Creative and Efficient Ways to Interview Potential Restaurant Staff

Hey there restaurant pros. It’s Dave Scott Peterson Welcome to Episode 71 of the restaurant prostrating formula. I’ve been coaching restaurant owners since 2003. And the restaurant prosperity formula is based on what the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with on a daily basis to achieve their success.

The basic premise of the formula centers around achieving prosperity, freedom of your restaurant and financial freedom you deserve to achieve prosperity you have to follow a very specific formula made up of leadership systems training, accountability and taking action. I want to tell you about our guest today. Avery Ward is the CEO of little elite pizza in groveport, Ohio. You may recognize His name because He was my guest in Episode 59.

Since that episode, he’s experienced explosive growth from moving his location to a newer, bigger location. Listening as we talk about how his new location created new staffing challenges, because his sales literally jumped overnight. 140% Avery will share with you how he found success with group interviewing, and how your vision for your company a great company culture and being an employer of choice, the integral of making a group interviewing process work. I want to welcome a reward to the show today.

Avery, I’m so glad that you’re willing to jump on here again with me. For many who have gone through my podcast gone down that rabbit hole of the restaurant prosperity formula podcast that met you in episode 59 But do me favors for those who have not listened all the way through. Tell people a little bit about your background and your restaurant.

Yeah, so my name is Avery Ward, operator, CEO of Little Italy restaurants a groveport Ohio family owned and operated business which started in 1979 as a pizza place before that, in the early 60s, my grandparents purchased a grocery store called Smith’s market and turn it in to Chuck’s a little Jack. My grandpa always had the dream of owning his own grocery store. And so they went out on that dream and the county King $1,000 loan the same day after a four hour conversation with the owner of that market. Same day took out a loan and purchased it and so that was kind of the start of my family’s venture in the business world.

They operated the grocery store for about 18 years and then turned into a pizza place and like I said in 1979 My dad operated that for a little less than 40 years. I took over from him about four years ago and came back with the dream of growing this into something that I knew that it could be my dad was very much so into the hospitality business and times to his own fault or defeat that he would give give give us a huge giver to where sometimes impacted in financially and they have a hard time in their bills. So I when I was 16 I went out of the family business literally grew up inside the restaurant making pizzas in the kid when I was 16. I went and worked for Apple for about five and a half years it was my dream job.

Dream company love their mission and what they were doing in the technology space and had a huge passion for technology when I was growing up kind of everything that I was doing anything I did I always figured out how I will integrate technology into that in some way, shape or form. So like I remember being in like, seventh or eighth grade when the iPad came out and worked in the restaurant, literally all summer, bought my first iPad and took it to school. And other teachers are like, No, you can’t have like, no, no, like you understand, like, I want to take notes as a kid because take notes. I want to do it on the iPad, like and so I was lucky enough that a lot of my teachers let me do that, you know, back then it was like unheard of other than like business people to have that kind of technology.

But this is kind of who I am. I love love technology. So came back to the restaurant business after working for Apple retail for a little bit to kind of have the goal of making this something bigger than what it was but also integrating technology in that process to ensure the customer experience from start to finish is as smooth as one but also the employee experience when they come to work that technology is integrated part of our operation. So from the time they clock in to how they prepare pack orders and everything technology has a good impact throughout that process.

So that was kind of my goal. In 2018 came back to business. Like I said, my dad, kind of sometimes through his own defeat was a giver very much so and so put a lot of systems in place to ensure that you know, the profit of the restaurant is definitely there and a part of mine at all times to ensure that you know we’re not doing this for no reason although we like definitely care about our community want to take care of our community and our customers and our employees. At the same time we’re not in this business for free.

So that was a big part of me coming back is to get everything in line to where we were making money and we could do it the right way. So with that in mind, we grew pretty quickly. Consistency is a big thing for me. So came back immediately started working on our consistency of all of our products across the board my dad and grandma I believe very much though and like not following recipes.

It’s just kind of following your heart and taste along the way. You’d always say that my grandma’s who was so good because it was so alive. You know constantly. Of course in the restaurant, that didn’t happen but you know ever has for sure.

But you know getting systems in place for consistency with recipes so employees can do the same thing time after time again and customers get the same result. And then focused on our growth for marketing and quality customer service. When they come in the door. They’re taken care of every time they walk in our door.

