We are thrilled to have the team at Mercatto in the Schedulefly Family. We recently asked their GM, Melanie, exactly why she choose to use our online restaurant staff scheduling software at their restaurant - and what they did before Schedulefly. Here is what she sent back. It is awesome and really helps shed some light on the areas that we are helping restaurants.
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Hi Wil - Glad to be on board! I'm actually a repeat Schedulefly customer, so there is really no before Schedulefly for me in my current position. I started using Schedulefly at the Drake Hotel (as the Director of Food and Beverage) in January of last year. By the second week of using Schedulefly, the paper schedule and employee bulletin board were history. When I assumed the General Manager position at Mercatto College, signing up for Schedulefly was one of my first initiatives, I could not imagine scheduling or communicating with the staff any other way after my Drake experience. It had reduced time spent making the schedule by 75% and virtually eliminated all time spent managing the schedule (shift trades, staff calling in sick, staff calling in for their schedule, time off requests, cutting staff, adding staff, changing start times, schedule costing, forecasting). At the Drake, with a FOH team of 100+, between creating a weekly schedule of 300+ shifts and managing the schedule day to day, the total manager hours spents was easily 35+ hours a week, so having Schedulefly on board was almost like having an additional manager on board. Add the time saved not having to repeat key information day in day out to a staff that is 40% part-time and work a range of shifts over a 24 hour operating period and you have a much less frazzled management team.
At Mercatto, the staff is much smaller (20 FOH staff and 80 shifts), but the communication and training benefits make it an invaluable resource. Communication is the key to success in any restaurant and, leading to better customer service from a well informed staff, clarity of expectations and an increased sense of inclusiveness and teamwork. We use schedule fly to broadcast the notes from daily briefings so everyone knows what to expect coming in for their shift, to broadcast new specials, provide important training information, update contest results, share guest reviews, highlight important personal achievements outside work and to let staff promote their outside interest to other staff. Using the Flynotes is an effective way to manage the never ending to dos for managers and provides great management insight into the business as well as providing an instant read on labour costs versus forecasted business levels to keep labor optimized for bottom line performance. In addition, the employee notes are a great way to keep track of performance issues and highlights, all maintained in one convenient, accessible location.
There were a number of other on-line scheduling options available before deciding on Schedulefly with more or less bells and whistles, but ultimately the decision came down to the most important user: the staff. Schedulefly provides an intuitive, fun and user friendly interface that encourages interactivity. At both the Drake and Mercatto, I've found that at least 50% of the staff logs in once a day or more another 25% logs in at least once every two days. Bells and whistles are meaningless if the staff doesn't actively use the product.
Mercatto College Street is the newest of the three Mercatto restaurants in downtown Toronto, owned by brothers Jack and Domenic Scarangella. Mercatto serves simple and fresh Italian cuisine paired with a Wine Spectator Award winning all Italian wine list. A fourth store is opening soon in the Eaton Centre this fall!
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This series profiles restaurants that are creating a buzz in their cities and towns. With each Awesome Indie we profile, we’ll check in with owner (“The Head Honcho”), the GM (“The Fearless Leader”), and an employee who personifies their brand (“The Evangelist”), to pick their brains and find out what they’re doing that makes their restaurant hum.
First up - Joe’s Real BBQ, a phenomenal, popular, well loved restaurant in Gilbert, AZ. They’ve been in business for 12.5 years, and their employee turnover rate for hourly employees was about 28% last year, despite losing more college-bound high school seniors than usual. Management turnover was 0%. And they are doing great business year after year out in Gilbert!
The Head Honcho Tad Peelen, one of three owners. Tad co-owns the restaurant with partners Tim Peelen and Joe Johnston and is the operating partner you will typically find at the restaurant.
Why is Joe’s Real BBQ successful? Because we really only care about three things. Our employees all wear hats that say “clean, delicious, friendly” for a reason. When I sit down with my staff, we only talk about 3 things. When we hire customer service staff, we really only care whether they are friendly or not. When we create a new dish, we only focus on how delicious it might be. Our menu hasn’t changed much since 1998. The environment here is welcoming, and family-friendly. Diners are greeted by the same people every time they come. Our lunch customers have been rung up by the same cashier for almost 12 years. There is a 1948 John Deere tractor in the dining room, and a 70-foot long mural celebrating our town’s agricultural heritage. It’s the kind of place where everyone feels welcomed, and everyone can be comfortable. We are not a dive (clean is important in our business), but we’re far from pretentious.
