Gecko Hospitality Blog » restaurant jobs

Restaurant Performance Index reaches six-year high

Kevin Kalstad — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:56:18 +0000

Restaurant Performance Index reaches six-year high

Posted by Annika Stensson on January 31, 2012 9:37 AM

Fueled by solid same-store sales and traffic results and a bullish outlook among restaurant operators, the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) rose sharply in December.

The RPI stood at 102.2 in December, up 1.6 percent from November and its highest level in nearly six years. In addition, December represented the third time in the last four months that the RPI stood above 100, which signifies expansion in the index of key industry indicators.

“Aided by favorable weather conditions in many parts of the country, a solid majority of restaurant operators reported higher same-store sales and customer traffic levels in December,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the Research and Knowledge Group for the Association. “In addition, restaurant operators are solidly optimistic about sales growth in the months ahead, and their outlook for the economy is at its strongest point in nearly a year.”

“Coupled with the solid November results, the RPI’s impressive December performance bodes well for continued positive industry momentum in the year ahead,” Riehle added. “The ripple effect will likely be felt throughout the supply chain as well, with restaurant operators’ plans for capital spending rising to its highest level in more than four years.”

The RPI consists of two components – the Current Situation Index (measuring current trends) and the Expectations Index (measuring restaurant operators’ six-month outlook) – and tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry.

The Current Situation Index stood at 102.1 in December – up a solid 1.9 percent from November and its strongest level in seven years. December also represented the third time in the last four months that the Current Situation Index stood above 100, which signifies expansion in the current situation indicators.

Building on a solid November performance, operators reported even stronger same-store sales and customer traffic levels. In addition to positive sales and traffic levels, capital spending activity among restaurant operators continues to trend upward.

The Expectations Index stood at 102.3 in December – up 1.3 percent from November and its highest level in a year. In addition, December marked the fourth consecutive month that the Expectations Index stood above 100, which represents a positive outlook among restaurant operators for business conditions in the months ahead.

With higher sales and an improving economy expected in the months ahead, restaurant operators are also beefing up plans for capital spending. Fifty-five percent of restaurant operators plan to make a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion or remodeling in the next six months, up from 47 percent last month and the strongest level in more than four years.

I QUIT! Why Restaurants Managers Gave Their Two-Week Notice in 2011.

Robert Krzak — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:33:30 +0000

Gecko Hospitality, a national recruiting firm dedicated to the restaurant and hospitality industry, is pleased to share the results of its 2011 survey. Over 2500 salaried restaurant and hospitality managers who were placed by Gecko Hospitality, were surveyed and asked a series of questions before beginning employment with their new company. The results not only let corporate hiring managers know why managers are choosing to leave but what factors are influencing their decision. It’s fair to note, management candidates from all sectors within the restaurant industry were included in this survey, consisting of Fine Dining, Casual Theme, Corporate Dining, Fast Casual, and QSR.

While a big push by U.S. congressional leaders in September 2011 led to a firestorm of national press into the potential discrimination by employers against the unemployed, our survey concluded that 18% of the candidates were indeed unemployed at the time they received their job offer. The significance of this number is yet to be determined as this controversial debate is in its infantile stage.

Surprisingly, the salaries offered to fifty-eight percent (58%) of the candidates surveyed who accepted a position with a new company stayed the same while only six percent (6%) of the candidates took a decrease in pay. Thirty-six percent (36%) of the managers Gecko Hospitality placed received increases in compensation.

The graph below illustrates the various dollar amounts in salary a candidate received with their new employer.

Restaurants Mark Strongest Net Positive Sales Since 2007

Kevin Kalstad — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:31:57 +0000

Driven by positive same-store sales and an increasingly optimistic outlook among restaurant operators, the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) rose to its highest level in five months.

The RPI, a monthly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry, stood at 100.6 in November, up 0.6 percent from October. In addition, November represented the second time in the last three months that the RPI stood above 100, which signifies expansion of key industry indicators.

“The November increase in the Restaurant Performance Index was fueled by broad-based gains in both the current situation and forward-looking indicators,” says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the Research and Knowledge Group for the Association.

“Restaurant operators reported their strongest net positive same-store sales results in more than four years, while customer traffic levels also grew in November. Among the forward-looking indicators, restaurant operators’ outlook for both sales growth and the overall economy rose to their highest levels in seven months.”

The RPI is constructed so that the health of the restaurant industry is measured in relation to a steady-state level of 100. Index values above 100 indicate that key industry indicators are in a period of expansion, and index values below 100 represent a period of contraction for key industry indicators.

The RPI consists of two components, the Current Situation Index and the Expectations Index.

The Current Situation Index, which measures current trends in four industry indicators (same-store sales, traffic, labor, and capital expenditures), stood at 100.2 in November, up 0.8 percent from October’s level of 99.5.

November marked the second time in the last three months that the Current Situation Index stood above 100, which signifies expansion in the current situation indicators.

Restaurant operators reported positive same-store sales for the sixth consecutive month in November. Fifty percent of restaurant operators reported a same-store sales gain between November 2010 and November 2011, while just 28 percent reported a same-store sales decline.

This marked the strongest net positive sales performance since August 2007, when 54 percent of operators reported a sales gain and 29 percent reported lower sales.