So that’s a little bit about kind of my background. And then where we were, we were in a building. It was about 2000 square feet was the size of our store grocery store and we quickly outgrew that in three and a half years. We literally would go on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights a waitlist after five o’clock the line out the door to come into the restaurant not only to be seated but also to pick up their orders.

We only had 12 parking spots in our parking lot. So it was quite a small parking lot but we had a public parking lot like adjacent to our property. So a lot of customers would park in that and then walk across the street. And so we quickly outgrew our operation with the amount of sales that we seen.

We doubled the business the first year and then pretty much almost kind of doubled that again, if not a little almost tripled that and then doubled that number again and then doubled that number again. And so you know from where we started, less than a $500,000 a year business by 5600 Something like that to where we are now. You know at the end of our old location so we just moved out of our own location into our new store that we had constructed. Like I said, our old store was 2000 square feet like 1998 and our new store is 5200 square feet.

So we almost tripled our location size, our kitchen and our new restaurant is the size of our building our whole old building inside of our kitchen plus 270 something square. So definitely a huge upgrade for us. And that’s come with a lot of challenges and learning opportunities to learn how to support that quick and when we opened up at our new store. We almost well we did double almost kind of 140% of our sales from our location.

So that was a very quick growth. learning opportunity ahead of us.

And we’re talking about that. So the size of the other building, how many seats do you have in the original building when you just moved from 60 to 62 And where do you how many seats do you have math so we translate that

160 40 of that being outdoor and you added 20 During

you had bar but you didn’t you made a full bar and this one so it is really kind of a neighborhood location. People can actually come not just get alcohol but they can be a part of the bar and you’ve added an ice cream shop along the side of it.

So we are at the intersection the main intersection in town now there is a stoplight right in front of our building on both sides that people park you know and wait for that light and stare right into our venue. So we’ve got windows down on the side. It is definitely the community gathering space for sure. We did not have a bar we had beer and wine.

We only had three taps of beer and some bottles of wine. But it was as you know, less than 1% of our sales. It was very, very small. Right 98 and a half to 99% of our sales was food and so in the new location, we added a full service bar, full liquor menu cocktail menu with a really heavy focus on Italian inspired cocktails to complement our dishes really well.

Yeah, and then I’m really not wine selection. And then yeah, we have a dedicated pickup entrance off of the side of the building. Which is right off the bat because the kitchen, customers can park on the side of the building and dedicated spots come right in those dedicated doors. Get in and out service to not have to go through the dining room and travel through all the customer eating to get in and out really quick but also it’s really efficient for our kitchen because it’s right off the back to the kitchen.

And so over there, it’s right on Main Street and so we put a candid ice cream shop out there. So there’s 20 different flavors of hand of ice cream that we have on hand for for that area.

And so it’s a major change from this. What I would call a mom and pop kind of operation in the 60s seeds and you are always busy you know and when you came back to talking about doubling sales and doubling sales again, you are bursting at the seams like there was incredible reviews I’ve seen the social media posts I’ve seen the videos people have posted like your food is outrageous. The hospitality was fantastic like you are already doing restaurant one on one really well. But as you wanted to do you wanted to grow your company you took a risk and said I’m gonna move to this bigger space at a bar add it to go side add a an ice cream shop and then in with that you built your kitchen to handle like years down the road growth.

But you got that growth right away. You had 140% growth. So talk about some of the challenges of what it felt like to to basically move a restaurant but almost reopen. It wasn’t as smooth as you want to say hey, we’re just going down the street and moving some equipment or whatever.

It was like a brand new place. Talk about some of those challenges.

Yeah, well, first off, you know, I took your advice of opening up a new restaurant. You told me to do several plan soft opening nights where you invite specific people and that’s kind of a very dry run. Right? I was expecting these nights to absolutely burn down and they were everything but that they were so smooth.

My staff did such an amazing job. That first we closed down for a week of no business at all. For the first three days we trained Train, train, train, train train, we trained to our wheels fell off. And the fourth night was on Wednesday.

We did a vendor’s VIP night. So we invited all of our vendors and construction workers, anybody that’s really ever helped us out over the years for anything. We invited them in as like a buffet all you can eat kind of just come check out our space hanging out kind of night. It went so perfectly the kitchen was they did such a great job.