How do people find out about Joe's? Mostly from their friends and neighbors. We have an embarrassingly low marketing budget, and usually come in under budget. We employ social media. We have met hundreds, probably many hundreds, of our customers via social media and forged lasting relationships with them. We have never paid for search engine placements, but do fare rather well when people start looking around the web for a place to eat in the phoenix area. We encourage people to write about their visit on yelp, urban spoon, and other review sites. We have great relationships with the local media – traditional and digital. We have very very loyal fans. We get quite a bit of publicity for giving everyone a free meal on their birthday. And we have an animated neon sign sticking up about 18 feet in the air!
Why is your turnover rate so low? While I’d like to think it’s because people really like the owners so much, the truth is people hang around because they are treated fairly and shown they are valued. Showing employees you value them takes effort, and must be consistently evident. Money can’t be an afterthought. We give raises when they are warranted. We offer full time employees health, dental, ltd, std and life insurance and pay 90% of the premiums. We offer full timers and part timers alike a 401k plan with matching. We offer full and part timers paid vacation after 6 months on the job. The employee meal is always free. We run contests where employees can be in a drawing to win a gift card. While it gets more difficult as we grow, we’ve always tried to have corporate outings – diamondbacks baseball games, bowling; that type of thing. We give anniversary gifts and bonuses. Every employee gets their birthday off with pay. We recently started honoring an employee of the week. As you may have guessed, our employee of the week must go above and beyond in getting the place clean, making delicious food, and being friendly. We post photos of the employee of the week on ScheduleFly, and on our in-house electronic menu board known as BBQTV.
What’s your favorite meal on your menu? I like the sampler platter. Served with a homemade side dish, our sampler offers brisket, chicken on the bone, ribs and pulled pork. While it is big enough to split, I usually don’t have any left to share with the Mrs.
Let’s say you meet somebody on a plane who is coming to visit Gilbert. He doesn’t yet know you own a restaurant, and asks for a restaurant recommendation. What’s your “airplane pitch” for Joe’s? The best BBQ in Arizona, served in a 1940’s agriculturally themed restaurant at yesterday’s prices.
What do you hope the future holds for Joe’s Real BBQ? More of the same. We are humbled we’ve had almost 13 great years in a great town. We have no immediate expansion plans, and intend to focus instead on making our place cleaner, our food more delicious, and encouraging our employees to be even more friendly. If the lord continues to bless us, we’ll be doing what we do for quite a few more years.
The Fearless Leader Darryl "Big D" Jansen is the kitchen manager who has worked at Joe’s for almost 13 years. He was the first employee.
Why do you like working at Joe’s? I like the owners, Joe, Tad and Tim. The dedication and care they show for my family and I.
What’s the most important aspect of your job? Food safety and food quality. Clean, delicious, friendly.
What is your management style? I am a hands on chef. I get dirty with my staff and work side by side with them.
What’s your favorite meal on your menu? I like ribs with beans and applesauce, with cornbread and honey butter.
The Evangelist Florencia has worked at Joe's for almost 12 years. She has worked as a counter server, at the takeout window, and cashier. Both of her parents work at Joe’s, but she has seniority on both of them!
Why do you like working at Joe's? I like the atmosphere, my bosses, my co-workers, and the way I get to talk to customers instead of being in an office or away from people all day
What’s the most important aspect of your job? The way I get to interact with so many customers. I see hundreds of people every day, and have seen so many people for so many years, a lot of them are like friends and family
What’s your favorite meal on your menu? When I am real hungry I get the stuffed baker with turkey on top.
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We always try to be very open about what's happening at Schedulefly, including our plans for the business. So here's a simple list of what Wes, Tyler and I are working towards every day, one customer at a time.
Become the Most Beloved Brand in the Independent Restaurant Space We love indies. Everything we do is based on making the lives of folks at independent restaurants easier. So we make our app really easy for them to use, and we use our blog as a tool to let them tell their stories, and to promote them, and do whatever we can to support them. Years from now, we want every independent restaurateur to know and love our brand. Period. That's what fuels our fires every day.
Be a Great Company, But Not Necessarily a Big Company We purposely made Schedulefly simple, intuitive, and flexible, so we wouldn't have to have a bunch of people to provide customer support. We don't have many customer support requests, and new customers rarely need any training. We believe passionately and very, very confidently that we can grow our business significantly with just a few people. We have three people now, and our guess is we will have no more than four or five people two or three years from now. We strive to be great. Not big.