Restaurant operators also reported stronger customer traffic levels in November. Forty-one percent of restaurant operators reported higher customer traffic levels between November 2010 and November 2011, while 32 percent of operators reported a traffic decline. In October, 37percent of operators reported higher customer traffic, while 39 percent reported a traffic decline.

Capital spending activity among restaurant operators trended upward in recent months. Forty-six percent of operators said they made a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion, or remodeling during the last three months, the highest level in five months.

The Expectations Index, which measures restaurant operators’ six-month outlook for four industry indicators (same-store sales, employees, capital expenditures, and business conditions), stood at 100.9 in November, up 0.4 percent from October and the third consecutive monthly gain.

November also marked the third consecutive month the Expectations Index stood above 100, which represents a positive outlook among restaurant operators for business conditions in the months ahead.

Restaurant operators are more optimistic about sales growth in the months ahead. Forty-one percent of restaurant operators expect to have higher sales in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year), up from 35 percent who reported similarly last month.

In comparison, just 12 percent of restaurant operators expect their sales volume in six months to be lower than it was during the same period in the previous year, down from 15 percent last month.

Restaurant operators are also somewhat more bullish about the overall economy in the coming months. Twenty-seven percent of restaurant operators said they expect economic conditions to improve in six months, up slightly from 26 percent who reported similarly last month.

In comparison, 16 percent of operators said they expect economic conditions to worsen in the next six months, down from 22 percent who reported similarly last month.

Restaurant operators’ outlook for capital spending remains positive. Forty-seven percent of restaurant operators plan to make a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion, or remodeling in the next six months, essentially unchanged from the levels reported in the previous two months.

The RPI is based on the responses to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey, which is fielded monthly among restaurant operators nationwide on a variety of indicators including sales, traffic, labor, and capital expenditures. The full report is available online.

The RPI is released on the last business day of each month, and more detailed data and analysis can be found on Restaurant TrendMapper (www.restaurant.org/trendmapper), the Association’s subscription-based service that provides detailed analysis of restaurant industry trends.

Industry News | December 30, 2011

The Four Worst Hiring Mistakes – The problem might be you

Kevin Kalstad — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:22:10 +0000

The Four Worst Hiring Mistakes

The problem might be you.

By April Joyner | @aprjoy | From the November 2011 issue of Inc. magazine

In this job market, you might expect that hiring new employees would be easy. But many entrepreneurs still struggle to find good people. In a recent survey of Inc. 5000 CEOs, hiring edged out even the economy and government regulation as their top concern, with nearly one-quarter of respondents identifying it as the biggest challenge they had faced in the preceding three months.

To be sure, not every candidate is a rock star. But if you keep turning up dud after dud, the problem may not be the applicant pool. In a quest to find the best workers, entrepreneurs sometimes wind up adopting hiring practices that are actually detrimental to their companies. Here are the four most common problems that afflict interviewers.

Are You a Narcissistic Boss?

Without a deliberate hiring strategy, founders often gravitate toward job candidates who share their personality.

Entrepreneurs’ identities are closely tied to their businesses, so it’s not surprising that companies often absorb many of their founders’ personality traits. A founder-driven culture can be a good thing. Steve Jobs’s design ethos, for instance, helped mold Apple into a successful business. But when founders fill companies with their clones, it can lead to problems.

That’s what happened to Todd Morris. When Morris founded BrickHouse Security, a New York City-based company that sells hidden cameras and other surveillance products online, he was determined to keep the company lean. For the first few months, he worked alone. Over the next two years, he gradually added a handful of employees. Morris picked people who were a lot like himself: driven and independent.

But as the company grew, collaboration became increasingly important. Employees started complaining that there was a toxic work environment. It had become like something out of Lord of the Flies, says Morris. “You couldn’t leave them alone, or they’d be at each other’s throats,” he says.

Morris wasn’t sure how this had happened. With complaints mounting, he hired a consulting firm, PI Worldwide, to help fix the culture problem. The firm administered personality tests to the whole company, including Morris. The results were clear: Certain employees refused to listen to the ideas of others and were clashing with the rest of the group. And those troublemakers were mostly Morris’s early hires. For the sake of the company, Morris had to ask those employees to leave.

Like Morris, many entrepreneurs fail to consider team dynamics when launching their businesses. “The Stanford Project on Emerging Companies,” a study of nearly 200 Silicon Valley start-ups from 1994 to 2002, revealed that most CEOs put little thought into their hiring strategies. As the companies grew and evolved, the CEOs discovered that many employees no longer fit in. “People have the idea that they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it,” says James Baron, who co-directed the study and is now a professor at the Yale School of Management. “They seriously underestimate how costly and difficult that is.”

Without a deliberate hiring strategy, founders often unconsciously gravitate toward job candidates who share their personality traits. “Sometimes we use ourselves as a yardstick,” says Linda A. Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School and the co-author of Being the Boss. But, she says, people tend to overestimate their strengths and downplay their weaknesses. So, by hiring people like themselves, business leaders may inadvertently populate their companies with CEO-level egos.

These days, all job applicants at BrickHouse are required to take personality assessment tests before coming in for an interview. Morris looks for signs that people work well with others, and he is cautious about hiring candidates whose test results indicate big egos. And Morris meets with prospective hires only after they have already received a thumbs-up from a department manager and a couple of potential co-workers.