Couldn’t be any more prouder of the team that we hired on and how quickly they learned I mean we for this project, we hired 26 people, and I thought that was going to be more than enough. We came over with a team of 40. So we had 66 people on our team when we opened up the doors here and I said I thought that was going to be more than enough. We had the new role of house so we hired for that we had the new role of bar we hired for that.

We needed additional people to work to pick up counter and ice cream shop because it’s more than just hey go grab the register. No, it’s It’s somebody answering the phone all the time now, giving people their pickup orders and dealing with all the hand advice green volume and we haven’t even started doing like milkshakes or anything like that yet. And so you know, I thought we had more than enough and so those first the first vendor night went great, everybody did excellent dishes were coming out amazing. Communication was fire.

It was great. second night, friends and family night my personal friends night saying that we way, same way. It was a very planned reservation. Everybody had a specific time they were allowed to come in.

And it was very on purpose not to overload it but to be a little more difficult than the night before. And it was perfect. I mean, on all accounts it ran so smoothly. Then we did it friends and family night for our employees.

They got to invite their friends and family and then we also invited our VIP customers and it basically doubled the amount of reservations that we have and I can run my night. Again, perfection. I mean, it really blew me away those three nights of how well things went. And that was like Yeah, our training was fantastic.

Like we were so ready for the public. We opened on Super Bowl Sunday. Perfection. I thought it was going to be an absolute shit show.

I thought it was going to be like just like the fire shoes and Super Bowl Sunday the worst day to possibly open it went great and I think everybody was scared to come in and they thought it was gonna be crazy. Monday happened and we have such a nail. And Monday onwards for the next well, to date. It’s been like this.

Every day there’s a line to get in the door. People to try and get in here. It’s been crazy. And so from those plan nights, you know, the first day of opening the public, we turned on integration and delivery operators.

Not to mention you know, we have a dedicated pickup entrance but we also deliver where we are at a pizza place. And so we deliver to about a five mile radius. We get six drivers on our team. And we do quite a bit of delivery at the old store.

It was about 30% of our sales volume, and now that has gone way down because our volumes skyrocketed. But we still do that. So all of that volume of people that maybe have never even stepped foot in our store started ordering from us again. So that was a learning opportunity.

And then we have all this pickup customers that probably never even come into our restaurant and if they do, it’s very rare. They just come in and always pick up that now added to the fire and then we have this dining room. It’s literally exploding on a waitlist. That added to the fire.

So very quickly, like all these very planned and methodically thought out knights were like, oh, let’s go back to that, you know, but no, we just had to. We had to roll with the punches and the first few weeks man, myself and my managers God love him. I mean, I don’t know what I’d do without him. We were awful in a 85 hour workweeks open like we would get in here at 8am 730 sometimes and we wouldn’t leave until five six in the morning.

And I get home with enough time to shower and nap for about 3540 minutes before I’d have to get on the road and drive 30 minutes back to work. And did that for the first several weeks and we we literally looked each other and we got to do something this is not sustainable that we cannot keep doing this. And I said Well, guys, we got to go back to last year. We have to start our systems over again because the moment we left our old store to the moment we opened up the new one.

Everything went out the door. Everything that we’d done the checklist were useless. All of our attendance systems were put into place. We were so fucking busy.

We couldn’t think about doing those things. Right? I mean, everything we were monitoring on a daily basis it all went out the door. We were working in line, my manager was working the expo.

I was helping the guy in that prep room. The GM was trying to put out fires in the dining room and train the servers that are all only five days old of working here basically. Right. And so it was a very quick, how do we fix this?

We have to do something and to be honest with you, we’re still doing that. We’re still constantly evaluating. Okay, what do we need to focus on this week? What do we need to do this week and so I trying to chew away at that elephant again, like rebuilding all this from scratch.

But that’s kind of how we how we did it us kind of how was it like moving in and that’s that’s what we did.

So part of it was the the swinging the Miss on how busy you thought you’d be. I mean, you had already you thought you’d double your sales not quite do even more. So you were short staffed, I can remember us talking and you were literally kind of like after spending all this time we first met and we’re working up and as you were driving you were doing all these things to where you were working. You got into the restaurant manager meeting to some walkthroughs and you were working basically from home strategic run your business, you are working on the kind of helping the GC make sure that new project was getting there and you had all the challenges that every new restaurant has from delay, delay, delay and cost increase.

