3. Stay present and engaged
When you take time during training to get to know franchisees individually, you start the relationship with a good sense of alignment. But it takes constant effort to stay aligned.
One of the ways Culver’s does it is through a network of franchise business partners (FBPs) that acts as a field team to support the franchise community. Each FBP has about 20 restaurants to visit and measure against standards. They’re also on-call to help franchisees solve any business issues, from profitability to developing their teams.
But Keiser doesn’t use that network as an excuse not to get out in the field himself. Both he and Craig Culver visit restaurants throughout the system.
“I once had a guy tell me that as you advance, it becomes more and more difficult to get out of the office and into the restaurants,” Keiser says. “I always thought that was a little bit of bull, but I’ll tell you what — I can’t get out as often as I’d like to.”
At a minimum, he grabs lunch at a nearby Culver’s almost daily and tries to get out of Prairie du Sac for a couple of days each month to visit other restaurants.
The main goal of visits is shaking hands and saying hello. But he was a restaurant manager, too, once, and he still observes through those eyes.
“When I walk in the restaurants, I’m not the president of the company anymore,” he says. “I’m basically the restaurant manager, looking at the things I looked at when I last ran a restaurant in 1981: What’s the sense, what’s the feel? Do they have their act together? Do they have the right amount of products? Are the team members smiling at each other? Do they say please and thank you? They can’t fake that stuff.”
Even if they behave while you’re there, how do you know they don’t play while you’re away? The key is not drawing all your conclusions from one visit.
“You don’t just use one snapshot to tell the story,” Keiser says. “You use the collection of all the things you see happening at a restaurant: What are their patterns for growing sales, what are their patterns for growing people, what is their community involvement, how does that match up with the reports and what the other folks are doing?”
That big-picture mindset is important because you’re not just visiting a restaurant, you’re assessing how the local leadership is managing that operation.
“I not only have to see how the restaurants are doing, I have to evaluate how the rest of our leadership team is evaluating standards,” Keiser says. “You may go from one FBP’s region to another FBP’s region and you start to understand, OK, this guy or gal has a blind spot or that’s their hot button and they’re really pushing that aspect of the business. When I go out, I really try to look at it and say, ‘What are my directors of operations and my VPs talking about when they’re out there?’”
While tucking observations into his broader evaluation of the network, Keiser takes note of details, too.
“Ours is a very detailed business,” he says. “We measure our success in terms of penny profit on our menu items. We measure our success in terms of seconds in speed of service. There are a lot of details that go into it — not that I can get into all the details in my job — but [it’s important] to have enough of an awareness that when you do dig into a certain topic, you can get down to brass tacks and understand it.”
But tread carefully when dealing with details in the field.
“If you see a critical detail that’s being missed, you’ve got to be conscious (of the situation),” he says. “I have to remember that, for me, I’m just walking into another restaurant. For them, they’re getting visited by the president today, and that makes some people uptight.
“But when you see stuff that is on standard, you try to reinforce it. And if there’s a coachable moment, well, you do a little coaching, too.”
The main objective is just letting employees know you’re there and you care about what they’re doing. The more you do that, the better equipped you’ll be when issues need attention.
“If you have some things that aren’t quite to standard, it’s much easier to have some of those difficult conversations if there’s a relationship based on trust and mutual respect,” he says. “If they only hear from you when they did something wrong and they’re in trouble, so to speak, then that doesn’t work very good. … You’ve got to get together with people and get face-to-face as much as you can.”
How to reach Culver Franchising System Inc.:
Phone: (608) 643-7980
Web: www.culvers.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/culvers
Facebook: www.culvers.com/facebook
NEXT: Get to know Phil Keiser better