The changes have already had a noticeable effect. Its 55 employees are getting along, and turnover has dropped 10 percent. And Morris has gained a greater understanding of his own weaknesses. “I had, through narcissism, hired people who were similar to me,” he says. “It created an environment where there was too much conflict and not enough cooperation.”

Treatment:

Be strategic about the company culture. Identify the company’s core values and long-term goals. Hire employees who embody and uphold those values.

Involve key managers and employees in the interview process to ensure that new employees will work as well with their bosses as withtheir peers.

Are You A Perfectionist Boss?

Wonder why it’s so hard to find good people? Maybe you’re asking too much.

What matters more, skills or attitude? Entrepreneurs often say that they value intangible qualities above bullet points on a resumé. But in practice, many are hesitant to hire an employee who hasn’t already held an identical job. And sometimes the quest to find the best candidate becomes a hunt for the person with the longest list of credentials.

Paul Millman has reasons not to fall into this trap. He is the president of Chroma Technology, a Bellows Falls, Vermont-based manufacturer of optical filters for scientific equipment. Before Millman co-founded Chroma, in 1991, he held a string of short-lived sales jobs, including one at a company with which he now competes. Millman had no scientific training, but he absorbed a lot selling optical filters, enough to launch a competing business.

Millman’s views haven’t exactly been reflected in Chroma’s hiring process, however. Chroma is owned and run by its 98 employees. Four of Chroma’s employees serve on a steering committee, which makes most management decisions for the company.

Last fall, when Chroma added some customer service positions, the committee created a job posting requiring applicants to have either a biology degree or at least five years of experience in the optical filters industry. The committee figured that sort of experience would come in handy, given that the new reps would also be charged with helping customers—mostly biologists—select the right optical filters for their needs. But very few people applied. The positions sat empty for six months.

Millman was perplexed by the stringent requirements. “I didn’t have those credentials,” he says. And in the company’s early days, people routinely performed tasks in which they hadn’t been formally trained. One of Millman’s co-founders was even able to develop software for Chroma’s manufacturing equipment, despite never having had a programming job. Plus, says Millman, Chroma already has some scientists on staff.

Every company wants the best employees it can afford, but some businesses have unrealistic expectations. “Sometimes companies expect a combination of Superman and Batman,” says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, the author of Great People Decisions and a partner at the executive recruiting firm Egon Zehnder International. In reality, the best employees are those who buy into the founder’s vision and are willing to do what it takes to achieve it, says Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Those aren’t necessarily the people with the most experience. While studying how successful serial entrepreneurs approach decision making, Sarasvathy found that they placed a greater emphasis on a candidate’s aptitude and commitment than on a candidate’s previous positions.

That is wise because an impressive resumé may give a false impression about a candidate’s potential, says Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Chasing Stars. In research for his book, he found that star employees from various businesses owed much of their success to their companies’ processes and cultures. When these employees moved to other companies that lacked the same infrastructure, most failed to match their past performances.

Ultimately, Chroma did manage to find a new customer service rep with a biology degree. But it also ended up hiring two reps who did not meet the criteria in the job posting, and both of them have worked out just fine.

Treatment:

Decide which qualifications are truly essential and which skills can be learned on the job. An excessive list of requirements may discourage good people from applying.

Develop an on-boarding program. Even the most experienced hires need time to adjust to a new environment.

Are You Overthinking Your Hires?

So what if you make a mistake? Here’s how to beat analysis paralysis when hiring a new employee.

Any job seeker knows from experience how much first impressions matter. In fact, they probably matter too much. A single interview, after all, rarely uncovers enough information to determine whether someone would be a good employee. To compensate for this shortcoming, many entrepreneurs follow the adage to hire slowly, fire fast. But hiring too slowly can be just as counterproductive as making a snap judgment, especially when entrepreneurs tack additional steps onto the interview process without clear objectives in mind.

Gary Jaffe, CEO of The Booksource, a St. Louis-based distributor of schoolbooks with 135 employees, made that mistake last fall when he began looking for a new sales director. The search ended up taking five months—two months longer than the contract period for the recruiter he enlisted. Each candidate was required to go through two personality assessments and about four hours’ worth of interviews, meeting with each of the company’s three managers. After sitting in on each interview, Jaffe privately questioned the candidates he found promising. His impressions of candidates would often start out positive but deteriorate as the interviews dragged on. “In the first two hours, I would have absolutely hired this person,” says Jaffe. “By lunch, he was questionable.”

There are many reasons entrepreneurs prolong the hiring process. For starters, adding employees at a small company is tricky. “Once you insert a new person into the mix, you change the team’s dynamics completely,” says Lanny Goodman, CEO of Management Technologies, an Albuquerque-based firm that trains entrepreneurs in management techniques. Previous hiring mistakes can also cause entrepreneurs to drag their feet: Because they second-guess their opinions, entrepreneurs add extra rounds of interviews and assessments.

That was the case for Jaffe. After firing two of the company’s executives, he had begun to doubt his ability to make good hiring decisions. “It’s so frustrating when you get it wrong,” says Jaffe. “It takes so much effort to fit this person, and you say, ‘Why is this not working?’ ” He was determined to get it right this time.

