Restaurant Franchisee Culture Coach Program

Project Type

People

Country

USA

Case Study Title

Restaurant Franchisee Culture Coach Program

The Client

The owner of a leading operator of Denny’s and Jack-in-the-Box franchises in California was already outperforming most other restaurants in the systems.

Background

The owner had spent time earlier in his career working at a luxury five-star hotel and believed that the level of service and the type of culture the company fostered could apply to his quick service restaurants.

Client Need

The client wanted to invest in building a stronger workplace culture throughout his corporate office and all 40 of his restaurants with a goal of offering a better service experience than at any other quick service restaurants and being seen as an employer of choice in a competitive industry.

He approached Donald Bowman to talk through the possibility and they both realised that the yearlong Culture Coach partnership was a perfect fit to achieve this goal as it provided a well-planned and structured approach to building the foundation for a service culture that the future growth of the company would need.

Scope of Work

Each of the ten-phases of the program were followed methodically.  The Leadership Workshop, a critical part of the process, was held at a luxury hotel where the leadership team of twenty-five people were led through an orientation to the program.  The location provided with an immersive experience in what quality, luxury and excellence feel like while learning about the implementation plan for the coming two-month period that would lead to the launch of their new Service Culture.  They identified several major service-related goals that the company would pursue and created their own unique and meaningful Service Culture Statement which formed the backbone of the culture work ahead.

A two-month action plan was created for all the work to be undertaken before rolling the program out to all team members throughout the organisation.  Donald guided them through the implementation, ensuring accountability and providing all the support required.  During this time Donald also created the Service Culture Training program that would be rolled out to every team member at every restaurant.

A Service Culture Dashboard of metrics was created to track the impact of the program and significant improvements were seen throughout the organisation.  It also helped to identify any areas where the culture was not sticking which allowed the team to revisit, retrain and realign the leadership to keep the company’s new culture on track.

Donald then finally introduced the ongoing Quality Circle part of the program that continually seeks ways to improve the team member and customer experience by reviewing all feedback received through multiple channels and making permanent and positive changes to the organisation as a result.

What did Hotel Solutions Partnership achieve for the client?  

With Donald’s enthusiasm and passion and the owner’s commitment combined, the team took the implementation to the next level and stirred up an incredible passion for service throughout the company.  Within a three-week period, every employee was trained on the new service culture and a suite of service and empowerment tools were rolled out to every restaurant.  Donald ran a train-the-trainer program and also recorded a training session which is now part of the online onboarding process for all team members.

Since the completion of the program Donald continues to assist periodically and will run a second Service Culture Leadership program to reinforce the work and introduce new ways to continue the investment in the company culture.  The owner has since referred Donald to another franchisee with over 200 restaurants where a similar program is now underway.

Testimonial from the CEO and Owner

“The service culture program that Seaside built from the ground up led by Donald Bowman has transformed the way we do business with our most important stakeholders, our Team Members.  Donald’s effectiveness during all stages of our project has been superb.   His unique ability to garner buy-in from our focused leaders with his outstanding communication skill has allowed us to build a world class service culture program that is extremely rare in our industry and has now made us an employer of choice in our marketplaces.  We consistently rank among the top operators in our two major brands and have formed and executed countless initiatives to bring joy and happiness to our employees which in turn has greatly improved our overall business.

I give my highest recommendation for Donald Bowman to any business leader who is interested in bringing significant positive change to their business.”