What’s coming in ’23? Likely, more of the same. No doubt, more AI and robotics, ever tighter client budgets, headaches with hiring and retention, more demand for tech solutions with faster, more consistent production. The list goes on. Chaos or not, this is what we signed up for as professional foodservice consultants. At the same time, with the pandemic, recession, war, supply chain disruption and more, I find myself asking a different question for 2023.  

What can we do to maximize our effectiveness, our work, our growth, and our teams?

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The world of restaurants and foodservice performs every aspect of business there is. We literally have “all” verticals of industry under “one roof” every day. More so, our transaction time is faster by far than most. Our production cycle is multiple times an hour, every day, with the expectation of zero defects, and 100% money-back guarantee. We accomplish this outcome with very tight margins! At the very foundation of our performance, and most often taken for granted, is sanitation and safety.

As global pandemic of Covid 19 spreads this month three simple rules apply: Rule 1. “Wash your hands with soap and water for twenty (20) seconds.” Rule 2. Sneeze into your elbow/sleeve. Rule 3. Manage personal space. These rules are basic in our industry, so obvious and so often forgotten. 

Trust that safe, sanitary production is present in our world of work has historically been at the very core of both guest trial and retention. When we execute effectively, this trust evolves into the creation of raging fans of our businesses.

What has been restaurant/food production “101” for decades cannot be taken for granted. As operators, owners, brand managers, team members, we lead the way. We can be the model for our nation and the globe. We can do this and be this, literally.

Our guidance from the federal government is not consistent. Different levels of government are sharing different views on what is real and/or what is important. In our industry, we know these basic rules, and how to handle and create sanitary conditions. We can model these basic methods and be a voice of reason and care.

There are at least two deeper issues and opportunities we can step into from our wake-up call with Covid- 19. Both issues focus on our teams and their well-being.

Issue 1: 

What about paid medical leave? The alternative is our habit. That is, having our whole team cycle through ongoing illness because there is no paid medical leave. Exacerbated now, the potential of this habit can unknowingly spread illness to our customers. For years, the real cost of lost production and/or sales to our companies when illness cycles on site over and over again has had me in awe. Yet, this has been our habit. Hopefully, no more. We have the opportunity to be conscious and choiceful in our actions. 

Issue 2:

As big, and just simply sad, is the issue of childhood hunger. Covid 19 has raised attention to a major issue of school shut downs, usually unspoken. We seem oblivious to: How many students DEPEND on both breakfast and lunch from school programs. What happens for these kids and their nutrition when the schools are closed? There’s no valid reason for childhood hunger. Yet, this issue will continue as will the awareness of basic hand washing (sanitation) long after Covid 19 is dealt with and “gone.” We have an opportunity to get rid of this issue, if we choose. (Please check out: nokidhungry.com and other programs available via google or other media.) We have an opportunity to be conscious and take positive action by choice!

My invitation, from one restaurateur to another, from one business person to another, is that we step into the bigger dialogue and solution of these two issues: medical leave and the issue of childhood hunger. Along the way we can reinforce all we know about hand washing, sneezing into a sleeve/elbow and honoring personal and public space. 

Best to you, your team and your community during the next few months of this challenge of pandemic! Let’s lead the way in what we can do daily with the choices we make for our lives and businesses!

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Three issues, three solutions:
Issue I. Finding and keeping great staff is illusive. This is the same old story. Here are three solutions to this issue:

1. Define excellence in every job or position. Instead of relying on common sense (there’s no common sense by the way) create a shared sense of what performance excellence is. Period. See item II Below!
2. Tell a story in your job posts. Re-think help wanted and talk about the kind of work place you have and the opportunities there are for anyone working here. Hire attitude, teach skills. See item II Below! 
3. Hold interviews on a regular basis. Instead of hiring a warm pulse, interview until you find the right attitude. Hire A+ when it shows up. The ratio we’ve found typical is about twenty (20) interviews for one (1) A+ hire. (All the better when we define what A+ actually is.)

