, I remember somebody lost their mother, suddenly, they had to go fly home and they had a hole. Somebody needed to run the wine program there. And the corporate wine director couldn't just plug himself in and be there for a week plus. But you know what? They had enough of us. And they snagged one of those, one of my colleagues, and she went over and she ran the program for about 10 days, and it basically ran like clockwork.
[00:45:59] So now how do you do that? I turn that on to you. How do you teach bussers to be runners, runners to be servers, servers to be bartenders or managers? How do you teach your manager to be a general manager? How do you teach your cook to be a sous chef?
[00:46:15] How do you teach your sous chef to be a chef de cuisine?
[00:46:19] How do you take somebody to go from CDC to executive at your new restaurant that you're going to open across town?
[00:46:25] Being able to identify talent, nurture that talent and develop them, give them the skills they need. Again, they were quantifiable skills, tangible skills that you need to be, for example, a wine director. You need to be able to order wine, maintain your wine, cost inventory, log it, stock it, and then sell it and then pour it and educate the staff on that. All of these things that you ultimately need to do to run a profitable wine program.
[00:46:53] And the same is true on the back of house side. Same is true in service.
[00:46:58] How do you teach people about management, how to manage people, how to speak to people. How do you teach people how to. To run profitable labor numbers?
[00:47:07] How do you teach them to keep the labor in line?
[00:47:10] Again, all of these things are things we can be teaching people.
[00:47:15] And it's something we do really, really badly in this industry.
[00:47:20] Other industries do a much better job of it. And I think if we look around and we say, why do we keep losing people? This is one of the reasons, because we don't understand and we don't acknowledge the fact that the professional life exists to support the personal life and that people want to grow within their jobs. They want to do more than they're doing. They want to make more.
[00:47:42] They ultimately want to go beyond where they are so that they can stay satisfied and engaged.
[00:47:48] So we talked about how we improve our place. This is how we improve our places. How do you be better than 99% of the restaurants out there? You do this.
[00:47:55] So again, I appreciate you being here, guys. Level one, level two, and level three, training. If you thought training was done after five days, you are wrong.
[00:48:03] You are wrong. It goes much deeper than that. And I challenge all of you to help us have a better restaurant, better restaurants, better industry, so that people want to work in our industry. This is one of the ways we do it. Again, I appreciate being here. As always. I appreciate you taking the time. I know there are a lot of great podcasts you could listen to and this is just.
[00:48:22] This is just one of many. I appreciate. Hope you got something out of this. If you ever need to reach me, you know my email address. Chip close.com. that's C-I P K-L-O S E dot com. I answer each and every email I ever get. I appreciate it and I will see you next time.
