“In your casual and even more forward business conversations, you can start to understand the skill sets that are needed at a multiunit role. Once you understand them, you can start mentally interviewing these people to try to understand whether or not they have those skills to move on to the next level.

And then obviously before you put them in that role, you give them some development and you put them through some assessments. And the assessments that I've used in the past, they are highly predictive. You start looking at your team and you start understanding who are the next people that you need to start preparing for this role.”

“On Tuesday mornings, we do a P&L call. Having a call with all multi-units and reviewing the profit loss statements for each restaurant on Tuesday morning. 

The profit loss statements. 

They don't just affect the operators... They affect the finance team... They affect the technology team... They affect culinary.

What we've done is we have invited individuals from those departments to be on that call. If we have questions as operators, or if my multiunit individuals have questions, they can have a conversation with the finance department. 

If there's some misunderstanding. Everybody understands where the sales are, where are the issues that we're having, and how is profitability looked at for each restaurant, how is it different by each region?

There's more than just one department reviewing those. 

We’re breaking down that barrier of silos. 

Everybody in the company understands the sales, the profitability and everything that controls it.”

“We show by example. Growing up in this industry, I owned the restaurants, I owned multi restaurants, and I had to handle management and then started franchising.

I would clean out grease traps, show them how to clean.

As an owner, you have to know all aspects of the business, enough that nobody can pull the wool over your eyes. 

My philosophy is to lead by example. 

If I come to work and I hide in my office all day long, what does that show to other people?

When you're in your restaurants, you're going around to your customers. 

Employees will see that, they'll duplicate it.”

“What I tell folks when I'm working with them is that learning a job station is like playing a piano. 

When you start, you have to go slow because you want to get it right. It's muscle memory over time. 

This is not just for a job station, but it's how to write a schedule or how to coach a team member. You start slow and you make sure you get every step.

For operations that is really essential. You have to teach the right way the first time and you let them go slow and you let them learn at their pace. 

Then over time, once you internalize the steps, you can start accelerating and really become an expert. 

When you think about playing a piano, you're marrying skill with art and the art comes in when you don't have to think.

Here is a good example from my restaurant days, being an expediter. If you watch a good expediter in the kitchen, they are not watching the orders. They are watching everybody around them. The orders are second nature to them. They're not even thinking about pulling the plates together and looking at the receipt and making sure the order is accurate and whether it's the server or whether it's out the drive-through getting that order out. That has become so second nature to them that they don't even need to think about it.”

“We've landed on an idea that we will carry forward probably forever. It's called our Biscuits For A Cause Program. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, when it was just a devastating time for restaurants, everyone was having to scale back operations.

We looked really hard into what we could do for our people.  That was top of mind for us. 

We had always prior to this time given away biscuits. 

It was our staple.  Free of charge with the meal. 

In this takeout environment, we said, “what if we charged for biscuits”?

Crazy, crazy idea, because, prior to that we knew we could get a lot of pushback on that. 

We said, what if we did this with the intention that every dollar of profit goes straight back to our employees, and every dollar profit from our biscuits goes to this fund. 

Throughout the year, when we were met with difficult circumstances, when we were met with employees in need, we had this fund which has now raised over $350,000.”