But you weathered all that made it all the way through and you were able to focus on that growth and look at all the strategic things you were doing. ie the the TO GO station the ice cream, the bar like new thing. But you undershot that in your brain and all of a sudden you were short staffed, as you said, you and your managers were working line positions basically 80 plus hours a week. Talk about the moment you said okay, I need to hire and but that initial process you were you were bringing people in and talking to people one at a time.

What did that what was that like and and when you looked at that, what was that light bulb says I can’t make it to where I can hire enough people doing it this way.

Yeah. So at our own store, I mean, the hiring process started. We were doing it about a month before we were opening up. And we brought several of them in which, thank God we did it.

It turned out to be so good. We run several of them in the training field location and just get to know the point of sale and how to talk with customers because that stuff wasn’t changing. So we started going through, we put out what posts that we were hiring in our new location and some images of it. And you know, how we treat our customers how we treat our employees like family and to start talking about our story online.

And applications just started flooding in I think we had close to 200 something applications to scavenge through at the old store to hire for the new store. So we scheduled never forget this day we scheduled one day. I think it was 12 or 16, something in that range interview. And myself and one of my general manager were performing interviews and a 12 hour shift later we got 12 interviews done and that was like Jesus, man, like how are we going to do?

How are we going to get through these 200 interviews? Like there’s no way we’re going to come through these people, you know, we’ve only got 12 done and out of this 12 We really only want to hire two of them. How are we going to do those? And, you know, we started scratching our heads and so I mentioned it on one of the calls the group cause of you know, us doing these interviews and they’re like, why don’t you group interview and so it didn’t really click we we kept doing the individual interviews and did a couple more.

Well, there was one day we booked another 12 And it was another and out of that 12 I think we hired nine or 10 of them and everybody okay, that was that was good. So we had six from this we have the 10 From this day. And you know, we did I think one more of those individual interview days, and then we were stuck to the for the news. And we’re like, Okay, we’re good.

But then we started running, we were stuck on the line and it very quickly became clear to me like okay, we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to go back to our system. We’ve got to build our systems for our own our existing employees and I told the managers as I said, we can hire as many people as you want. But if we don’t tell them how to do their job, and we’re having to sit here okay, I want you to do this next I want you to do this next, I need you to clean this Hey, can you please do this a little better redo this for me do this do this.

And we were just constantly in traffic director, right, like we’re just pointing in all areas. And I told him I said we can’t hire people and bring new people in and just keep doing it. This is not sustainable. So I threw one of them on the line.

I said you’re working on job. We’re not doing anything until you get Joel in our checklist done. And he got them to a point where I felt they were good enough to get people to start following them again. So we had our fafi that instantly it was that.

You know, I talked about like going back to the beginning of the program because like I got the relief from Joe the old store, right you know, when I had our bathroom checklist and I literally gave it to a new hire and said okay, cleaned the bathrooms and it was spotless. I got that same gratis you know, satisfied satisfaction at the new place of like, here do this list and then they did it right and I was like damn the last two weeks we’ve been like having people we’ve been wasting so much time staying here till almost midnight when we close at nine with a staff have like 12 people on him like what are we doing? And so, getting that instant gratification, you know, we were really able then to bring additional people on it was like Okay, now we’ve got that but more and so that’s that was our next, next so

I know we talked about that again, you were in this point in time about these group interviews and it really isn’t my strength to be full disclosure. I talked about it because my daughter had gone through a concept called Dutch Brothers growing here on the West Coast, a little coffee kind of drink thing drive thru, and they they attract nothing but the best people. Of course my daughter was one of them. But her high personnel like high customer service, want to kick ass and run and do all these things.

But they did it in a group interview situation where they’d have 2030 people in a room and you’d go to the next interview 2030 people in a room until you’ve gotten the individual and you know, I sat there and I kind of threw that attitude. And I didn’t have a lot to back it up. But you had gone through that experience with Apple. How did that translate to say, I know how to do this because I’ve done it in the corporate world, not necessarily in the restaurant space.

What was that? Aha like and what did you draw from that experience?

Yeah, well when you recommend it to me, it was something I wasn’t even thinking about. We used to host them at Apple all the time. And actually when I got hired there, I was a part of one. So what we would do is we would rent out a whole hotel like they would rent out, typically like the Hilton Garden and that was bought in the store.