Never Sell Our Business People always ask us, "What is your exit strategy?" People think it sounds sexy or cool or something to have an “exit strategy.” And they assume all entrepreneurs have "exit strategies." After all, when people "exit" it means they sold their business for lots of money, and people like those kinds of stories. So the press always tells us about mergers and acquisitions, and entrepreneurs "exiting" with lots of cash and, presumably, their dreams fulfilled. But the three of us love Schedulefly. We love what we do every day. So why in the world would we ever have a strategy to "exit" something we love? And since we love Schedulefly, we make decisions based on what's best for our business, not based on propping our business up to be sold one day.
It's fun to dream big while also focusing on keeping things simple. It's working great so far!
Wil
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Restaurant with Open Jobs to Fill? Check out Restaurant Jobs by Schedulefly The easiest way for restaurants to find and hire great people
Restaurant owners and managers usually can't find extra time to eat and sleep, much less, time to tell us how our software helps their business and makes their staff's lives easier. So when we get their undivided attention even for just 2 minutes - we try to make the best of it! Recently we caught up with one of Joe's Real BBQ owners - Tad Peelen and asked him to tell us more about the ROI his family owned and operated restaurant receives from Schedulefly. What he said was cool and clearly something that is much easier to realize in hindsight...so I wanted to share it here.
When we study our investment in Schedulefly, we look at before and after scenarios. Before, we were spending hours creating schedules in Excel that were posted on a bulletin board in the employee break room. We spent more hours during the week taking phone calls from people who couldn’t make their scheduled shifts, and trying to cover those shifts. Add up all of the hours we used to spend, and add in the fact we can now communicate with our employees instantly, our employees can cover their own shifts, and schedules can be viewed from any phone or computer in the world, and then it becomes a no-brainer. Money well spent.
Thanks Tad and team! This insight into the ROI your seeing from using Schedulefly really helps other restaurateurs who are learning more about us.
The Schedulefly Crew
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Restaurant with Open Jobs to Fill? Check out Restaurant Jobs by Schedulefly The easiest way for restaurants to find and hire great people
While on vacation at the beach - I read Tony Hsieh's book Delivering Happiness - A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. It is the story of Zappos and how he and his team made the online shoe buying experience easier, better and more fun than actually visiting a shoe store! They did this by focusing on customer service and creating a culture of happy, passionate employees. If you've ever ordered from Zappos - you've either been WOW'd by their speedy free shipping (both ways) or their friendly, unscripted, truly helpful service when you call. I read they even hire marathon runners to answer questions about running shoes and hiking fanatics to answer questions about trail shoes. Their relentless pursuit of WOWing their customers with exceptional service and a simple and fun experience made them stand out.
It was an inspiring and fun book to read. They clearly made it fun for everyone by being different, being passionate about what they do, creating a family like culture and focusing on actually being helpful to customers when they call. They indeed figured out how to deliver happiness in a box!
Wes @ Schedulefly
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Restaurant with Open Jobs to Fill? Check out Restaurant Jobs by Schedulefly The easiest way for restaurants to find and hire great people
If you've been to Virginia Beach - I bet you've been to Waterman's Surfside Grille. Since 1981 this family owned and operated oceanfront venue has been serving up steaks, ribs and local seafood - as fresh as it gets. Literally. To get the full experience of Waterman's - you can book an offshore fishing charter on The Waterman - a gorgeous 57' foot sportfishing boat - and take your fresh catch of Tuna or maybe Mahi-Mahi to Waterman's to have it grilled with a side of rice and veggies while you wait with a cocktail at their outdoor boardwalk bar. Seriously - I can't think of a better way to spend a day...
Waterman's, and their 132 staff, love Schedulefly. It's not that easy to schedule and communicate effectively with a restaurant staff that size. They use Schedulefly because we make it easy and fun for them to do just that. We are not just saying that - they told us that. So we sent them our Flip video camera in a box. The only other thing we sent (besides a return label) was a note that said - "Tell us why you use Schedulefly". Check it out...
Social networks are changing the way businesses find and recruit new staff. Many restaurants are letting their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers know about job openings instead of posting to the big search engines like Monster and Yahoo. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars to post a job that is immediately seen by thousands of unqualified candidates - they are targeting their broadcast and finding the right people faster - for free. They are finding local people who might be familiar with their business and/or their staff. People with whom they (or someone on their staff) may already have a connection. It makes sense.
So we decided to help restaurants take advantage of this by making the hiring process easier and much more organized. We've given them a free easy job posting tool so they can create a job opening page with a way for people to apply. They simply share this page with their team and on their social networks. When someone applies- we notify the hiring managers via email and attach the resume. They can also visit the site to review applicants, post and edit jobs. All the applications are stored nice and neat for review at any time.
