Don't Run the Team Ragged

Your people are there to help you run the business. They aren't there to run it FOR you.

You may have the most competent assistant manager in the company. Does that mean its ok to leave them understaffed in order to free up labor dollars for you? I don't think so.

Your best closer never fails to set you up in the morning. He puts every other closer to shame with his skillful stainless steel polishing. Does that mean you work him six nights a week? Not the best idea.

Everyone has a point where they reach peak productivity. Too few hours or too little responsibility will leave your team members feeling unimportant or bored—which leads to a lack of motivation. Too many hours, shifts that are scheduled poorly (a close, a day off, followed by an open for instance), or too many duties will burn out your team and send them to the want ads. You make the big bucks because you can see when people are hitting their peak, and adjusting your operation for that moment.

It takes extra effort, but for the love of all things good in the world rotate your people. Spread out the workload. Develop your less experienced people so they're able to handle more of the load. It ties into the Always Hiring mentality...just as you constantly need to reseed your labor pool, you have to tend the people who are already there.

As tempting as it might be to lean on a competent or even gifted team, you're hurting yourself and the company in the long run. They'll notice your short hours, your light workload, and it'll breed resentment. Use your team, by all means: no one should work themselves to death when they have the ability to keep a healthy balance.

But balance means staying in the loop, keeping productive, and not taking advantage of your subordinates.

Hiring

If you run a QSR restaurant you are always hiring. You're always taking applications, you're always interviewing, you're always wracking your brain to find enough hours to train and keep a new hire.

Why? Because if you ever start thinking, “Hey, I'm fully staffed!” then you'll be caught flatfooted when your best register guy decides to start skimming from the till. Or you won't have a backup when your primary closer gets in a car wreck. Or maybe that family your predecessor hired all at the same time, the backbone of your schedule, will decide to start playing games and demanding special treatment...and you'll have to give in, because you have no one in place to take over. It's a pain in the neck to fit training, interviewing, and those extra hours into the schedule...but just remember the last time you had to do all that while you were short staffed. Which is the best option?

But for the love of all things good and happy, don't just hire anyone. The whole advantage to thinking ahead and hiring BEFORE there's a crisis is you get to hire for personality. You can take your time, review the application, ask questions about the last couple jobs, the employment gaps. Talk to the person about who they are. You can think about whether or not they fit with your current team, if they'd complement the people you already have (or hope to have). Set 'em up for a second interview to get another impression. You have time, so take an extra couple days to make the right call.

If you don't have a subordinate manager or shift supervisor to help with hiring, fix that. Start developing them to spot good applicants. Teach them the questions to ask when handing over the application. Make sure your people know the staffing goals...what hours are you hiring for? What positions? Pay, benefits? If you're the only person who can answer these questions you're setting yourself up to get burned out, or to miss good people who don't want a run around (yes, “Come back at 3 to ask these basic questions” is a run around).

Above all, be persistent. Review staffing efforts at your manager meetings. Even when it's not a priority, make it clear that hiring hasn't dropped completely off the table. You have to get the right people on your team, and if you can't do that if you aren't looking. Turn over is a fact of life in the QSR industry, and while you can take steps to minimize it...the only defense is to be prepared for it.

You are always hiring. Period. Make it your mantra, and instill it down the chain of command.

Consistency is Key

Consistency is one of the quickest ways to make or break your restaurant. A lack of consistency—whether in policy, direction, or quality—will make your customers not know what to expect, your employees insecure, and your P&L number fly all over the spectrum from week to week. Being consistent, however, is how you generate a loyal following of customers, employees who are confident in their work, and stable financials.

As tempting as it can be to play favorites and make exceptions, it's generally a bad idea. The rules are there for a reason, and breaking them can have unforeseen results. Yeah, you know Janet is under a lot of stress right now, so you wink at her calling off once in a while. But Louis notices Janet not getting in trouble, and now he's starting to call off regularly. When you try and call Louis on the issue, he throws Janet's special treatment in your face.  Now what do you do?

Same thing with work duties. If nightly inventory is an issue only once in a while (instead of nightly, as the name suggests), or if stocking cups before lunch rush happens only if certain people are on duty it creates random fluctuations in service and control. If there's a set of duties that needs to be done regularly, it needs to be done regularly. You can't just let someone off the hook (including yourself) if they aren't in the mood.

Of course, there's a standard disclaimer. You're the officer in charge, the lead on the ground, the person with the answers. You know when to make exceptions, so make them when it's appropriate. It's assinine to fire someone because they've been throwing up for three days but can't afford to go get a doctor's note. It's unreasonable to expect a manager who worked an open-to-close shift to do a detailed inventory count. Just don't make exceptions the rule.