One of the most promising applicants for the sales director position was referred by a trusted source. Jaffe’s father, Sandy, who founded The Booksource and had been its CEO, had met the candidate in a business mentoring group. But despite the family recommendation, personality tests, and rounds of interviews, Jaffe was still unsure. So he invited the candidate out to dinner. After an evening of polite small talk and Southwestern cuisine, Jaffe finally made an offer.

But even after all that, Jaffe is again trying to fill the position. Less than three weeks after the sales director joined the company, Jaffe fired him.

No matter how many times you interview candidates, there’s no way to accurately predict how well they will perform. Entrepreneurs who drag out the hiring process put off the ultimate test of a candidate: time on the job. Plus, as the months pass and pressure mounts to fill critical positions, entrepreneurs sometimes find themselves making the same hasty decisions they sought to avoid in the first place.

Treatment:

Set clear objectives for each stage of the interview process. Make sure follow-up interviews aren’t rehashing the same discussions from previous meetings.

Limit the number of people evaluating candidates. It’s wise to seek a second opinion, but involving more than two or three other managers can make it difficult to get a clear assessment.

Trust your instincts. As the hiring process drags on, you are more likely to ignore red flags.

How to Make Hiring Less Frantic

Recruiting is like selling: You need to develop a pipeline and build relationships. Here’s how.

At some companies, new employees are emergency purchases. With limited time and funds, entrepreneurs seek employees only when it’s absolutely necessary for their company’s continued growth. Then they frantically attempt to fill the positions.

Recently, that became an issue for Nick Bock. In the early years of his company, Five Nines Technology Group, an IT consulting firm in Lincoln, Nebraska, Bock didn’t have to worry about hiring. He added only a handful of positions a year. And because Five Nines had quickly earned a strong local reputation, the office received a steady stream of resumés from computer engineers, even when there were no jobs to fill.

But lately Bock has struggled. Eighteen months ago, after taking on several new clients, Five Nines had to more than double its head count, from 23 to 47 employees. Bock hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to staff up. After quickly tapping out his leads, Bock scrambled to find suitable candidates. Meanwhile, his team of engineers was putting in extra-long days to handle all the new work. One person quit. Bock tried to smooth things over by giving out bonuses.

Recruiting is a lot like sales. It involves developing a pipeline and building relationships. Bock realizes that now and has made recruiting a priority.

He schedules meetings with promising engineers even when Five Nines doesn’t have any openings. And when there is a vacancy, Bock publicizes it on job boards and the company’s Facebook and Twitter pages. He also asks employees to spread the word. Bock personally reviews each job listing, occasionally recommending changes to better attract the attention of skilled candidates. He also tries to scoop up talent at the earliest opportunity. If a candidate seems like a good fit, he will extend a job offer before finishing the round of interviews.

Bock’s new approach has already had a big effect on Five Nines. The company now hires at least one employee every six weeks. Still, Bock thinks he could do more to streamline the hiring process. “I would love to always have one or two people queued up and ready to go,” says Bock. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get to that, but if you don’t have something you’re striving for, it’s easy to slack off.”

Treatment:

Make recruiting an ongoing process. Maintain a list of prospective hires, even if there are no immediate openings.

Create an employee referral program. Also tap social networks, professional organizations, industry trade shows, and local universities.

Stay in contact with talented prospects through occasional lunch dates or meetings.

Jobless rate drops to 8.6 percent, hiring picks up

Kevin Kalstad — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:38:40 +0000

Jobless rate drops to 8.6 percent, hiring picks up

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The unemployment rate fell to a 2-1/2 year low of 8.6 percent in November and companies stepped up hiring, further evidence the economic recovery was gaining momentum.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 120,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, in line with economists’ expectations for a gain of 122,000.

The relative strength of the report was also bolstered by revisions to the employment counts for September and October to show 72,000 more jobs created than previously reported.

While part of the decline in the unemployment rate from 9.0 percent in October was due to people leaving the labor force, the household survey from which the jobless rate is derived also showed solid gains in employment

The unemployment rate had been expected to hold at 9 percent. It last dropped by 0.4 percentage point in January.

“The really good news is that employment has grown for four months running — in large steps. There was a solid increase in private employment. Everything there looks steady, but clearly healthy and positive,” said Pierre Ellis, a senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.

However, retail accounted for more than a third all new private sector jobs in November.

U.S. stock index futures added gains after the report, while Treasury debt prices briefly extended losses and interest rate futures held steady. The dollar extended gains versus the yen.

The report is unlikely to take much pressure off President Barack Obama, whose economic stewardship will face the judgment of voters next November. The outlook for the U.S. economy is also being threatened by Europe’s deepening financial crisis.

The report could temper the appetite among some Federal Reserve officials to ease monetary policy further.

In forecasts released earlier this month, the Fed said the jobless rate would likely average 9 percent to 9.1 percent in the fourth quarter. It did not expect it to drop to an 8.5 percent to 8.7 percent range until late next year.

Data ranging from manufacturing to retail sales suggest the growth pace could top 3 percent in the fourth quarter, in contrast to China, where growth is cooling and the euro zone, which many economists believe is already in recession.

While the economy’s growth pace appears to have accelerated from the third quarter’s 2 percent annual rate, unemployment remains too high.

