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Ask and ye shall receive: Tapping into the game-changing power of ALL employees' ideas

Does your brand's leadership work to pull solutions to business problems from all employees? If not, you're bypassing your restaurant's biggest and best source of brand-boosting power and innovation, as the leaders of one Florida chain shared at the National Restaurant Association Show this week in Chicago.

May 22, 2019 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

You never know where your brand's next game-changing move is going to come from, but foodservice history proves that some of the best ideas have from those who know your brand and its customers best — frontline store employees. 

That was one of the primary ideas conveyed during a fast-paced session at this week's National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. Max Piet, the president and CEO of Florida-based deli chain, TooJay's Deli and Restaurant, partnered with the brand's Training Director Rachel Richel to lead the presentation, which was pegged on the central theme that every brand's marketing strategy should be designed with all teammembers as critical players. 

Richel and Piet repeatedly provided examples of how their 30-store unit chain has repeatedly benefited from the innovative input of everyone in the company, especially frontline restaurant staff. By way of example, they pointed to an instance early in the chain's history when a newly hired employee who was manning one location's meat-slicing station used his experience from his previous position at another restaurant as a sushi chef to create what is now the deli's signature rolled, ingredient-incorporating deli sandwiches. It was one of those "light bulb-moment" ideas that improved the way brand markets and serves its offerings system-wide. 

Go out of your way to learn from all employees

Time and again, Richel and Piet said they've learned this lesson and now go to great lengths to incorporate employee input and action into every level of their marketing strategy. As another example, Piet referred to the brand's loyalty program rollout two years ago, which he said initially did not live up to expectations. 

"One of my favorite questions is, 'What are we doing that is stupid?' Just sit down and ask that question because ... your team members are really the ones that know what's getting in the way of things. ... They're so open to sharing those ideas, too because (then) it allows us to clear the road for them. ... They will tell you what they need."                                                               -Max Piet, TooJay's Deli CEO

The problem, they ultimately realized was that frontline staff weren't communicating the program to customers. That's when Piet said leadership went to those employees to see what the problem was. 

"So during a training session, we flat out asked the team, 'Why are you not getting this done?'" Piet recalled, adding that was the point where one employee spoke up to say, "Max, I really want to make this happen, but we're so busy, I just get caught up and I forget."

That's when that same individual suggested a button for employees' shirts to serve as a reminder to spread the loyalty program news. It worked and Piet said loyalty enrollment "skyrocketed." 

Another benefit of intentionally incorporating all levels of a brand's team into everything from marketing strategy ideation to enactment is that it tends to help employees feel their work has a larger purpose and that they are more valued by their employer. In essence, Richel and Piet said, it works like an employee retention strategy, a real asset in this very tight labor market. 

TooJay's, for example, has about 1,600 employees. A significant 14 percent of those workers have been with the brand more than 10 years, while 3 percent have worked there more than 20 years. Richel and Piet said that kind of retention comes primarily from working at every level to connect employees' passions to the brand's purpose. The two leaders outlined three primary ways to do that, including: 

• Work to pull ideas from employees at all levels of the organization.
• Make the effort to make brand marketing initiatives fun and valuable to employees.
• Give team members ways to support brand's growth. 

Piet said the theme here is to truly put your trust in your employees and remain in a state of openness to their ideas and then following through to enact them when they "click."

"One of my favorite questions is, 'What are we doing that is stupid?'" Piet told the audience. "Just sit down and ask that question because ... your team members are really the ones that know what's getting in the way of things. ... They're so open to sharing those ideas, too because (then) it allows us to clear the road for them. ... They will tell you what they need."

Make brand initiatives fun, valuable to employees

By making marketing and other brand initiatives both fun and valuable to employees at all levels of the organization, Piet and Richel said leaders can expect  the unexpected ... in a good way. As an example, Richel pointed to a couple of marketing initiatives at TooJay's that attracted such an outpouring of enthusiasm and interest from employees that the initially anticipated results of the action multiplied to include many other benefits. 

By way of example, she recalled the time the brand generated a recipe contest, incorporating employees own favorites, with the winner to be designated as the top team member on the restaurant chain's culinary team. It was designed to generate new ideas for the menu, but what it also generated was great employee engagement and social media content. 

Richel (left) and Piet present at the NRA show this week in Chicago.     (Photo by S.A. Whitehead)

"Social media started really blowing up with comments," Richel told the audience. "People were cheering on their team members and it was great. ... So something that started off as a marketing and culinary strategy turned into a social media/team member engagement strategy."

Richel and Piet provided other examples that revolved around brand community engagement strategies that ended up underlining employees' feeling of purpose in their work, as well as a birthday celebration that again generated a wave of great social media interaction between employees and with customers. 

The bottom line, the pair said, is for the top levels of brand leadership to plan marketing and other initiatives with very special attention paid to ways to incorporate and solicit input from employees, not just directly to their direct managers, but directly to top levels of chain leadership. Too often they told the audience, brands tend instead to solely focus on the details of the marketing initiative rollout itself, without paying any attention to how the initiative can "roll in" employee participation and input. 

True employee engagement is like a shot of steroids for brand growth 

Growing any brand means growing its pool of talent and TooJay's relayed how it works to do both simultaneously, including a recruiting and retention initiative that Piet said has resulted in an 11% increase in staffing levels across the brand's 30 locations. 

Granted the labor market is tighter than its been in decades, but brand leadership took that as a challenge and opportunity, rather than as a stumbling block. They created an initiative around the old notion that the best recruiters for any business are the employees that already work there. That plays into retention, as well, because people who work with friends — including those they've helped recruit — stay at companies longer. 

"This year, we decided to really up our game," Richel told the audience. "So we raised the money we pay out (for referrals) and we looked at it as an internal marketing promotion. ... And it really made a difference in our team members' perceived value."

Just like any other promotion, the brand created posters, flyers and attached information to paychecks to engage employees. TooJay's Human Resources and Marketing teams partnered to form a solid and lasting connection that will serve it well into the future. Ultimately, the results spoke for themselves. 

"By doing this program, we increased our staffing levels by 11% going into season,'" he said, referring to the busy seasons that most of the chain's Florida locations regularly handle. 

And Piet added that the partnership formed between HR and marketing also allowed the brand to increase one of its key retention and engagement initiatives — the creation and communication of a career path for employees. Here again, he said it was key for the brand's top leadership to go directly to all levels of employees for answers. After all, through its research into the source of the problem leadership discovered that although managers across its system were well-versed in the intricacies of the brand's employee career path, most lower-level employees weren't even aware TooJay's had a "career path" established for them.

"They said, 'Career what? What does that even mean?'" Piet told the crowd. "So now we did a whole informational campaign to educate everyone on it and now they are part of that process, too. ... We have a goal to increase that (level of career path awareness) from the current 20 percent to 50 to 60 percent."

And, it's a safe bet TooJay's will accomplish that goal since history shows that the brand has gotten pretty good at enlisting "all hands on deck" when the call goes out. Further, TooJay's positive results from this approach serve as everyday proof that some of the best solutions to restaurant business problems are not only some of the simplest, but some of the easiest to find if a brand creates a culture where every team member feels free to submit those ideas to even the top levels of chain leadership and then see them put into action to make the most of their work and the brand as a whole. 

Feature photo: iStock

Inset sandwich photo: TooJay's Deli via Twitter

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.