Issue II. Be aware of three (3) cultural norms! Two are deadly. After forty years building, evolving and growing values driven, high performing companies, I find the following Irrefutable: Workers work in three broad culture norms. Each is created by leadership behaviors which by choice or default create a Brand/Culture norm. Motivators are one of three:

1. fear = do the job or else. 

With fear, A+ players leave because they know they can get a job anywhere. A company driven by fear gets left with average or below average performance. 

1. neutral = it’s a job;

A company playing in the neutral mode, have leaders thinking it’s the workers that need to change or evolve to our habits, it’s not us that have to shift attitudes it’s the employees that need to adhere to us. 

Here’s what happens: In neutral mode (the typical restaurant or hospitality side is neutral) and performance is, well, average, not great, not horrible. Outcome? The attitude of leadership we find is that labor is hard, we can’t find any good people. We have a turn over median that is +/- 185%.

C. inspiration = I am inspired by what we do and thus, I perform at a higher level.

In an inspired workplace excellence is defined, A+ players are inspired, performance rises, and we just keep getting better! Turnover drops and retention rises in an inspired workplace because the team is, well, inspired. 

Of interest too is this: people not inspired leave of their own accord. Ironically who replaces them are other inspired workers. Hence the potency of a values driven work place. The more we define excellence and coach to the positive, the culture/brand acts as an attractor for new hires that want to perform! Turnover goes down, costs go down, retention, sales and profits go up! Period.

Issue III. AI is a paradox: Incredible opportunity and threat! Be Aware!

The good news and the bad news is that unemployment is at a near all-time low. Bad news, our story continues to be, “I can’t find any good people out there!” (Where do I find great people? start over, read from the top of the blog)

Good news: Just “around the bend”, 5 years, 10 years at most, there’s a freight train headed straight at us. Thanks to the story about how hard it is to get good help, and ever enhanced technology, AI is going be a capital investment that replaces any staff position that demands consistent, replicable performance.

Bad news: As low as unemployment is now, it’ll be that proportionally high when AI kicks in hard. Seems like it can be an employer’s dream.

… One last piece that I’m not hearing anyone talk about is what happens to gross sales when so many people will be unemployed and potentially unemployable?

What’s our role as leaders, founders, c-suite and floor for vision with training, ongoing learning of all kinds for the team members we have and will have?

Obviously, the three issues relate. When issue I. and issue II are put in place, Issue III. takes care of itself for now. (More on this in coming blogs.)

Questions come to mind: What’s it take to have a truly inspired workplace? Do We actually care enough to inspire? Is it just easier to drive people? Is our training enough? How do we keep getting better?

As my colleague/friend Horst Abrams asks, “Your Thoughts?”

About Miick

The key to receiving these benefits is learning how to delegate effectively. Miick is an able coach and guide for you and your team in the process. Our Values drive us to client success and our track record proves it. We walk our talk. We can coach you in becoming a better leader who knows how to delegate effectively. We can also help build up the performance of your business as a whole. Please be in touch to see how you can benefit from the two of us working together. 

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There are new populations like Gen Y and millennials to understand. There’s new technology to learn and then train your staff with. There’s the high turnover, so you are consistently looking for reliable team members. There’s the challenge of retention and creating a culture that staff members want to be a part of.

The most successful operators are new-age leaders who aim to develop new leaders and build a culture that stands out.

But the first step to being a great leader is understanding motives.

We sat down with Rudy Miick, founder of Miick Companies on the recent IOChangeMakers live stream to see what it takes to be a leader today as the restaurant industry experiences a profound shift. As Miick points out, there are two types of workers today. Ones that have to work to make a living and others that are inspired to work.

So the goal is to inspire your team. But that is easier said than done. It all starts with defining the “why” or as Miick calls it “your purpose.”

“If I don’t have a sense of purpose or what some people now call the why, if I don’t know why we’re in business besides making money, then I end up being that rudderless leader,” says Miick.

Once you define the why and then establish values that support the why this is how you create or build a culture that resonates. Understanding the why also inspires new leaders within your team.

Want more leadership tips from Miick? Check out the clip above. The full interview is also now exclusively available on Foodable On-Demand here.

