Take Care of Your People, and They'll Take Care of Your Customers

Everybody says take care of your customers. I'd start one step earlier than that.

Your crew is the one standing at the counter when a customer is upset, when the line is out the door, when something goes wrong at 9pm on a Friday. How you treat them is what walks out to that customer.

After 20 years and 38 Sonic Drive-Ins, here's what actually worked.

Take the hard decision away from them

I never wanted a 19-year-old assistant manager standing across the counter from an angry customer trying to figure out: Is this person lying? Should I stand my ground? Should I argue?

That's an impossible spot to put someone in. So we took the decision away. We gave them a rule and nine words to say: "I'm so sorry. Let me fix that for you."

Some people think that meant I cared more about the customer than about them. The opposite was true. I was protecting them. A rule made in advance, when nobody is angry, beats a judgment call made in the heat of it every single time.

Give your team permission to fix reasonable problems without asking. Then back them up when they do.

Teach them the numbers

I asked a room of culinary students how much of every dollar a restaurant keeps as profit. The guesses ran from 28 cents all the way to 78 cents. They thought it was almost all profit.

The real answer for most full-service restaurants is about 4 to 5 cents on the dollar.

And no wonder they think otherwise, if we never take the time to teach it. Your team can't protect something they don't know exists. Show them where the dollar actually goes.

Show them what waste looks like

When I walk into a restaurant, I look in the trash can. An ounce of egg left in the carton. A tomato nobody cored. Too many wings in the warming drawer. Four cents of shake scraped into the sink.

Sounds like nothing. But if you have 20 people working in your restaurant over the course of a day, and they each waste $3.50, that's $70 a day. Thirty days later it's $2,100 in the trash.

Here's the part that gets me: We won't spend 60 cents to buy a new tomato corer because our staff carelessly threw it away, and then we'll throw $60 worth of tomato slices away five cents at a time, because we didn't core the tomatoes! But we'll argue with a customer over a large drink while all of that is sitting in the can.

Teach the pennies. Don't fight over them.

Hire people better than you

A lot of owners are quietly afraid to hire someone sharper than they are. I understand it. But the fastest way to cap your business is to make sure nobody in it is better than you at anything.

When I say hire someone better than you, I mean someone who is better than you at a certain skill. Someone who can take you to the next level. Not a better person.

Hire people who are better. Then get out of their way.

Assume you might be wrong

Even when I know I'm right, I just might be wrong. That goes for customers, and it goes double for your team.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Ask before you correct. Most of the time the person in front of you has information you don't.

Take care of your people, and they'll take care of everybody who walks in.

Paul

P.S. Watch: Should You Really Hire Someone Better Than You?