Because the rules, the policies, the procedures are there for a reason...if they aren't serving a useful purpose anymore, they should be changed once and for all instead of leaving people not knowing what to expect.

The Schedule

The schedule is what is going to make or break your experience in the QSR world. That's it. End of story. Period.

If you write a good schedule you'll be happy, productive, and profitable. If you write a bad schedule you'll be pissed off, unable to accomplish anything, and either out of business or changing careers. The weekly schedule is how you manage your primary set of tools—your subordinate team members. (On the flip side, the weekly schedule is THE central issue in their lives...but more on that later).

With enough exceptions to drive you to drink, rush periods can be predicted. Rush periods, by definition, are when large amounts of your business happen. Flipping burgers, this was lunch. Some days up to 75% of our business hit between 11am and 2pm. Slapping pizzas, I saw a lot of weeks when 50-65% of the weekly revenue happened in 5 hours every Friday. When you start talking large percentages of your daily or weekly business, you need to start thinking large percentages of your labor hours. If you short-staff your rush period you'll get nothing but pissed off customers, pissed off crew, and an alcohol problem for yourself.

Since you can't turn a profit if you work everyone all the time, pre and post rush hours need to be carefully considered. This is when the heavy lifting for your store happens. Before the rush, this is when your tomatoes get cut, your condiments get set out, utensils put in place, food stuffs readied for battle. After the rush, someone gets the trash and dishes out of the way, re-preps all the stuff you went thru before, keeps an eye on business to make sure late-lunchers don't go away feeling second rate. These periods will make or break your day, and you shouldn't give just anyone with a pulse these hours.

If you pay attention, you'll get a feel for when exactly your rush starts and stops on any given day. It's not written in stone. There are so many variables to when people eat, and sometimes the only way to win is with literally last-hour phone calls to keep people home or call them in. So while the labor matrix your district manager or operating partner or owner tells you to use is a very powerful tool...it is far from always right. That's why they pay you to write the schedule, and not a machine.

How do you write a solid schedule? Start by having everyone's current availability, in writing. Signed and dated. Nothing will destroy a good mood—or a good schedule—faster than someone coming up to you with a variation on, “But I told you every third Tuesday I have my back waxing appointment!” Be flexible, but when people tell you they can work a particular set of hours hold them to it. Knowing they've made a written commitment to be available for certain hours and days goes a long way towards keep people honest.

Stuff comes up. Doctors appointments, hot dates, family gatherings, once-in-a-lifetime rock concerts. The type of things we should be worried about, instead of work. Have a schedule request system in place for these situations—and use it. Giving someone a day off—especially if they're available five to seven days a week—will not ruin your business. It doesn't matter what the system is, exactly...but make sure it's written (so you and others can verify dates, track how many requests someone makes, etc), easy to get to for the crew, and something you can work into your schedule writing routine easily. I'm a big fan of a three ring binder, one page per schedule week. I worked for a guy who had a manilla envelope stapled to the wall next to the calendar in the office. Whatever works is what works.

Have a solid schedule routine. Start by scheduling to schedule, where you have a couple hours to just sit in the office or the dining room and write the schedule. This lets you focus on the task, do the labor calculations, make adjustments as needed. Resist the urge to “throw” a schedule together on the fly...you're not just putting numbers and names on paper, you're deciding the fate of your restaurant's next week.

Think “schedule” all week long. At least, have it in the back of your mind. If Susan is bucking for hours, coming in to help when there's call offs, make a note to reward that with more hours on the next schedule. If Billy has decided the post-rush trash run is more about his cigarette than the trash, make a note to yank those hours. The schedule is a great tool for motivating people...but only if you use it!

The needs of the business come first. Being flexible is admirable, and very necessary to keeping a happy workplace. At the same time, an employee who expects a full time schedule but can't work rush hours is not doing you any favors. A delivery driver who only wants to work Monday and Tuesday night? That's fine...except that driver had better understand he's only going to work 6 hours a week at most. Someone who wants to flip burgers only between 2 and 6pm? That's just taking post rush hours away from someone willing to come in at 10am and stay all day.

But at the same time, without employees who is going to take care of the customers? Remember everyone on your schedule has bills to pay, some more than others. It's not reasonable to use an adult with children to feed for a handful of hours if you can possibly help it. And while they have bills to pay, they have lives to lead too. You'd be pretty pissed off if you had to close, then come in and open. Or if you had a class to attend and your boss scheduled you to work at the same time. A little empathy, looking hard at finding solutions that meet everyone's needs instead of taking the easy route, will save you a lot of trouble in the long run with turnover.