A little side note. I had this manager running one of my restaurants. He was a good person with great core values. He was up in sales on average 25% per week over the prior year. In the restaurant business, this is huge for an older location. However, when I would go there, the place was always a mess. They weren’t greeting customers, the staff would only spend more time with the customers they knew, while ignoring the ones they didn’t. The bathrooms weren’t stocked and kept clean, food prep sheets weren’t being used. An opening checklist wasn’t being completed. Promotions weren’t communicated to the staff, and several other issues.
My job was to make every store better. Nothing is perfect so there is always something to improve, even if minor. I started putting more focus on this store than on others that weren’t performing nearly as well in sales. The other stores had their systems in place even though their sales didn’t reflect it at the time.
My manager was very upset at this because he knew the numbers of the other stores. He asked me why I was pressuring him so much to do better when he was up more than everyone else?
My answer...He was up in sales despite himself!I helped him understand that with systems in place he could be up in sales even more, or when things start to cycle down (they always do in retail), it would be less of an impact. It took him that conversation to realize things weren’t as good as they could be. He needed to implement consistently the systems that were put in place to help him succeed to his full potential!
So through my quest to start my online business, I didn’t start with any real systems in place and I believed a huge myth…