Building Winning Cultures in Your Kitchens
One of my Sous Chefs and I used to relate building a kitchen team to the process of building a championship NHL team. There are a ton of similarities!
Cooking in a commercial restaurant is a team sport; everyone loves to win and be a part of a winning team! No bill times over 15 minutes during that rush? Put it in the win column. Food cost came in under target this week? Chalk up another 'W'. Celebrate the wins with your team publicly and proudly! They're huge accomplishments.
Morale and culture is one of the greatest intangibles in sport. You can watch a demoralized team, hockey or kitchen, start to fall apart when momentum shifts. But all it can take is a few good shifts and an injection of belief to help turn the tide!
Anyone who has watched hockey for awhile also knows that teams that win consistently have depth. That is to say, that for every position occupied there is someone else that knows it like the back of their hand, ready to step in at the drop of a hat. This doesn't just happen - it's the result of a lot of hard work and training.
To accomplish this, you need to have strong, solid leadership to provide guidance and direction, a few veteran anchors for stability , and a supporting cast of junior apprentices.
What's also important to note is that winning cultures can't be bought or imported. Culture isn't a problem you can just throw money at and hope it turns amazing.
Just like a hockey team, restaurants also have a "salary cap" to contend with. There is a maximum amount they can afford to pay and retain staff. That strong leadership? That's most likely a salaried position. Those key veteran anchors we mentioned? They're gonna cost you more than your average cooks. You're going to need to rely on that depth, utilizing your supporting (and probably less expensive) cooks and training systems!
Where do we get started?
Winning cultures are created with a mix of structure, support and opportunity.
- Structure, so that members of the team know what's expected of them and they are provided a clear path towards personal and professional advancement.
- Support, so that members of the team aren't afraid of making mistakes, and instead view them as learning opportunities.
- Opportunity, to grow and develop into leaders within the team and organization. Provide ongoing feedback, coaching and development opportunities to keep staff actively engaged in the success of the restaurant!
Provide a structured training foundation
No different than playing hockey, everyone on the team has a job to do! Make those jobs easier by clearly explaining what they look like and the tasks they are comprised of.
At the very least, you should offer some semblance of the following:
- Unique job descriptions for each position (1st Cook, 2nd Cook, Sous Chef, Head Chef).
- These should detail the expected daily/weekly duties for the position in clear terms.
- A detailed Training Guide for each position.
- Each new staff member should undergo identical, measurable and recorded training days.
- E.g.:
- Day 1 consists of Orientation, Store Walk-Through, Location of Fire Extinguishers, Safety Exits, etc.,
- Day 2 consists of Line Training for 4 hours, Prep Training for 2 hours, etc.
- Set expecations and established follow up actions
- Is someone is struggling with a certain aspect of a position? Tell them, and document a plan with a timeline to support the follow-up training.
- What happens when that timeline is surpassed? Be open and honest.
Providing staff with consistent training ensures that all new hires entering the kitchen have the knowledge and information necessary to succeed in the position. It's easy to do a good job when you know what success looks like!
Regardless of the initial knowledge of new staff, with the right training systems you'll either turn them into productive team members or figure out that they're not the right fit. Time for the trading block!
Support the team
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Emotionally
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Praise in public, discipline in private! It's important to always take note of the little things that the team is doing. Did someone on the team go above and beyond to help? Perhaps they stocked another team member's station without asking, or they broke down the cardboard and took it out to the recycling, just because.
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Make a positive example out of them!
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Let everyone on the team know what they did and why it's so amazing! Make them something special for their staff meal as a way of saying "thank-you".
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One of my favourite things to do in the middle of a rush is to stop the entire line to draw attention to the cook working dish with the near-empty counter. "Great job in there! You're doing amazing! Keep it up!" from the entire team goes a long way when you're staring down the barrel of a 10-hour shift, and the prospect of being off work at 2:30 AM.
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With proper tools & equipment
- Waging battle in a kitchen day-after-day takes it toll on equipment. Communicate with your staff to make sure they have everything they need to do the job effectively!
- Keep kitchen equipment cleaned and maintained. Nothing is more demoralizing than working in a dirty kitchen or one with broken equipment.
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Financially
- Come up with a raise and/or bonus structure that's attached to job-specific duties, not length of time worked.
- E.g.:, Initial wage is $20 per hour, but that increases to $21.50 per hour when they complete the "Ordering" Training Guide you setup. You have an extra cook that can place orders if someone calls in sick, they get compensated for the extra effort. It's a win-win!
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Professionally
- Conduct structured reviews that celebrate the wins from each team member but also provide a training path for them to advance. Perhaps there is no Sous Chef job position open right now, but that could change! Offer the training and have multiple people ready to step up should the need arise.
Opportunities for growth
I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behaviour never lies.
Nobody wants to join a team without any options for learning or advancement, whether that be professionally or personally. It's the kitchen equivalent of permanently being on the 'taxi squad' for a hockey team! After awhile with no advancements it can get demoralizing.
How do you keep staff motivated? Keep them engaged and part of the process!
- Have a Chef or Sous that is great at understanding the Food Cost?
- Awesome! Show them how to read a P&L statement and include them monthly.
- Set goals with them and task them with explaining any variances
- Have a cook that normally only works prep?
- Train them how to interpret a Sales Mix Analysis and use that information to update par levels.
- Teach them how to work a station on the line when it's slower.
- Someone great with food but horrible with computers?
- Purchase them a course on Excel or other office related software via an online platform, such as Udemy.
Investing into the personal and professional growth of your team shows your commitment to them. Plus, the more items you train multiple staff members on, the more you increase the overall "depth" of your team.
Someone call in sick? No problem. You already have someone waiting in the wings!
Assembling your team
Much like a professional hockey team, you'll probably always be looking for the right combination of talent and training. Some people have great seasons and then drop-off. Others are late-bloomers and gradually become more effective as they get more comfortable on the team. Cooks get traded from one restaurant to the other, sometimes for nothing else than needing a change of scenery.
Sometimes it's about having the right mix of "line chemistry", or having the right staff members work together on particular shifts. Watch how your team works together and what skills compliment others, then schedule accordingly!
If you foster a culture that rewards people for supporting the team and organization, you'll begin to attract and retain higher quality team members. Remain consistent in your messaging, standardize your training, and reward hard work, dedication, and above all else, respect for the team.
At the end of the day it's important for everyone on the team to know that we're all in it together. Just like the NHL, winning and losing is done as a unit. Everyone has a position to play, and no position is more important than the other.
We win together, we lose together, we grow stronger together.