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The Miick Method: Building Brand from the Inside Out

At Miick, we work with you, digging deep to define and refine the purpose and operating values of your company, your brand, culture, and the team members in it. Here’s an overview of how the Miick Method works:

KNOW WHO WE ARE

Our clients achieve a deeper sense of purpose in their work. This is our goal. To arrive here, we want you to be able to answer the question, “Beyond income and profit, what’s the benefit, the experience and outcome our guests, customers and team receive from the products or services we provide?”

Our work with you to investigate, refine and clarify this sense of purpose, and the values that get you there, leads to highly motivated staff members. Each ends up working with a sense of passion in ways you’ve likely not seen before. Team members end up eager to demonstrate the pride in their participation. This understanding of purpose and values is of utmost importance. 

No professional sports team, dance troup, musical event, or military entity would send a team on the field without clarity of how to achieve the objective. Do your best, use your common sense would not be the siren call. 

We also work with you to define excellence. Once defined, instead of relying on common sense, the leaders and team work together with shared definitions of excellence, on purpose, using shared clear values in decision making. If this isn’t happening for you already… it’s time to call us.

COMMUNICATION

Step two of the Miick Method is to create a Safe Space for open communication. Leaders and team end up seeking out the positive, looking for ways to inspire rather than reprimand. Another outcome of Safe Space in your business is that the whole team learns to give and receive feedback, rather than “constructive criticism” in ways that build performance instead of undercutting trust.

Oh, by the way, clear communication that supports knowing who we are as a brand is most everything the millennials on your staff want. 

FISCAL SYSTEMS

Most owners and managers, regardless of industry, shield team members from fiscal information. We coach the opposite. The folks we work with end up better off fiscally by a multiple of three (three times average fiscal performance) when everyone understands the costs and opportunities of doing and building business. More so, we set up anticipatory fiscal systems that have you and your team looking forward instead of backwards at an old financial statement. 

HIRING SYSTEMS

From the clarity of knowing who we are, using effective, Conscious Communication that creates Safe Space, the crucial next step in the Miick Method is hiring. We work with you to define and refine an ongoing hiring system. Instead of hiring being an event happening at the last minute when someone leaves, hiring becomes a practice that builds our brand.

The steps defined so far support the folks we work with to create an opportunity for new team members to join by choice instead of chance. Purposefully instead of depending on luck.

[Here’s more on effective hiring to find a culture fit and high performance] 

TRAINING SYSTEMS

A natural outcome from knowing who we are, having fiscal clarity of top and bottom line performance, supported by safe space to give and receive feedback, supported by a clearly effective experiential hiring system, is training design. No clarity, no training, no execution. Period. We work as facilitator and guide to co-create experiential training that’s fun as well as effective! Outcome: brand execution. Work done on purpose and fiscal results that will take your breath away. Here’s more:

ONGOING LEARNING

Last in our six steps is the awareness that learning is ongoing! Especially in the 21^st century, if we’re not learning and implementing, we’re done. If you’re ready to keep learning and keep exploring opportunities to evolve performance, you’re ready for Miick.

We’re here for you.

This September, we’ll be putting The Miick Method to the test at our annual Leadership In The Fall Line® leadership development ski retreat. This unique opportunity will be held in Portillo, Chile. Learn more.

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There’s an old phrase that still holds much relevance today. “From fifty thousand feet” there’s no difference between Darden restaurants, McDonald’s, Panera Bread, IBM, Apple, Google, Microsoft, or even your company. Regardless of size or reputation, we all have three areas of opportunity:

OUR EXISTING CULTURE

Culture happens accidentally or it happens on purpose. There really isn’t an in between. It is all about behavior and the creation of norms. We can define and track these behaviors as either red flag or green flag, and the organizations that do things right will use them as an opportunity to coach teammates, not police them.

Most companies will likely have some great cultural elements, but they also will probably have some negative ones. The important thing is to recognize the red flags and begin to shift them in the right direction. The first step is to define these behaviors you need to start doing, stop doing, and keep doing – on purpose and not by accident.