And they wouldn’t buy 100 150 Sometimes 200 people to this group interview, and I say the interviews and Apple did the same thing. But to me an interview is more so me selling myself and what we’re offering here to the employee versus me trying to figure out in the beginning if they’ll fit here and I want to see if they’re getting excited about what we’re talking about. I want to see if they are engaged in what we’re talking about and how we treat our people and do they really like the sound of that. Is that something that attracts them or and not really.

So we spend a lot of a lot of our time trying to you know, let them know what we’re like as employers what they can expect but also what our expectations are of them and you know will do they feel like a failure. And so at Apple that was that was one thing. You know, all these people would come into a room they’d be greeted with a video, talk a little bit about, you know, where Apple came from its history, what its mission is, you know, to create a great experience for their customers when they walk through the stores, but also what their technology does, for you know, humankind altogether. I mean from the deepest south of Africa to the complete desert of Iran, people are using Apple products and how does it you know, impact their life from now having a connection to the outside world versus before there was nothing or to America where you know, you can live in California and have grandchildren in New York and still be connected to them through, you know, FaceTime or messaging or whatever.

And so, they talked to really a lot about their mission and what they’re passionate about, and you know, where the company is going and why it’s going there. And so I took a lot of that knowledge when I was going through that myself at Apple, it was a big thing to me like I was, I was like I was like glued to that stream. You know, because being a teenager at the time and I was like 16 They didn’t hire till two they were at they didn’t learn that I wasn’t 18 till the end of the interview when they offered me the job. And I put the wrong birth date on the application just to get it to go through and they said they were like, you’re only 16 I was like yeah, I’m gonna like we’ve never hired a 16 year old before.

We’re gonna have to talk with HR to make sure this is like, okay, but Right. We really want you on our team. And out of that entire group of 150 people. I was one out of two people that got hired.

And it’s a very selective process. They actually there’s been articles done that the hiring process at Apple is harder than to get into Harvard. But I was very engaged in the brand and I’m very, I was very engaged in their promise of what they you know, their core values. And so I kind of have started holding our group interviews like that same way of selling myself to the employee, what I’m about my core values in the company, how we treat our employees, how we treat our customers, how we’re involved with the community, and really talking about that, but, you know, the more style is what can they expect from us as an employer?

Well, well, I never, you know, screw them over on what will I always promise them but what also what I expected return and you know, I’ve been very blessed to say that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad hire come through my door. I don’t think I’ve ever really hired somebody and said they truly are a bad fit. And while I’ve had some that, you know, yeah, maybe not the right position for him.

I don’t think I’ve ever hired somebody that I would say that disrespectful to my customers or they’re disrespectful to their co workers or anything like that. I know a lot of places have those kinds of issues. But I feel like it’s a part of really the the selection process and how I hold interviews helps me determine if I think they’re going to be a great fit in our company culture or not.

So kind of the you’re looking for cultural fit instead of asking this certain 8 million questions on a was this person gonna fit? You’re saying if you can get excited about our core values, our dream, our mission, our vision for this business, if you can see yourself working for someone like myself in this kind of management team, you’re going to kind of self select yourself, you’re going to kind of rise to the top and go hey, raise my hand I want to be a part of this. And you see that in the in the interview process. Am I reading that properly?

Yeah, I can train them whatever I want them to do. If they’re if they’re engaged and they care. I can train them whatever I need to do. And so you know, it’s all about caring and being engaged in what they’re doing.

It’s more of our slogan and in our pickup area, if anybody looks up our restaurant or Google or whatever, you’ll see a logo, a little graphic that’s on the wall. I had a brick wall that was whitewashed, and I put this graphic on there and it says it’s more than just pizza. It’s our legacy since 1979. And I believe in that and you know, I say that it’s more than just the pizza hitting the table because it brings people together and when the your hands appear from every direction to help himself, that’s what it’s all about.

And so, you know, I want to be a part of people’s lives and create married memories. You know, we say we’re a part of the experience business, right? We’re here to sell people on an experience and get them to also get our customers to buy into that same mission. So our employees need to be engaged in that and like to spread back messaging when they approach tables, you know, you always say like, your customers can or you can learn how your employees are feeling.