This tool is one of the tools that Schedulefly's customers use in our easy web-based restaurant staff scheduling and communication app. It was easy to build and is easy to maintain and was frankly a very easy piece to strip out of our app and give away for free to restaurants.
So now - any restaurant, anywhere, can now post jobs online for free at http://jobs.schedulefly.com. Yep, that's right. Any restaurant. Anywhere. Free.
We have recently been working to understand the common traits that our restaurant customers share. And we've learned that outside of the obvious desire they all have to improve their restaurant staff scheduling and communication, the commonalities are pretty easy to determine...
Independently Owned Restaurants Almost all of our customers are independently owned restaurants. Most of our customers have one, two, five, or maybe ten locations. Many are franchisees. All of our customers tend to value easy communication, simplicity and focus on creating fun environments. Since we focus on the basics and leave out complicated features and rules, we usually attract restaurants without a governing corporate headquarters. We attract restaurants that are empowered to make smart financial decisions for their own business and ones that like to empower their staff.
Employee Focused Most restaurants will tell you they care about their employees. And you can be certain the employees know if that’s true, or just lip service. Most of Schedulefly’s customers really mean it. You can tell when you speak to them. The owners and managers talk a lot about their employees. They tell you one of the most important reasons they use Schedulefly is to improve communication with their employees. And to keep them connected. And to help build camaraderie and teamwork. And simply to give their employees a fun tool that makes their lives easier. They tend to think like Richard Taubin, co-owner of Friends Coastal Restaurant in Madisonville, LA, who says “We are very family oriented. Our employees come first, even before our customers.” Or they think like Kiersten Traina of Liberty Market in Gilbert, AZ who thinks about and accounts for her employees' personal schedules as much as her restaurant's needs when creating the weekly staff schedule.
Fun & Family Most owners, managers, and employees of Schedulefly customers will tell you their restaurant is a fun place to work. They’ll say it “feels like family.” If you and your employees would say the same, Schedulefly is probably a great fit. We have a fun app that helps our restaurant customers foster teamwork and camaraderie and build their own online communities. Frankly, that’s why we are so focused on serving independent restaurants, and franchisees that think like them. We’ve found that indies like to keep things simple. They like to keep things fun. And they like to feel like a family. As Renee Shuey, GM of Murray Brothers Caddyshack in St. Augustine, FL told Wil: “We’re like one big family. We like to have fun. And Schedulefly fits right in with our approach.” If you can relate to Renee’s philosophy, you think like most of our customers, and you and your employees will probably love using Schedulefly.
If you find yourself nodding knowingly while reading this and thinking "That's us!", then I'll bet you Schedulefly will be a great fit for your restaurant. We'd love for you to sign up for a Free Trial and find out.
It's funny how many restaurants try to concoct "fun" atmospheres and make customer service a process. There's nothing genuine about it, and we all know it when we see it. It's so common that the movie "Office Space" has a few "Flare" scenes to mock the approach. Here's one of them....
Then there are places that realize you can keep it simple and still get it right. Five Guys is notorious for minimal decorations and very simple layouts and interiors. A bunch of plain wooden tables. Not much on the walls. Certainly no "flare" on their employees. I ate lunch at one with my three year old son today, and we had a great experience. It was great because of two simple gestures by the manager.
First, my three year old son tried to give him my credit card so that he could pay for lunch for us. But the manager moved his hand aside each time my son tried to hand him my card. After a couple of times my son caught onto the game and started laughing. So he quickly won over my son. Then, when our number was called, we went to pick up our lunch and the manager - still at the register - looked over and caught my eye. He simply said, "Hey thanks for coming in today sir." He held eye contact and - this is the key - I could absolutely tell he meant it. His thanks was genuine. That's all it took. We'll go back. Now, we'd go back at some point anyway because we love their burgers. But you can bet my son will be asking me to take him back in a day or two, because he now associates Five Guys with having a funny man at the cash register. And since I received a genuine thank you, I will be happy to take him.
I recently started keeping a fly fishing for Redfish journal. I keep detailed notes on each trip I make. I jot down the date, the tide, the temperature, the time of day, who I was with, the spots we fished or checked, wether or not there were clouds hampering our effort etc. Lots of stuff. I, of course, also describe in detail how the fish were acting that day and if we had success or not. Anything that might be an indicator as to why we found Redfish or not. It is going to be really cool, next year, to look back at my entries for the month of June this year and refresh my memory on where the fish were hanging out. I am learning every month.
