'It's incredible how much we're focused on labor shortages as an industry and the challenging labor market. Just like it's easier to get an existing guest to transact with you one more time, it's easier to focus on retention to address the challenges that we have as an industry than it is to find a new guest effectively, to find a new employee and bring them onboard. 

That's why I'm so passionate about this topic. The other reason I'm passionate about this topic is it literally affects every area of the business when you improve retention. It improves your service. It improves your food consistency. It improves your labor, your cost of goods. 

Today, I'd love to see if we could just organize the conversation around 3 major keys to driving improvement in retention. Those three are: one, selection of employees and initiatives to improve selection; two is onboarding experience; and three is the post-onboarding experience, often looked at the 30-day mark, 60-day mark, 90-day mark. Certainly, post-90 days, the employee is onboarded. They're trained. They're fairly familiar.

What is that experience like for them after 90 days or however long they're going to stay on beyond that? We have major initiatives underway to drive improvement in retention, focused on those 3 major topical areas."

- Alex Eagle, CEO, Freebirds World Burrito

"What's most fundamental is making sure that we've got talent within the ranks. We're continually developing our future leaders. My Penn Path was born out of saying when we hire someone, let's talk to them about what their future looks like with our company from day one. That way, we don't lose sight of that with every shift that employee is on board with us.

We've kept it simple. It is a two-page document that walks you through your first day with the Penn Station brand through rising up the ranks and putting yourself in a position to be one of those 250 general managers who are looking for the next latest and greatest to help them manage their business."

– Lance Vaught, Senior Vice President of Operations, Penn Station Inc.

“When we created the vision for the Pacific Northwest to be the healthiest region on the planet, that was really our stake in the ground to say, "We're going to look at this through pillars of people, product, and place. The people part being our employees and our guests as well as our suppliers. The product being really, what are we doing for stretch goals in our region around locality. And then place being, making sure that every decision that we're making goes through that lens of the vision around our region specifically.

And then as we all know, March of 2020 hit, and really quickly, we were looking at our business to say, "How are we, one, going to stay in business? And two, what do we stand for going through this time period?"

The forefront of everything we decided from that point forward was to stay proactive. That has been one of our brand tenets, and it has helped us a lot manage all sorts of crazy disruptions none of us could have foreseen, or we could have, but maybe didn't.”

“How are we successful from a franchise standpoint? How do we work with them?

The first thing is to take care of your existing franchisees. If your existing franchisees aren't happy, you're never going to get new franchisees.

Let's talk about how you help existing franchisees. First of all, you make them extremely profitable and they make money. Franchisees that make a lot of money are extremely happy. 

The other thing is, make sure that you collaborate with your franchisees. What people don't understand is that the majority of our franchisees have 2 to 5 locations, and their operators are in their restaurants 5, 6 days a week. I'm in the office 3, 4 days a week. I'm lucky to be able to hit a restaurant once a week unless I'm doing a restaurant tour where I'm on the road for a couple of weeks.

Our operators know it way better than I do. You want to be not creating without the franchisee's input. You want to be making sure that you collaborate with your franchisees.”

 – Carl T. Howard

Through her experiences and learning on both sides, Mary Jane Riva, CEO at Pizza Factory, is able to resolve conflicts between the franchisor and the franchisee by meeting halfway through proper communication and transparency. 

Tune in to our podcast today for more exciting learnings on building good relationships with your franchisee.

“I think the best place to start is being a franchisee and coming into this position as an executive. How much I learned so much on the other side that I was never privy to because I wasn't in the corporate structure that way. On that part, it was an opportunity to be more vocal and transparent on the other side, being the franchisor side to the franchisees, really opening it up more and explaining or telling or giving the whys. Why do we do it this way? Why this, why that?

Yes, the butting the heads - I do that with myself. If I had 2 heads, they would be butting together sometimes. I have such a feel for the franchisee side because my husband and I still have 4 stores. There are varying issues just like everybody else.