If a customer is asking, Hey, what’s it like to work here and they spit out all the bad, right? You know, I’m really confident to say that I don’t I don’t think that my employees would do that. You know, they’re very, I feel like everybody that we have here now professionally, is very engaged in what we’re doing that talking about all the little things like oh my gosh, you know, we are you know, when we, when they built this restaurant, you know, they took into consideration the old stores this or that, and that’s why this is here. That’s why this is shaped like this.

This is why this word is selected. Like we did a lot of that stuff in the beginning of touring people through the new store to get them excited about why we did this why we built this building. It wasn’t just to do more sales. I was making great fucking money in the old store.

I told my employees during the orientation, I was making great money. I don’t I didn’t need to make more money is not why I built the store. I wanted to be able to serve more people, but at the same time, I wanted my customer, my employees to have a very comfortable work environment and the volume that we were doing in our old store in this space that they were doing it in was hurt. I mean, we were pushing out $3 million in revenue from an 800 square foot kitchen.

Right? It’s unheard of. And so you know, it would that that really is what it came from for me is I want my employees to be able to work in a comfortable space where you know, they grab something off the shelf and buy things are going to fall on them and they get all of the things that like happened in this business. And so I wanted to provide him a nice space to work in.

And so we explained that during the orientation. And so, you know, I think it’s important that your employees are engaged in your mission because like I said, you can teach them whatever you want them to know.

But you came over 40 employees, you added 26 You were grossly understaffed. Now you do this group interview process. What kind of numbers? What did you get from it, like how many people came through and how many people did you select one of those, how many happy with

so we invite 40 Something employees to two different group entities. So the way that I do it is I create a calendar link on there that I select you know, two different time slots on a day and then two different time slots on this day and I send out a email Well, I first call the applicant or managers call the applicant let him know hey, we’re holding a group interview. We would love for you to attend. Looking at your application.

We think you would make a good fit in our business with the experience that you’d have. We’d love to talk further about, you know, what we’re offering here what we’re doing, and to make sure that you are the right fit for us. And so we’d love to invite you to this over the phone if they don’t answer willing to wait now saying that and we also let them know that voicemail Hey, we’re gonna email you a link to sign up. If you’d like to sign up.

Feel free to we’d love to have you know we’re holding on to different days. So we do that. If we email them, they sign up great. They attend we have their information, we’re ready to go with the group interview.

If they answer we sign them up. And that Calendly link sends them an email letting them know that you know Hey, reminder interviews tomorrow, and then they get one with a reality. And that I don’t I actually don’t think since we started doing that, but we’ve had a single person not show up for the interview. That’s been a big thing.

At the store when we were doing the individual. We would just call it like okay, this is probably work for you and that yeah, okay, and then sometimes it wouldn’t go on. Right, you know, so having that system where either they sign up, obviously they were engaged enough to do it themselves. Or if we sign them up, they now have the reminder that you know, hey, you have an interview.

So we did, we invited 40 Something to the interviews on two different days. We held those and we ended up hiring a teen or 19 more for the second round of hiring that we did.

Almost. So you I mean we’re in the day and age where people are talking about how difficult it is find employees. And yet you were able to put 40 People in two different sessions and come up with 20 employees 19 That is amazing. Now, what I want people to understand is that’s because of all the other things you talked about in your orientation or interview process, have your core values and staying true to your core values.

Take care of your guests, taking care of your employees, truly being genuinely who you are, which makes you an employer of choice. Like that doesn’t happen if your restaurant sucks and you got bully managers and what have you, you know you’re not getting the 40 people to show up in the first place. But you are the the employer of choice in your marketplace. And I think that that is a tribute to it.

So as people listen to us, I don’t want you to think that Oh, you just throw up a group interview and it’s going to fill 20 people in each one like you’ve done. There was a lot of work behind that from creating a positive work environment to all the social media posts that you did, talking about your past your history, your vision for the future and the new place. Like it wasn’t an accidental thing. It was a lot of things put in place.

But with that said, that’s incredible. So now you bring 19 People in they’re starry eyed they’re ready to go you’re already chicken so how was that that orientation process of getting into the full that and how quickly did you see relief because it’s gonna take you a week to two weeks to get everybody trained and so on. So your managers and you are still burning the candle. What was that?

What was that? Transition? Like?

Yeah, so there’s a couple things that I want to talk about. It’ll lead to the transition. One thing that’s important to me during the interview is at the end of it if we feel like that that applicant is a good person we want to move forward on. One question I always ask is when would you be looking to start?