You see, the Redfish we catch here in NC, are creatures of habit. They do the same thing year after year. They are resident fish and they live here. In the Fall - the more mature fish (5 yrs old or more) move out of the creeks and bays off the Intracoastal waterway and head into the ocean - where they spawn. The juvenile fish stay in the bays and creeks and marshes until they are old enough to be parents. There a number of factors that cause the bigger fish to leave their cozy, safe shallow water homes near oyster beds and spartina grass and head into the ocean - things like water temperature and definitely the movement of bait. The movement of the food brings them all back.
My focus on learning how this one fish lives and moves and eats and evolves has turned into an obsession. Each time I fish, regardless of catching fish, I learn something new. Focusing on them and learning about them is causing me to have more success each year. Just a few years ago I would fish a spot that had no life - no bait, no sting rays, no turtles etc. I would always say - "there have got to be fish here - it just looks too good". Today I know better. I look for real signs of fish before I actually look for fish. I look for bait. I wait for the right tide. I look for other marine life. It is amazing to see success happen because of what I learn each time out. Sure - fishing is a lot of luck - but consistent success is directly related to focus, patience and learning. If I lost my focus on Redfish and just started fishing for anything that bites - I might catch more fish - but I would be less effective and I would certainly not have as much fun.
The hunt for this one specific fish and the challenge of catching them with a fly rod, consistently, is what drives me. It is not about the catching, it is not about the numbers - it is about the hunt and the not so obvious things happening during the hunt. The sounds, the smells, the quiet and the intense focus. The rare success I have comes from time on the water - hours and hours of focus. Focus on how these fish move and on what tide and what they are eating. Often too, it's just as important to learn where the fish are not - and why. Kind of a process of elimination I guess. Every trip I take - I learn more about what I am trying to catch and over time - I am having more and more success.
Here is an NC Redfish being released to rejoin his school of buddies...
Here are a few of the restaurants that have recently started using Schedulefly to post and share their job openings on the web. Our simple job post tool allows them to create a page with the job details and a way for people to apply online. They simply share the URL of the page on sites where they have a local following like Twitter or on sites where people are searching for restaurant jobs like Craigslist. The also share the page with their staff - via the message wall - encouraging them to share with their friends and colleagues. When people apply for the jobs - hiring managers get an email with the resume attached. All the applications are neatly stored inside Schedulefly for viewing by the entire management team 24/7. It is terribly easy to use and appears to be helping restaurants more and more each week...
We are currently enhancing the Jobs Site - adding a search box and will be allowing any restaurant in the world to sign up for free - customer or not.
Here is a transcript of Wil's conversation with Chester Kroeger, owner at Fudpucker's (2 locations) in Destin FL. This is fantastic insight into the mind of a very successful restaurateur...
[WIL BRAWLEY:] All right. Good afternoon. It’s Wil with Schedulefly and this is the next in our series of conversations with restaurant owners about owning restaurants. And I am really stoked this afternoon to be talking to Chester Kroeger of Fudpucker’s down in Destin and Fort Walton Beach in the Panhandle of Florida. They’ve got two locations. This place is fun, it’s unique. It says on their website this is not just a restaurant, it’s not just a bar. It is flat out a one of a kind experience and you’ll hear that from talking to Chester today. So this is cool. Chester, thanks for doing this and why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a little about you and how you got Fudpucker's started 25 years ago?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] No problem, Wil. Thank you for the opportunity. There’s really not a whole lot to tell about me personally. I’ve had a pretty darn interesting life. We don’t honestly have time to get into all the crazy things that I’ve done. So I’ll focus a little more on the restaurant business. And the way that Fudpucker’s came about was, I got finished with college, ran out of money like so many other people. Was too proud to call my mom and dad and wound up working doing something completely outside of my field. But I had a real passion for entertainment and frankly for food. And I worked at a nightclub kind of part time. That eventually turned into the guy that owned the place giving me an opportunity to run the snack bar and that’s where it all started. The snack bar was fine. It was making decent money and then a lady came up and said, hey man with a name like Fudpucker’s you really need to do a t-shirt. And the t-shirts are the thing that vaulted Fudpucker’s into the limelight so to speak. It became a very very very popular place and today we’ve got two locations. The larger of the two is about 36,000 square feet here in Destin, Florida. And we do everything from basic appetizers, America style food to some really creative stuff that we do in the kitchen. A lot of seafood. And of course we still sell a gazillion tee shirts and have late night entertainment and teen night which is one of the biggest things that we do here lately it seems like. That’s where the money is and teens just really enjoy Fudpucker’s. We do so many things. We’ve got gators too. I mean that’s another little thing that we do on the side, sort of brings people in, makes it kind of a fun place to be. And then of course I’m sure Deede has told you all about the Crazy Mother Puckers hot sauce line that we developed a few years ago. And if she hasn’t talked to you about that you need to talk to her separately because she is blushing.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] That’s great. I think she has mentioned that. I think she has when we first talked. You guys are doing a lot of cool stuff. You mentioned the word passion for entertainment and food. And then I read in your bio that Deede sent me that you became a gourmet cook through trial and error. No real culinary training. One thing that caught my attention that I wrote down is you said the big thing is desire. So when I hear words like desire and passion, it sets off these emotions that seem to be from my conversations so far from other owners so critical to the success of a restaurant. Am I hitting on something? Could you talk more about that and tell me what are some of your secret sauces? How have you guys been so successful for so long?