Hand Trucks and Hand Grenades
The culture of a business affects everything they do and everything they produce. This is perhaps most evident in the restaurant business where complaints about poor quality and poor service are solicited, expected, published, and in demand. Feedback to restauranteurs is immediate and often harsh. When was the last time you opened the newspaper to the section on “Cell Phone Service Reviews”…or your city celebrated it’s local daycare assessor? Restaurant Critics are celebrities. With feedback on restaurants front-and-center of their success or failure, you’d think that they’d protect their image and reputation on every front. Poor service, abusive work environments, lousy food, shady accounting practices…all point to a culture of “poor character”.
One of the least obvious contributors to a poor reputation is a restaurant’s relationship with their vendors. Many restauranteurs blow it with their vendors. In that group is the guy who sweats to bring the product in the back door to your coolers where he endures most of the abuse. Napoleonic chefs often badger a vendor and/or belittle the driver.
For vendors making a sales calls, I often hear passive aggressive responses from chefs and managers: “I don’t have time to talk right now” or “hey lemme call you back” . Some more direct abuse comes in the form of demanding that the vendor produce product at the restaurants doorstep…on a Sunday…when the warehouse is closed…when the vendor is with their family…and it’s the chef who doesn’t know how to forecast and order properly in the first place. Delivery drivers get it the worst: “What time is? What does my watch say! What time are you supposed to be here! Say it! Before 10 o’clock! Why are you 1 hour late? Take it all out of here and bring it back at 3pm…and have your boss call me!”
When the time comes to negotiate better pricing, guess who get’s the worst deal? Guess who’ll get the worst delivery times available? Guess whose reputation as “difficult to work with” will be spread through their communities ? Guess who won’t get a tip about a star chef who is about to kick off a job search? Guess who won’t get baseball tickets for a Father’s Day game? Guess who won’t get their hands on a super-allocated wine that everyone is buzzing about? Vendors are some of the most underutilized resources for making your business hum.
When sales reps call and asks for your time, give it to them. Not willy nilly, mind you, but schedule it. Be honest about what you can do and why you don’t want their product if you indeed don’t want it. Vendors and sales reps should be thanked for taking time to come and see you. They’re motivated to sell you things and often bend over backwards to help your run your business. A restauranteur’s goal should be for every sales rep and vendor who interacts with them to walk away saying the same thing about them as they want people to say about the restaurant. If it is a cold call and you philosophically disagree with the products offered, have some $15 gift cards loaded and give them one after you explain why you’re not interested. Goodwill, reputation and character cost very little but cannot be bought. Gracious, polite hospitality in everything you do. Sometimes restaurant managers and chefs are the LEAST hospitable folks in the business. It’s criminal.
Take care of your delivery drivers! Feed them. Ask them about their families. Establish a personal relationship with them. If you have to send something back and they have to call their boss, stay with them and support them. Maybe even call their boss yourself and kindly explain why the product is going back. Help them get the product back on the truck. Get them a Christmas Card and remember their birthday. Invite them to the company party. It is the norm to abuse the driver and snub the rep. The point of differentiation that will help any restaurant deliver better returns is it’s relationship with the people who keep the business supplied.
I live in Atlanta and two chef’s immediately come to mind as having stellar relationships with vendors. I’ve met both of them and they may or may not remember me…but I remember both of them because of their reputations with the vendor community as being “kind, generous, friendly, approachable, a pleasure to do business with”…oh, and they’re two of the most celebrated chefs in Atlanta…Gary Mennie and Kevin Rathbun. Some would argue that their reputation comes from their success. I say their success comes from their reputation. I met Gary back in 1990 when I was a line cook at the Ritz Carlton. I’m not sure where he worked but we ended up meeting at McTighe’s where we shot pool. He was nice then and nice when Ford Fry and I met with him to see his wood burning grill in 2006 at Taurus. I met Kevin Rathbun at Nava when he was working with Pano Karatossos and Buckhead Life and again at his own restaurant…doing the same thing…making sure everyone liked the food (he REALLY wants to know what you think like no chef I’ve ever met). My interaction with these two gentlemen is very limited but I can sing their praises because the vendor community sings their praises. They have a reputation and I’m happy to dine in their restaurants, I’m happy to forgive them if I have a bad meal, and I’m happy to spend more to support them (I may get an extra glass of wine and/or save room for dessert!).
When I see poor behavior in a client’s business, I put down the manuals and spreadsheets and recipe books and systems … and have a heart to heart about their culture. They can tell me whatever they want …but I look at the way they treat the guy with the hand truck.