At the same time, U.S. fiscal policy is set to tighten in the new year, even if lawmakers extend a payroll tax cut.

Taken together, some analysts believe the headwinds facing the U.S. economy will lead the Fed to ease monetary policy further by buying more bonds.

“We still have a very long way to go. I would favor the Fed going for a third round of quantitative easing,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “It’s the only powerful tool left, even though it’s losing some of its bang.”

Analysts say the economy needs to create at least 125,000 jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate steady.

But there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

While the government’s survey of employers has shown a still tepid pace of job growth, its separate poll of households that is used to calculate the unemployment rate has shown robust jobs gains for four straight month.

At the same time, a broad measure of unemployment that includes people who want to work but have given up looking for jobs and those working only part time for economic reasons dropped to a 2-1/2 year low of 15.6 percent in November from 16.2 percent in October.

PRIVATE SECTOR SHOULDERS BURDEN

All the increase in nonfarm payrolls in November again came from the private sector, where employment rose 140,000 after increasing 117,000 in October.

Government employment fell by 20,000. Public payrolls have dropped in 10 of the past 11 months as state and local governments have tightened their belts.

Outside of government, job gains were almost across the board, with retail surging 49,800.

Elsewhere, construction payrolls fell 12,000 after losing 15,000 jobs in October. Factory jobs edged up 2,000, with most of the gains coming from automakers.

Health care and social assistance hiring rose 18,700 after adding 30,300 job in October. Temporary hiring — seen as a harbinger for future hiring – increased 22,300 after adding 15,800 jobs last month.

The average work week was unchanged at 34.3 hours, with hourly earnings falling two cents.

5 Tips To Fast Track Your Restaurant Career

Robert Krzak — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:38:40 +0000

Okay, so for the past three years you finally got the courage to take that leap of faith and put your resume out there and go after the job of your dreams. Restaurants are starting to expand once more and you figure ‘now is the time’ (and in my professional opinion your opportunities couldn’t be more plentiful). You do your homework and target the three restaurant companies as your next ‘home away from home’ and after the two to three week courtship, you accept the best offer, throw in your two week notice and take a weeks vacation to get energized for the next chapter of your life. Sound too familiar?

While you’re sipping on your Pina Colada on the warm beaches off of some exotic Caribbean island, now’s the time to start thinking and ask yourself “how do I get to the next level of my career”. Let’s face it; unless you have a crystal ball, that actually works, there is no textbook answer that any professional can offer because every restaurant operation has their own set of rules, culture and beliefs. However, there is one constant variable that is universal no matter what segment of the restaurant or hospitality industry you’re in and that’s people, people, and people. A successful manager knows how to identify, relate and lead multiple groups of people from various backgrounds and genders to a common goal of customer satisfaction. Restaurant professionals need to remember that perception IS reality in the eyes of consumers and your employees play a large role in your success as a manager.

If you’re looking to fast track your restaurant career you may want to consider integrating these 5 tips:

1. Share Your Career Path With Your Company. There’s a saying in business that, “If you don’t promote yourself, nobody else will.” Don’t be reserve and keep your goals to yourself when it comes to your desire to move up the company ladder. Share your goals with your immediate supervisor and ask them if they’re attainable. Get your immediate supervisor to “buy in” to your goals and set reasonable time limits to have them completed. By having this “buy in” with your company, you’re demonstrating that not only can you accomplish the goals set by the company, but those that you have set for yourself.

2. Help As Many People As You Can. People develop relationships with those around them when you offer help. The more people you help in attaining their goals, you’ll find that your goals get a lot easier to accomplish. Why? Not only are you investing in the future to those you assist but karma seems to make its way full circle.

3. Be Consistent. As restaurant managers, we make hundreds of decisions each week that, whether good or bad, decide various outcomes. No one person keeps a mental tally of your impartiality, fairness and consistency than your employees and the professionals you surround yourself. Restaurant operations, as well as its employees, are based around routines because each routine is meant to be consistent. From how an employee is counseled on excessive tardiness to loading the dishwasher, each company sets its standards for each routine that must be followed and employees need to be able to depend on its management staff to be consistent.

4. Hire and Retain Quality Employees. Bottom line, quality employees inspire and motivate others by their example and enthusiasm. Good employees will inspire others directly and indirectly toward higher achievement and those around them feel more confident because of that higher level of competency. As hiring quality employee’s accounts for fifty percent of the equation, keeping those superstars happy account for the other fifty. What managers fail to realize is the smallest gestures mean a lot and don’t cost much to keep employees happy. Notoriety for a job well done in the presence of and surrounded by fellow employees is gratification that employees crave. Employees want attention and recognition and are hungry for any and all types of acknowledgement of their value.

5. Educate and Train Constantly. Continuing to improve your employees to become more educated within additional areas of your restaurant operations so you can be more effective with them is an area that many managers do not take enough advantage. Training not only maximizes overall efficiency of restaurant operations but also encourages a culture of constant progression and learning in a dynamic industry. A quality-training program not only assures that all employees have the tools they need to succeed but reduces the turnover rate, which subsequently increases the ROI for each employee. Your commitment to the art of People Development assures you of a rewarding career within the restaurant and hospitality industry.