I really come into the corporate meetings with that hat on and presenting another side when I feel that it really needs to be – maybe explored a little bit more, at least, what's going on for the franchisees.”

CJ Lewis:
“I was looking up quotes, just cute quotes on simplicity, and one that stood out was from Steve Jobs. He says, "Simple can be harder than complex." That stood out to me. I'm like, "I wonder if that's true." Maybe not in all cases, but focusing on simplicity can be a difficult thing because it just feels natural that we, as humans do, we naturally complicate things when they don't need to be.”

Joe Gale:
“When I look at other systems and I see their complexities, it's generally in SKUs. They have so much they have to have on hand. They have to think of, "Where is this product right now? It's frozen. It's in the back. We've got to get it out and make sure it's ready to roll." 

I think the quote really does relate to Pancheros because being 100% fresh is not easier. I think it would be easier to have frozen things. I think it would be easier to not make our own tortillas. It would be easier to have everything come in and ready to go. Where it is a little more labor-intensive to be fresh, but it sure pays off when you're biting into that burrito.”

“The magic number we hear from talking to other people in the industry is 20 stores.

You've got to get to 20 stores, but it's got to be sustainable.
It's got to be scalable. 

What we did over the last year is we turned that into a 5-year vision plan that's going to take us to 2025.

Within that, there's 2 phases. Phase One, which is the 20-mile march to 20 stores, that's 2021 in 2022, where we hope to get to our 20th store. Phase 2 is 10xing the brand, taking us from 20 to 200 units, and that's going to come in 2023 to 2025.

What we're focusing on today is that phase one, 20-mile march to 20 stores. The way that we're going to accomplish this goal is by getting an A-grade in the 8 pillars we've identified as being critical to the success of any emerging brand in the QSR space.”

-Matt Ensero, CEO and Founder, Wing it On!

“If you want to build sustainable sales and sustainable profits, the only way you’re going to do it is to put the team first.

You focus on building a great team.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t value the guest as much as any other customer. We absolutely do. We’ve got several guiding principles that are focused on making sure we deliver a great experience for our guests, but you cannot bypass the team member experience in your quest for great service.

The guest experience will never exceed the experience of your team member. If you hire the best and the brightest and figure out how to keep those people engaged and you keep those people on your team, you can’t help but deliver a great guest experience.”

Bill Fry:

“We've been using rewards, and recognition for our team members and for the folks that work here in our corporate office, because we just believe that when you treat people right, you're going to get better results. And during these really trying times, this has become even more important, and we've doubled down on that. So we start off certainly with recognition. And recognition, for us, is we believe it's that team member motivation. It's a point of differential. You don't need to write any of this down. This has been around forever, but it's really important that you find things that are right.

Our team members know that there's a good chance someone is going to get pointed out for doing something right, it just promotes that type of behavior. We really like to go with the positive approach, and this way we hope that all of our team members know that you're going to get recognized for doing something well.

It's catching them doing something right and making sure that they know that when they work at A&W, it's going to be a positive experience for them. They're going to hopefully walk out feeling a little bit better about themselves.” 

CJ Lewis:

“I love what you're saying, is that recognition, this is nothing we need to write down.

It's thanking people for doing a good job and finding the good in the world, and positive reinforcement. And what I love, you just said, is this doesn't just need to apply to our own businesses. This can apply to us as a human race, of calling out the good we see in the world.”

“We've got almost 5,000 employees. I said, 'We've got too many layers of management. We needed to break down the barriers and provide access to all levels of our management, including the most senior levels here.'

I really am a big fan that when I go into a restaurant, I'm an employee just like the servers or the dishwasher or one of the lines cooks. They should feel that they have that access to leadership and not the hierarchy or formality of saying, 'President's here. We all need to change our behavior.'

We've really been encouraging that behavior. You know the old story. You find out what's really going on in the restaurant from the dish pit guy because he's going to tell you what food's coming back on the plate, what's going into the garbage, what's being done and what's not being done. Nobody pays attention to that voice, but it is a wealth of information."