And the answer to that oftentimes gives me a good understanding of the type of person that they are. If they’re currently you know, they were telling me throughout the whole interview, they are currently working at this place or whatever and if I could start tomorrow, you know, they’re not going to get a two week notice. Do I think they’re the right fit? And oftentimes, if they don’t give a two week notice, and they’re like, Oh, are you currently employed peddler?

Yeah. Are you gonna give it to weakness? No, it’s not necessary. Okay, so that’s kind of where I shy away from that applicant, even if they hit all the other check marks out there, that’ll probably go red to know.

But so, you know, on the on the onboarding process. You know, I think it’s important to highlight that you say a lot of things go into this more than this quote in a group interview. I think it was about a year ago or so that I asked you about becoming an employer of choice and where’s the first step? Where do I need to start?

Where do I need to focus? And at the time, it was really, about how do we treat our employees? How do they feel about coming to work and I really couldn’t confidently answer that question to say they might not enjoy their jobs or you know, I don’t know. I didn’t really know where I stood in that, right.

And then I slowly started to build that, you know, piggy bank of commitment, I would say, with my staff, I’m really explaining our mission and where we’re going with this and they really started to see that comes alive. And so you know, my staff that we have the old store of 42 people really seen that come before their eyes because they’ve seen all the growth that we have to store especially in my long term team members. They’ve seen us double and triple and then double that again and double that again. They seen all that growth, and they seen the new store me getting so excited about it talking about hey, I’m doing this hey, I want you to look at this drawing Oh, I gotta look at this, look at this.

And they see all these things start to come to life and then they’ve seen the construction that they were getting really really excited. And so you know, I got my team engaged. And then I think the biggest part of this is like, when I say that I had 200 applicants. It’s not just because, you know, they’re just flooding in from Indian or whatever site you want to use, right?

No, we I think I don’t I wouldn’t want to say 100%. But I’d be pretty confident saying 100% of our applicants came from our Facebook. And that’s not me just putting a post saying, Hey, we’re now hiring. Right?

That was me telling a story over months, and months and months. Like you said, here’s who we are. Here’s what I’m passionate about. Here’s what my future looks like.

I can’t wait to have our staff and wrong. Hey, you know, appreciation posts for this employee appreciation posts for that employee. My staff did this tonight. I’m so proud of them.

You know those type of posts and like really lifting them up, not only in a social media presence, but also we’re doing that in our four walls. And so, you know, that’s part of it. And then, you know, as we talked about going on social media and sharing your story, you know, it’s more than just putting stuff on social media and braiding your customer, I think News special do this, do this. Who are you?

Who is the owner? You know, do they know you? Do they put your face two and two together when they come to pick up their pizza? Are you greeting people?

How do they see you train their staff when they walk in the door? All that stuff matters. And so you know, you say the transition period when we decided to move them forward with with onboarding. We have a pretty rigorous onboarding process and I got a lot of this from Apple.

And so having very clear documentation of the when they get hired, they get sent a handbook they have to sign the handbook they have to initial the important pages next to the important policies. They get the attendance policy they have to read over they have to sign it. They get a W force a term they get a direct deposit form center and they get signups to our payroll. They get signups to our scheduler, they get signups to our tip distribution software.

All this stuff happens before they even walk in our door. And then we get in touch with them and let them know we give them the rundown so it’s very clear expectation pay your first day. Is this your scheduled this you can see your schedule on this. Have you been able to see it?

Do you have any questions? We can’t wait to have you. We’re so excited to have you come in and train. You’re gonna be training with this person today.

So when you walk in check in with this manager first and then they’re going to put with this person in a very clear roadmap. Because when people walk into a door at a place to work, and it’s unorganized. And

I just sign up for another Do I go? Yeah. And so then, you know, the next shift, they don’t even come back and then the employers and they’re like, Well, I don’t understand we can’t hold people. We get them in the workforce for a day.

Right. And not to say that we have not had that turnover. We have had a couple I think probably four applicants out of that 40 Something that we brought in that didn’t work out you know, they they started and they thought hey this is really isn’t right for me. It’s the volume is crazy.

I can’t you know walk across the store that much, you know, or a you know, my other employer came at me with this offer and I’m going to work Monday to Fridays and I’m thinking just whatever it is. It’s not to say that you want to have turnover but it definitely drastically reduced out our own store. We had the same problem where people would not come in really interviews. If we did get them hired.