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Well my dad always told me that I had to love what I did in life. And I honestly believe that that’s true in anything whether you choose to be a cook or whether you choose to be a fireman or a policeman or a solider, you name it. If you don’t love what you do, what’s the point? It’s not all about money, that’s for certain. Now the restaurant business, most people that think about it, they think of a glamour job. Going in and getting to eat whatever you want. Having lots of free time and lots of fun people around you. Well the reality is that it’s not always like that. There’s a grueling side to this business. And you have to love it, truly love it, in order to stick with it and make it successful. There are obviously exceptions to that. There’s an awful lot of franchises that are geared around putting dollars in the bank with minimal effort on the part of owners, but I tell you if you work day to day in a restaurant like we do, you have to love it. As far as sauces and things of that nature are concerned, probably the biggest successful one that we have is called Sensual Sauce. It’s a very simple recipe. I can’t give you the exact recipe because you know, I’d have to kill you. But it’s a very simple recipe of Creole mustard, mayonnaise and honey. And it has been probably the one thing that sets our food aside at least as far as our sandwiches from day one. Very very very very tasty sauce. We also do a thing with all of our meats that we grill. And that is a basting sauce that’s made with soy sauce, Worcestershire, honey, garlic and a little bit of salt and white pepper. It’s again, it’s kind of a day old seasoning in a sense. That alone sets off the meat product so that it jumps out. Those are two sauces that I literally developed in a kitchen through trial and error as you were mentioning in the interview. I just kept putting things together trying to make something taste good. First time I ever used the Sensual Sauce, I used it with crawfish and shrimp that we were doing for a family event and it just went from there. And of course there’s a gazillion more. We do all of our own sauces. Everything we do here is homemade with the exception of maybe three of our appetizers.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] And you got a really extensive menu. I think I saw that you have over 70 items. Your website says it kind of alludes to this. It’s not just a restaurant, it’s not just a bar, it’s not just a tourist place, it’s a one of a kind experience. And a lot of that has to do with you guys just do so many different things. You touched on that a little bit at the top of the call. What else, Chester? What makes it work? You’ve got all this passion and you got this desire, but you’ve got several hundred staff across your two locations. How do you translate that to all of the folks that work with you and for you and get them to have that same level of passion and desire to make Fudpucker’s fun and successful and a one of a kind experience for your guests?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] That’s probably the most difficult part of the job. I don’t know that there’s any real way to say that there’s a formula. I will tell you that if you treat your people with respect and you go out of your way to provide the absolute best possible training, you show compassion, and you constantly stay on top of things. It’s probably the best way I can describe it. There are some employees here who’ve been with us for gosh, almost 25, 28 years. That’s pretty remarkable in this business. In fact, one of my partners Tim Edwards started with me back in 1985. He worked his way up from basically serving beer for free. Well, I say for free. He was a pretty big guy and was able to drink an awful lot of beer because that’s how I paid him. To being a major owner in this company. And like I said, it’s empathy, it’s compassion, it’s treating people with respect. It’s always listening. Sometimes when you start making a little bit more money and you have a little bit of success, your ears tend to close and you start to think that you have all the answers. You don’t. I can tell you that the people that are on the line, the people that are greeting the customer, the people that are in the back office looking at the reviews as they come in as Deede does here at Fuds and sees what people are saying on Trip Advisor and you name it. Now those are the folks that have to have your ear. Without it you’re dead in the water.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Yeah you mentioned several words that I keep hearing or words that are a similar. A lot of it has to do with, they’re emotional words. So in other words you talk about treating people with respect, you talk about compassion, empathy, listening. These seem to be common threads. I’m trying to find these common threads with folks like yourself. So everybody has different formulas. And they do things many different ways to make successful restaurants but I tend to hear that a lot. I feel like people who own independent restaurants like you, they have love, they have passion, they care about the people that work for them genuinely. They want the best for them. They look at it as a family. Is that fair? Is that a pretty common thread with other owners that you know?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Oh it is definitely the case. Regardless of how big you get, I mean we do have close to 500 employees but we are a family. You know, when times are tough for employees, we go out of our way to help them. Whether it’s with a loan to buy that car that helps them get to work or whatever. You just do what you need to do within reason. I mean you have to be careful. You can’t be taken advantage of. But more often than not we err on the side of doing what’s right for the employee. Doesn’t always work out but that’s kind of what you have to do.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Yeah. You’re taken a really big picture perspective on things and you’re running a marathon, not a sprint down there. That’s why you’ve been doing it 25 years really well. That’s really cool. Tell me about your employees? What’s it like to work there? I imagine everybody has a lot of fun but they also work hard and they really love your guests.
