QSR is about the generalist. The jack of all trades. There is very little room to maneuver at the bottom line. Most bosses believe that teammates should be able to do everything. Because they’ve been under-staffed for years (the pandemic and then the great quit just made it worse sort of) most training consists of “watch me do this” or “it’s easy just…”. Online learning, sure but I don’t have the labor to have someone sit at a computer and then they still don’t know what to do because the training is old, bad, no one can login, whatever the excuse of the day is. There simply is never enough time.
College degrees. You start with a general education. Then as you progress to your third or fourth (or fifth?) year, the courses become more and more specialized to your degree. Broad then specific. Years of learning. With only 54% of QSR employees making the 90-day mark in 2022 (1), we can’t teach the broad and then work to the specific. We need to start small. Start by teaching about the company and their importance in their role, sure. But how to do their job? One task at a time.
Not one day making product. Weeks making it until they’re good enough to train someone else, then we can introduce them to something new. This reduces the choices the teammate must make. This will increase their ability to feel good about the choices they do make. “Just do this”. The beautiful thing is this works at all levels. Remove choices from your store managers. Remove choices from your multi-unit managers. If your business is having issues with Costs of Goods Sold (COGS), or Labor (Work Hours), Speed of Service, Sales, Shrinkage / Theft, Cleanliness, staffing levels, teammate ability, and customer satisfaction, how do you pick where to start? My experience? You don’t. The boss above you will tell you. That boss, not a leader but a boss, is going to change the priority each week, day, or hour, depending on the information in front of them. Now you try and communicate that. Your team starts to talk about competing priorities, shifting goals, lack of follow-up, all because you have 100 plates in the air. Make your life easier by making their lives easier. Make work small. (NOTE: From “my experience” to here is SARCASM! You have to pick your priority. The issue is a “boss” may expect Rome to be built in a day. You’ll need to manage it up; we will discuss that a little later.)
What is the highest impact, lowest cost, quickest time issue you can fix? Just focus on that until it is fixed. Clearly, don’t allow a unit to catch fire and burn to the ground because we’re focused on speed of service not firefighting. We’ll get into what communication systems are later; this is about how you communicate.
Focus on one main issue.
Don’t get any worse in the others.
One focus task each week, day, shift, hour, and customer.
How do you do this?
The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List [2024] • Asana
Guide: Impact and Effort Matrix - Learn Lean Sigma
(1) Take from QSR Magazine article→ [Chipotle's Hourly Turnover Dropped 10 Percent in 2023 - QSR Magazine](https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/chipotles-hourly-turnover-dropped-10-percent-in-2023/#:~:text=Staff employees. 2023: 22 percent; 2022: 23 percent; Senior management.)