As mentioned earlier, there is no one silver bullet that can propel a manager from one level to the next but if you look closely, the restaurant industry revolves around two words; passion and people. If you’ve been in the restaurant business for as very long as I have, the word passion gets thrown around so loosely like rice at a wedding. If you take into account the amount of hours a company demands of its restaurant managers for the salaries being offered, accompanied by the strain this industry places on ones personal life, others would call it extreme lunacy while we in the restaurant industry call it passion. How quickly you rise through the ranks is not determined in the level of passion that you possess but the passion that is bestowed upon, filtered and carried on through your employees.

Gecko Hospitality President to Lead NAPS Board

admin — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:46:18 +0000

Gecko Hospitality President to Lead NAPS Board
Recruitment Industry Leader Promises to Focus on Cutting Edge Education

Downers Grove, IL – Gecko Hospitality President, Robert Krzak, has been appointed Chairman of the Board for the National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS). “It’s a real honor for me to be appointed to this organization, because it represents the foundation of education for the staffing and recruiting industry,” says Robert.

NAPS represents personnel services professionals in the legislative arena, guides the profession on ethics and assists with industry self-regulation. “NAPS also has the mission of increasing awareness of the value of personnel services, educating the industry on best practices and creating high professional standards, so there’s synergy with Gecko’s approach to the industry,” he adds.

The largest restaurant recruiter in the US and a major player in the hotel recruitment sector, Gecko Hospitality has been a member of NAPS for more than seven years. The company is widely recognized for innovation and leadership in the hospitality industry, thanks to its unique approach to hospitality recruitment:

“To us, the hospitality industry is not just a business; we have a real passion for it,” comments Robert, adding: “That’s evident in the way we operate. We partner with industry leading restaurants, hotels, resorts, clubs and casinos to provide them with the management staff they can’t get on their own. We handpick the best and most qualified candidates with the highest integrity because our clients expect no less.”

One of the best ways for personnel services and recruitment professionals to serve their industries is to keep their skills up to date. That’s why the role of NAPS in providing targeted continuing professional education and certification of its members is so crucial, comments Robert. As the new chair of NAPS, he’s committed to fostering this part of the organization’s mission: “Under my leadership, NAPS will continue to provide cutting edge educational materials and share the latest technological resources for our members to better enhance their success.”

About Gecko Hospitality
Based in Downers Grove, Illinois, Gecko Hospitality is the largest hospitality recruiter in the US. The firm partners with top restaurants, hotels and casinos to help them identify the best salaried management personnel for their properties. Gecko has 37 regional offices and a team of more than 80 hospitality recruiters covering all 50 states and Canada. For more information, please visit www.geckohospitality.com

Why smart CEOs hire for niceness

Kevin Kalstad — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:29:58 +0000

Job Interviews Lead With 2 Big Questions

CORNER OFFICE: ANDY LANSING By ADAM BRYANT Published: August 27, 2011 The New York Times

This interview with Andy Lansing, president and chief executive of Levy Restaurants, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. You rose to the C.E.O. position from the legal side. How did that come about?

A. I started, just because it was my nature, poking my nose into other areas. I would say to people, why do we do it that way in purchasing, or why do we do it that way in human resources? And Larry Levy, our founder, would say to me, “Just go fix it if you want. Go work with it.” So I found myself collaborating with other people who didn’t report to me.

Q. How did you do that without people getting their backs up?

A. Part of it is the nature of our company, which is sort of this entrepreneurial family where people really didn’t live in silos. Even though there’s a head of human resources and a head of purchasing, there’s more of a sense of openness. We all did everything, we all worked hard, and I would approach people in a nonthreatening way.

I sort of did my best Columbo act, where I’d come in and say, “I don’t know, I don’t quite get it.” Maybe things made perfect sense to everyone else, but not growing up in the business gave me an advantage because I could say, “I don’t understand; will you explain it to me?”

I also learned early on about a trait of good leaders, which is that I may have the idea, but I’m going to make you think that you came up with the idea and give you credit for it at the end of the day. So it’s sort of getting people to do things without letting them know what hit them, and giving them credit for it.

Q. And how did you learn to do that?

A. I don’t know. What I can tell you is that early on I wasn’t crazy about the concept of telling people what to do and being a boss. The power of being a boss is an awesome responsibility, and I feared it a bit when I first became a boss.

I figured out that I didn’t want people to fear me and do things because of who I was. People have personal power or they have positional power. Positional power means I have power over you because I’m your boss — “I’m very important, I’m the C.E.O.” You should fear me because of who I am. And then there’s personal power, which is what’s inside of you. I always say there are people in our company who are dishwashers who have more personal power than someone who’s a manager because they have that quality.

So what I figured out early on is that being a manager doesn’t equal being a leader. You can have the title of manager and that’ll give you the right to walk around and spin keys on your finger or talk in a walkie-talkie or look and act important, but that’s not what gives you power.

What I figured out is that what gives you power is how you treat people and how you lead. I remember when the first secretary I had at a law firm would introduce me to someone and say, “I want you to meet my boss.” To this day it makes my skin crawl. I’d say, “I’m not her boss; we work together.”