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Well you know, it’s changed over the years. We’ve gone through some general management changes. And the personality of your place is often reflective of the person who’s kind of got the reins in their hand. The last couple of years we’ve been fortunate enough to have someone who has been in the restaurant business for 30 odd years. One of the people who was instrumental in helping Fudpucker’s get started back in the early days when we were a snack bar inside of a nightclub. And Peter has got, you talk about love and compassion and just passion for the business. This guy lives it, eats it, breathes it, sleeps it, you name it. It’s all about the restaurant business. And he’s fantastic. He’s a born leader and he shows people through his actions what’s expected of them. And he does not ever accept mediocrity. That’s the kind of manager you have to have. That’s honestly the kind of leader that you have to have. The kind of person that we strive to be. In a restaurant, people are of course concerned about the food and the drinks and how they look and all of that. But I tell you, you make one mistake and there’s maybe a smudge on a table or a mirror that’ s not clean or there’s something on the floor that shouldn’t be there. Or god help you, if there’s any kind of a problem with a product that comes out of the kitchen. You’re going to suffer because of it. So you have to keep a very very close rein on everything. You have to watch it. And that’s I think what a good manager, a guy like Peter will do for you. And he’s the kind of person that I guess people look up to and they don’t want to disappoint. So we’ve had that for years. We’ve had it in our previous GM and we have it again in this gentleman that’s working with us today.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Would I be right to assume that he leads by example and not by decree if you will? He’s doing all the things he’s asking people to do versus just telling them what to do?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Oh absolutely, it’s critical Absolutely it’s critical. People don’t respect you when you just say do this and do that. To give you a perfect example, our business is extremely seasonal. When I was a kid my dad always told me says, take your car and park in the front part of the hotel so people can see that there’s cars in the parking lot. Well we took that to another level here at Fudpucker’s. All of our staff here at the back office, when we have slow periods of the year which is usually during the winter season, we park our cars in the front part of the parking lot. Well if we didn’t do that, if we were demanding that our employees did it, how would that look? We’re not willing to walk that extra 50 or 100 feet to get to our place of work and yet we’re forcing them to do it? It doesn’t fly. So it is leading by example.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Absolutely. Yeah I love that. So tell me what’s on your mind these days? Being where you guys are and I talked to Deede a little bit about this. I know you’re keeping your eye on the oil spill. What kinds of stuff are you thinking about? What kinds of trends do you see that you think are positive or negative? Just kind of general stuff that either keeps you up at night or stuff that you’re excited about?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Well I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to publish all this stuff.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Bring it on.
