Hiring for “Signature Service”

The importance of hiring natural talent to be the face of your restaurant and the process of hiring employees who are passionate about service.

“Signature Service” is passionate hospitality. Your customer should leave your establishment with a “Wow, what a breath of fresh air that was!” In fact, in this ultra
The competitive industry’s “Signature Service” may be what sets you apart from your competition. When everything else is the same price and quality, customers will choose you for your service.

Talent is defined as the natural ability to perform a task without conscious thought. Skill is developed through repetition of tasks.

A hypothetical example I like to use:

“One fine summer day, Michael Jordan (yes, Jordan) and I decided to go head-to-head in basketball. I’ll admit, I don’t have any shooting skills and Mr. Jordan has a natural talent, he shoots without thinking. Mr. Jordan decides that he will give me 6 weeks to practice. I practice 60 hours a week, 7 days. I practice my skills over and over again.

On game day, Michael Jordan shows up. Who do you think he won? . Michael Jordan has the natural ability to play basketball and the result is obvious and not surprising.”

Now let’s bring that back to our situation. We are hiring talent. What are some of the talents we are looking for? I feel these are important:

> A natural and warm smile. There is no need to pretend. This person walks in happy and is always smiling.
> The ability to make eye contact. During the interview, see if your candidate can look at you and make eye contact.
> A welcoming personality. Enjoy talking to people. If you chatter non-stop, I guarantee you’ll have no trouble making your customers feel welcome.
>A caring personality. If a customer doesn’t leave with a smile, they’ll take that rejection personally.

Is this a difficult and hard job? Absolutely. Finding a gem is always difficult but rewarding once found. If you hire with talent in mind, rather than just “filling” a position, you can start the framework to rebuild your team with “Signature Service” as your new foundation. Just like in my competition with Michael Jordan, if you hire just to fill the “spots,” then your outcome is just as predictable. High turnover, lower sales volumes, low morale and lack of loyalty. Not only that, but you will find it difficult to recruit and retain key talented people.

Make changes to your restaurant

>At the end of the day, it’s about how you take charge of your situation. You may find that everything is fine and leave things as they are, but your competitor will not. Studies have shown that a 16-day regiment of:

Education and Engagement

>You must set expectations and standards and hold your team to them.

Evaluation and Benchmarking

>Give you and your employees a way to assess their performance and compare them for improvement

Correction and encouragement

>People will make mistakes. Correct them and reinforce your expectations.
> Always praise in public, punish in private.

celebration and reward

>When milestones are reached, celebrate and reward the team as well as individuals when goals are met.
>This is an important key to success, without recognition people will tend to “forget” what they are trying to achieve.

To close, remember “Talent brings talent”. Those talented people will bring more referrals, talented people like to surround themselves with other talented people.