They probably didn’t show up their first day or when they didn’t show up for the first day. They didn’t show up the second or maybe a week later they dropped out and it was not a very good experience on our end. You know, the hiring process and the employee probably it wasn’t a good experience. on their end.

And so I think putting all these into place have really helped us on on the hiring side. You know, I think probably 60% of our team right now are brand new and less than two months of employment and the fact that we’re doing the volumes that we are and we have employees who are happy coming into work, and we have employees who take care of our customers like I said earlier, there’s one thing I never doubt and that’s that my employees are going to not take care of our customers from our drivers on the road to our servers for back a house employees talking to the customer to the takeout rack to being in the parking lot taking out the trash. They’re not gonna like a you know, they’re like, Hey, are you open? Oh yeah, absolutely get go over there you enter and you know, I mean, they’re gonna take care of I never worry about that.

And I know a lot of other restaurant owners, do they, they don’t feel like their staff takes care of their customers or they’re the only ones who do or that maybe only their managers do or whatever the case may be. I really don’t feel like that’s a problem for me.

It is it is a true testament to you and creating a positive work environment, a great culture in your business. And it starts right from the beginning of the story from how your grandparents got into the business to your dad being the hospitality pro, you know, to a detriment, but the fact that matter is, you know, core values are so important and you want to take care of your community when take care of your employees and that shines which are also smart enough to go I’m also us make money at it. And by putting that together your corporate experience with apple with the systems we’ve put it with together and you put together before that you understand there’s a system of process away and those systems are really what makes it easy to manage as the systems that make it that people feel appreciated because they’re not worried about being yelled at all the time when they don’t know what they’re doing and being directed. They can feel confident they know what their job is how to do it, how well it should be done.

More importantly when they feel confident there’s a supervisor type that has their back and it’s going to support them and all the way up the food chain to you by going this is truly who we are and you want to be a part of this journey. You know, we’re gonna stay authentically authentic to our core values and move it forward. And I pulled you on because I wanted people to understand one, the group interview process and how successful that can be. But to to understand that it is not going to work for everybody.

If you did not build a positive work environment. If you do not stay true to your core values. That’s just gonna be an exercise in futility. But if you did, you’ve got the systems in place.

You’ve got the management, your truth, you tell your story, your why and everybody buys in, then it can be a game changer at making sure you can staff properly in an instant versus one interview at a time waiting for the no shows and so on and so forth. Is there anything that I’m missing that in what I summarized or anything you want to leave people with?

I think it’s perfect. One last thing I do want to leave people with is there’s one thing that my dad taught me in this business and that is to treat your customers like family and treat your staff like family. And that was one thing that resonated with me. I’ll never forget this for the car car ride driving into town.

And I asked him I said why do you do what you every day? And he told me that he said because my customers are like my family. And my dad has always done that really well. He knows every person’s name as far as the door.

He knows their husband’s name, Or their wife’s name or their kids. names or were unable to or what they always did, and a little bit about them. And I think through your systems and what you’ve taught me is that a lot of times I would find myself getting so frustrated at something that I haven’t set clear expectations on I haven’t clearly explain what I want. And so I kind of combined those to that one thing that my dad told me how to treat your customers by explaining that to our employees and getting them to buy into that same process.

Whatever you’re passionate about. Whatever you feel like your staff isn’t doing or what they could be doing better, has to be clearly explained how to do it. Have you shown them how to do it and how do you coach them and ensure that they’re doing so I think whatever you want to change in your business if you just follow them simple structure it can make a ton of positive change. And so um, you know, I think I’m kind of a good blend between my dad and my grandparents and learning their lessons, but also being somebody that is always looking to change and grow and learn and to combine all of those things together to make a really substantial impact.

I agree 100% with you and what I love is you know, you have a dream and you take action. Bottom line, you have a dream you take action that you you’ve really made a huge impact not only from that business and your community but for your family for yourself. And I can’t wait to see where your success takes you. I really appreciate you coming on a second time with me and sharing this with everybody.

Because you know as soon as I saw the success you had with it I’m like we need to share this with the world. So I appreciate you very much and I wish nothing but continued success for you, brother.

Thank you.

Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant. Before you go. I want to give you these three thoughts.

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