Now that the holiday season has come to an end, we are left with the dreaded months of January and February. The economy in general is much slower, and sales are significantly less than they were just weeks ago.
This is a great time, however, to refocus and reflect on the business. The extreme change from high volume to low volume really exposes each Team Member’s shortcomings, flaws, and areas of inefficiency. It is a great time to communicate goals and coach and develop others.
These 2 months are also a great time to take chances. There are so many areas that need tweaking or reshaping, and we are taking full advantage of the slower volume to accomplish these changes. Areas we are experimenting in include marketing (numerous in-store promotions and an aggressive food distribution plan), training and development (with special emphasis on leadership development), labor costs (finding new ways to increase efficiencies), and more consistent/controlled systems in place (many including firing our cleaning company in order to handle cleanliness in house). The beauty of trying this now is that when they do not work according to plan, our volume is slow enough that we can get through it.
A specific example: we have tried a number of new personnel structures in order to cut down on labor costs this month including eliminating a prep person on Saturday evenings. In this specific example, we ran out of all wraps and salads at 5:30 last Saturday night because we failed to account for the quantity of “New Year’s resolution diets”. We were able to pull a manager and a kitchen person to catch back up on prep because of our reduced sales, and the guest experience was not even affected. We can still implement our plan, but now we know to schedule someone in the kitchen who is proficient in food prep in case we run out of something again.
The next two months are looking to be exciting despite the slower sales volume because of our plans to take chances, improve our restaurant, and try new things!
This is a great time, however, to refocus and reflect on the business. The extreme change from high volume to low volume really exposes each Team Member’s shortcomings, flaws, and areas of inefficiency. It is a great time to communicate goals and coach and develop others.
These 2 months are also a great time to take chances. There are so many areas that need tweaking or reshaping, and we are taking full advantage of the slower volume to accomplish these changes. Areas we are experimenting in include marketing (numerous in-store promotions and an aggressive food distribution plan), training and development (with special emphasis on leadership development), labor costs (finding new ways to increase efficiencies), and more consistent/controlled systems in place (many including firing our cleaning company in order to handle cleanliness in house). The beauty of trying this now is that when they do not work according to plan, our volume is slow enough that we can get through it.
A specific example: we have tried a number of new personnel structures in order to cut down on labor costs this month including eliminating a prep person on Saturday evenings. In this specific example, we ran out of all wraps and salads at 5:30 last Saturday night because we failed to account for the quantity of “New Year’s resolution diets”. We were able to pull a manager and a kitchen person to catch back up on prep because of our reduced sales, and the guest experience was not even affected. We can still implement our plan, but now we know to schedule someone in the kitchen who is proficient in food prep in case we run out of something again.
The next two months are looking to be exciting despite the slower sales volume because of our plans to take chances, improve our restaurant, and try new things!
Hi Jamie, I work at the CFA of Gainesville (GA) and just found your blog. I'm hoping to become an operator in the future and look forward to reading more posts on your Interim Manager experiences. Best, Suzie Holmes
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