[CHESTER KROEGER:] I tend to be more of an optimist than anything else. I think in this business you almost have to be. You also have to take into consideration the reality that surrounds you. We were poised this year to have a banner year. The best management team. The best staff that we’ve ever had. And out of the clear blue in the middle of April comes a disaster. Whether the beaches here in Destin get hit by oil or not, a lot of damage has already been done because the national news media jumps on the bandwagon and sensationalizes things to the point where it doesn’t matter if there’s oil on the beach or not. People think there is and they’re worried about it. They’re canceling those reservations or trying to. So what’s on my mind? The immediate future is certainly on my mind front and foremost because without a good year all of us, it’s kind of like losing your job. Without having a good solid job you can’t go forward to the degree that you want to. Not that you can’t, but just maybe in a different way. So we’re focused very very heavily on the spill. We’re actually getting ready to send out an email blitz to hundreds of thousands of customers who’ve been our loyal followers ever since we opened and we’ve maintained contact with them through email. We’re going to send out a blitz and let them know that the beaches are fine here. In fact the oil is 60 miles further to the west today than it was two days ago. So you know, that’s one thing. Another thing that is of course of maybe more importance is the direction I see us taking in this country. And I feel like it’s something that is very detrimental to any small business and anyone who believes that small government is better than big government. The only sector of our economy that grew last quarter was the governmental sector. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs. I don’t know that it will get any better in the immediate future. It might. I certainly hope it will. And then of course you take a look at the world. And the world is in an economy downturn. All of those things affect everybody whether you’re in the restaurant business or whether you’re driving a trunk in Minneapolis or doing whatever. So there’s some sincere concern.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Yeah. The cool thing thing I think about Fudpucker’s is that you’ve got a fun place. You have a great price point and you just have something for everybody. So people, even when the economy’s tough they want to go sometimes and just have some fun and enjoy themselves. And so you’ve got a really well established brand down there and that’s probably real favorable. And you’ve also got. I’ve been to Destin. You’ve got beautiful beaches. I can account for that. Beautiful white sand. In fact I’ve been to Fudpucker’s back in college and I remember it too because you got a cool brand and a neat place. I went 15 years ago when I was in school and I remember going to Fudpucker’s. So if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about going somewhere to Florida, go to Destin and go to Fudpucker’s. You can go have fun and don’t worry about the oil because you’re right.
[CHESTER KROEGER:] And it may never come. We just don’t know. And I promise not to talk politics to anybody that comes to Fudpucker’s.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] That’s funny. I hear you. Hey let me ask you this just out of curiosity, how does that impact and maybe you don’t know yet, do you have your eye on food costs? You have a lot of seafood, I’m sure. What does that do to your food costs?
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Right now we have not seen an affect. We get a large portion of our seafood from outside of the area. We’re constantly searching for new product. Things that provide the price point that we’re trying to put on the table. And right now although we do get some of our seafood from the Gulf Coast, a great deal of it comes from overseas. So that has not really been an issue yet. I think that right now if I was to be a betting man, I would say that our numbers from a standpoint of costing and product is not going to be affected by this and I’m hoping I’m right.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Right. Cool. Good. Let me just thank you for doing this, Chester. This is absolutely unbelievably fantastic material. I mean I just really love talking to you. I know everybody that listens to this is going to get a ton out of it. And congratulations on just doing a great job down there and having a neat place and a success story and one that I know will continue for many years to come as long as you’re at it. So thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this.
[CHESTER KROEGER:] Well you’re very welcome and next time you get down this way please do stop in. We’d love to host you for a few hours and get some special insight into Schedulefly.
[WIL BRAWLEY:] Awesome. Yeah. Thank you very much. Deede, thank you for getting this coordinated and I’ll let y’all run but we appreciate your business and appreciate your time very much too.
We are thrilled to have the team at Mercatto in the Schedulefly Family. We recently asked their GM, Melanie, exactly why she choose to use our online restaurant staff scheduling software at their restaurant - and what they did before Schedulefly. Here is what she sent back. It is awesome and really helps shed some light on the areas that we are helping restaurants.
First up - 
Restaurant owners and managers usually can't find extra time to eat and sleep, much less, time to tell us how our software helps their business and makes their staff's lives easier. So when we get their undivided attention even for just 2 minutes - we try to make the best of it! Recently we caught up with one of 
When we study our investment in Schedulefly, we look at before and after scenarios. Before, we were spending hours creating schedules in Excel that were posted on a bulletin board in the employee break room. We spent more hours during the week taking phone calls from people who couldn’t make their scheduled shifts, and trying to cover those shifts. Add up all of the hours we used to spend, and add in the fact we can now communicate with our employees instantly, our employees can cover their own shifts, and schedules can be viewed from any phone or computer in the world, and then it becomes a no-brainer. Money well spent. 
While on vacation at the beach - I read Tony Hsieh's book 
If you've been to Virginia Beach - I bet you've been to 
Social networks are changing the way businesses find and recruit new staff. Many restaurants are letting their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers know about job openings instead of posting to the big search engines like Monster and Yahoo. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars to post a job that is immediately seen by thousands of unqualified candidates - they are targeting their broadcast and finding the right people faster - for free. They are finding local people who might be familiar with their business and/or their staff. People with whom they (or someone on their staff) may already have a connection. It makes sense.