OUR STRATEGY

Strategy, or planning, fails more than 80 percent of the time unless something within the business structure shifts. Structure doesn’t just mean moving a wall or adding a new piece of equipment. It is how we speak with each other, how we manage our behaviors, or how we conduct our meetings.

Strategic planning as an annual event is dead. That’s right! Today, review and course correction is an ongoing process, or at least it should be. Explore behavioral norms and fiscal results. Celebrate what’s working. Course correct what’s not. Do so with data-based feedback instead of compliments or criticism. Speak the unspoken, and have the real meeting in the meeting, not afterwards at the bar.

OUR STRUCTURE

The good news is the behavioral structure in your company is a whole lot cheaper to fix than a remodel or a new piece of equipment. Take a look at how you’re running meetings, talking with each other, and making decisions based on clear vision versus the fear of making a mistake or being wrong. All the more reason to have an explicit set of values that you actually use – defined purpose and explicit vision.

How to Define Your Company Culture

The work to define company culture is simple, not easy. There is a road map you can follow that will help you define and implement excellence.

Culture just is. And conscious culture is very achievable. If you take time to define your culture, you’ll get more than a brand promise, you’ll create a brand experience.

Start the process of defining and implementing your company culture today. 

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Consider Nick Sarillo. There are two Nick’s Pizza and Pub locations in the blue-collar suburbs of Chicago. Nick’s culture is about creating a real gathering place for families in the community. During the recent recession when restaurant traffic and sales were down 10 percent or more, Nick’s was realizing real growth of four percent. They were profitable with positive cash flow. So how did they do it?

For starters, Nick’s defined culture and performance expectations. More than 200 team members focused and aligned their goals behind an anticipatory management system. And they did this in communities where business performance is not the norm, much less in the throws of a recession.

Next, consider that four percent growth was still not meeting their goals. What were the options when costs are cut as much as possible? Raise sales. But how can you raise sales in a restaurant, during a recession, in a blue-collar neighborhood?

On Friday and Saturday, the restaurants had an hour and a half wait, experienced around five turns, and earned $16,000 a night though this is still pizza. So even in the middle of a recession, the weekends weren’t the issue. In a brainstorming session using their company purpose and values as a guideline, someone came up with an idea of serving half-priced pizzas on Monday night.

To be sure, there were plenty of restaurants out there looking to gain market share by lowering prices, mostly with little or no impact. More so, if you went through the so called burger or pizza wars of the 1990s, you know that lowering the price of core products is actually not a smart idea as opposed to creating a new product that provides perception of value at a lower price. So how was half-priced Mondays any different?

Culture is a choice. Why half-priced pizzas on Mondays actually worked.

Here’s the rest of the story. Half-price pizza on Mondays was offered because the purpose of Nick’s was to serve as a real gathering place for families. The entire team, from the president through the wait staff and dishwashers, believed in creating a sincere offering. This was their essential message:

“We know that our community is in a world of hurt. We also know that regardless of how tough it is out there for you and your families, you still visit us because we’re your gathering place of choice. To say thanks, we’d like to offer half-priced pizza every Monday. First, to say thanks, but more so, because we, too, are part of this community. We realize we can do something to support you by providing half-priced pizza on Mondays until unemployment numbers are back to pre-recession percentages.

We all feel the pain of this recession, and we’re in it together. This is one more thing we can do to support you in appreciation for the way you’ve supported us.”

What was the result of half-priced pizza on Mondays?

Thirty days later, Mondays were as busy as the weekends. A month in, local papers called out Nick’s for doing more to boost the attitude of the community and local economy than anything else. What’s the return on investment of free press?

You may say this is just smart marketing. It’s certainly smart, but it’s more. This is an example of decision-making using the purpose and value as guideposts. Nick’s is a company that has explicit values that support their overall business culture. So what’s next? How about half-price on take-out Tuesdays?

A closer look at company culture.

At Nick’s and other successful companies, constant attention is paid to anything closely resembling a red flag behavior. At the same time, emphasis is created on green flag behaviors. Find out what these behaviors are and learn how to create exceptional business culture by downloading our free Cultural Creation Tips from Miick.

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