Connecting Restaurant's Front line to Bottom line
Connecting Restaurant's Front line to Bottom line

Culture is something which drives discretionary behaviours from employees and it kicks in the moment employee handbook leaves out. It’s the behaviour that employees demonstrate. And, how a restaurant can inculcate that culture among the staff facing customers that drives revenue and hence bottom line. Given the restaurant manager being the centre fulcrum of daily operations essentially the culture of the restaurant is what restaurant managers demonstrates and that brings to a very pertinent question on how restaurant managers demonstrate trades like an owner and how do they bring the positive impact on the restaurant business.

Behaving like Owners

“Especially in the restaurant industry we say we are in the business of food and I typically say we are not; because we are in the business of people and they are the people who drive the entire profitability, sales and consumer satisfaction,” points Sameer Bhasin, CEO, Barbeque Nation. The pertinent point about culture is that it is very mystic in nature. Every business is a ‘Ghar’ and every house has its own set of culture and that’s what you get in bread. “Talking about Barbeque Nation and how we induce this culture in our front line staffs especially the restaurant managers is that; we ask them to innovate,” adds Bhasin.

According to the experts, culture is all about value and that’s how you create behaviours. “Communicate, communicate and communicate as it’s great,” shares Tanmay Kumar, CFO, Burger King India, adding that there are so many instances that come from people on the ground- asking to create a bifurcation. And, restaurant owners need to listen to them as they drive the business. The second thing about any business is the customer experience. He will come back if he liked the experience. “Else, empower your managers to go beyond to make your customer happy,” adds Kumar who has set up 100 outlets of Burger King in India recently.

Can HR intervention Change the Company?

Building a culture is not easy for any employer or organisation. And, culture in any organisation is termed as something to be followed every employees attached to the brand. “Culture at our organisation is termed as something to be understood by 30000 employees across 300 cities spread across three countries. It’s not an easy preposition in terms of everybody understands this uniformly across over 24/7 in 365 days. It’s all about empowerment, recognition and reward but constantly done over a period of time so it doesn’t look like as one of the case,” believes Biplob Banerjee, Executive VP-HR, CSR and Admin, Jubilant Foodworks, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

For a HR to set a culture starts right from hiring the correct talent. What kind of profile one is getting in to build and create that culture is more important. “We do a lot of background checks as it comes from the personality and my culture will change from that personality. Recruitment is very important aspect of bringing and creating a new culture,” comments Manish Rishi, Director - Human Resources, The Leela Hotel & Residences, Gurgaon.

Hence, we can say that it’s not easy to get the best talent and breed the culture on which companies’ are building and sustained.  

 
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