Q. Can you elaborate on the quality you’re describing?

A. Leaders are the people you want with you when all hell is breaking loose. They have the knowledge about how to treat people with respect and dignity and how to just be a natural leader. There are those great debates — are leaders born or are they made? — and I think there are people who are just born with that natural ability that makes people want to follow them. I think some people are born with something that makes people gravitate towards them and want to work with them. I’m not saying it can’t be honed, but I don’t think you can teach someone that. I think it’s in their DNA.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. How do you do it? What do you look for?

A. I have a pretty nontraditional approach to hiring. I hire for two traits — I hire for nice and I hire for passion.

If you sit down with me, no matter how senior you are in the company or the position you’re applying for, my first question to you is going to be, are you nice? And the reactions are priceless. There’s usually a long pause, like they’re waiting for me to smile or they’re waiting for Ashton Kutcher to come out and say, “You’re being punked.” Because who asks that question? And then I say, “No, seriously, are you nice?”

Q. What do people say?

A. It’s a question that you don’t prepare for and you’re not used to answering. And quite honestly, who is ever going to say no — nobody is. So I let them talk for a little bit about it as they try to figure out why I am asking that question. Then I stop them and I say, let me tell you why I’m asking that. The reason is that the most important thing to being successful at this company is to be nice. And if you’re not nice, this is the wrong company for you. It doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you, it just means that our cultures don’t align, and there are great places out there for you, but this is the wrong one.

Because if you get in this company and you’re not nice, I’m going to get you. It may be a day, it may be a week, it may be a year, but you will not have success at this company long term if you’re not nice.

Then I say, I know you’re not going to tell me that you’re not nice and you probably are very nice. But when you’re reflecting on the interview afterwards and whether you want to pursue this after our conversation, if you think that this nice thing is kind of “that’s not me and why do they care about that, they should only care about if I can do the job,” then pull yourself out of it. No harm, no foul. They won’t say it, but I’ve had more than one person not come back or not pursue the job.

Q. Where did you get the idea to do that?

A. It was probably from Larry Levy, talking about the importance of being nice, and it kind of just evolved as a company philosophy that we only hire nice people. It’s probably the first line in every one of our training manuals — we only hire nice people. And I realized a bit selfishly, too, that I only want to work with nice people. I don’t want to work with jerks. Life’s too short. I also knew intuitively that if you have a company of nice people in a service business, in a hospitality business, that’s going to be a good thing.

Q. And the passion question?

A. Then I say, “What are you passionate about in your life? What does passion mean to you?” And I’m looking not necessarily for the magic answer, but I love it when I hear that someone has fire in the belly. And then I say, you have got to be passionate about this company and the job if you come to work here. If you’re not, you’re going to be standing there, people are going to be driving by at 90 miles an hour and you’re going to say, “Whoa, what’s going on?” So again, ask yourself whether this is just a job to you; if it’s just a job, it’s the wrong place. If it’s just a step onto another career, it’s probably the wrong place. And then we talk about how the two biggest predictors of success in our company are those two traits.

If you give me someone who’s nice and who’s passionate, I can teach them everything else. I don’t care what school you went to, I don’t care where you worked before. If you give me someone with those two traits, they will nine out of 10 times be a great success in the company.

Q. What else is unusual about your culture?

A. I’m not a fireside-chat kind of guy, doing company updates that are very formal. So we have a really fun thing called “On the Road With Andy,” where I’ll take my flipcam with me whenever I go to one of our locations and we’ll do a video, either about a great employee we want to highlight or about an incredible food item they’re doing at a particular location that I want the rest of the company to see. It’s real tongue in cheek and fun and we post those for the whole company to see.

We just did a really neat feature where the whole company participated in a contest. We called it March Madness. Everyone’s always saying, “Andy, we want you to come to our location, we have something to show you.” So all 100 locations submitted a one-minute video of why I should come to their location, what they want to show us. And the whole company used brackets, like March Madness, with two videos that they were voting on online. One location got some pro athletes to say, “Come on Andy, you’ve got to come here and see this.” Some had mascots doing things. To me it’s about those kinds of fun, human things that help set the culture.

Q. Can you elaborate on what you said about not being a fireside-chat kind of guy?

A. I don’t like the idea of being a corporate C.E.O. with formal messages. I don’t like the town hall where you have to line up with a microphone. It’s not who I am. So the more we make it casual and the more we use humor, the better. You don’t have to be a comedian, but humor to me is the world’s best tonic. I always say that the shortest distance between two people is humor. I didn’t make that up, people have said that before, but it’s totally true. We work our tails off in the hospitality business, but if you can do it and laugh and have a good time doing it, it’s really special.

One Trait that Makes a Great CEO-and Place to Work

Kevin Kalstad — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:09:58 +0000

One Trait that Makes a Great CEO-and Place to Work

By John Baldoni | August 3, 2011

What makes a great CEO? That question came to mind recently when I read the news that Chief Executive magazine had named Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company its 2011 CEO of the Year. It’s easy to understand why Mulally was chosen. After all, he presided over one of the more remarkable corporate turnarounds in recent memory.

But a look at the magazine’s criteria gives some insight into what makes a great CEO truly great. Some of the criteria was typical: the honoree had to show evidence of looking ahead, driving value, focusing on people, fostering corporate citizenship and sustaining business results.

But one factor was unusual: the winner had to maintain a “stable, consistent ‘moral landscape.’”

Moral landscape?

Tom Saporito, CEO of RHR International, who helped develop the selection criteria, defined moral landscape as “courage, integrity, reputation and having a coherent and high purpose” embedded in the corporate culture, due in part to the CEO’s example.

From day one on the job in September 2006 when Mulally took the reins of a faltering Ford, he has pushed hard to drive purpose throughout the company. It was no easy feat; other CEOs had tried and failed, but Mulally made it clear through the development of One Ford that the company had to become leaner and more focused on developing products that were uniquely Ford.

Mulally himself preaches this but, and stuck his neck out on the line for, notably by taking out a $20 billion-plus line of credit to ensure the transformation. This line ensured that Ford would not need to take advantage of federal bailout funds, nor would it have to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying its creditors. Something that its Detroit competitors GM and Chrysler both did. I would call Ford’s behavior in this instance highly moral.

There is another side to sense of purpose that Mulally talks about extensively: you create greater levels of buy-in when people know what you stand for and are committed to doing. Ford’s pride of purpose took a beating in the early part of the decade when it suffered year after year of losses. But now that it’s firmly in the black and has paid all but $3 billion of the $23 billion it borrowed, the pride is back. Not because the books are balanced but because Ford is making and selling products that consumers in North America, Europe and South America want and will pay a premium for.

The drive for purpose emanates from the leadership team, but as I have discovered in research conducted for a forthcoming book, employees are hungry for it. Purpose, as supported by my research, drives clarity because it enables people to see the big picture. Even better they see themselves painting part of that picture.

Savvy leaders trade on this quest for purpose as a means of giving the organization sharper focus. When people know what it expected of them, they can deliver more readily. And if they believe in the purpose they feel part of something greater than themselves.

The coda to RHR’s description of “moral landscape” is a leader who puts “the interest of the organization above personal gain.” That’s a foundation of servant leadership; leaders do what the organization needs doing. Easy to do when times are good, but hard when times are tough.

But it is this orientation toward others that drives organizational purpose. Employees want to follow their leader; they believe in what he or she stands for. If they sense the leadership team is only out for self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement the underpinning of purpose erodes.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who works for a living. They know instinctively if the boss has their back or they have the boss. If there is mutual support, people are engaged. If something is missing, no amount of preaching about purpose will do anything. Leaders need to walk the talk.

NFL ends lockout, restaurants relieved

Larry Friedkin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:22:29 +0000

Beef O’Brady’s, Buffalo Wild Wings expect to see sales return
July 25, 2011 | By Alan Snel

Restaurants that rely on NFL Sundays for an important chunk of their sales were celebrating Monday when news broke that the National Football League players will sign a labor settlement with team owners to end the 132-day owners lockout.
“It’s an absolute relief,” said Aaron Carricato, owner of two Beef O’ Brady’s units in Tampa. “The NFL season for us is by far our busiest season.”
Carricato said that if the lockout scrubbed the 2011 NFL season, his Sunday restaurant sales would plummet 40 percent. Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, a Tampa, Fla.-based family sports pub chain, has 217 sites in 23 states.
“Without football it would have made a humongous difference,” he said. “We love 25 weeks of football and crave it the other 27 weeks.”
For the owners of five Beef ‘O’ Brady’s restaurants in Florida’s Panhandle and Mississippi, the end of the lockout means they won’t have to continue a free beer promotion that was introduced in April when the labor stoppage was about 35 days old.
The five restaurants gave away free Bud Light to customers starting at 4 p.m. on each day of the lockout. Those five units added a minute every day for the free beer for each day that there was no labor agreement. For example, on Day 40 of the lockout, customers were given free beer for 40 minutes starting at 4 p.m.
Another chain that reached out to its customers during the lockout was Minneapolis-based Buffalo Wild Wings. The 740-plus-unit casual-dining chain introduced TV spots during the NCAA college basketball tournament games asking viewers to help “save our season” by visiting Buffalo Wild Wings’ Facebook page and adding their names to an online petition.
“The end of the NFL lockout is a huge help for us,” said Chris Kulig, general manager of a Buffalo Wild Wings store in a suburban community outside of Tampa. “That’s a primary source for income on the weekends.”
Kulig said his restaurant has an NFL promotion called, “Countdown to NFL Fridays,” when the restaurant gives away free T-shirts, toy footballs and gift certificates to drive traffic for NFL Sundays.
“It helps people get excited about the season. To know the NFL is coming back is great,” Kulig said. “Now that we have a season, people can get interested in NFL fantasy leagues.”
He noted that Sunday sales increase 10-15 percent during football season.
Previously, NRN reported that Stephen Anderson of Miller Tabak & Co. estimated that 10 percent of Buffalo Wild Wings’ sales are tied to NFL broadcasts, and David Tarantino of Robert W. Baird & Co. wrote that cancelled NFL games could erode the brand’s average weekly sales by as much as 15 percent during the season.
Buffalo Wild Wings plans to hold a conference call to discuss its second-quarter earnings report Tuesday
Brand columnist Denise Lee Yohn, who writes on the restaurant industry, compared the NFL to an “ecosystem” that gives economic life to communities:
“Professional sports are interwoven into everyday life, including restaurants,” Yohn said. “When a lockout happens, it shows how fragile the ecosystem is.”