New Technology and How to Waste Salaried Employees Time

Martin CJ Mongiello

CEC, MCFE, CPFM, CHM

Martin CJ Mongiello

Friday, January 15, 2010 2

When you’d like to throw away money then give a $60,000.00 a year, Manager, an $8.00 an hour job and get nice and angry when things don’t work out. A lot of inexperienced managers spend too much time in self defeating rage spirals over the latest Executive Chef that they just hired. These managers typically have a point of sale system installed such as Squirrel, Micros or Jonas and a number of the back of the house functions have been enabled. Some of them use Chef-Tec. Part of the reason for the anger is the fact that somebody who wears a white chef’s coat can get paid so much money. This typically can get them started in the wrong direction every day they get out of bed. Armed with this resentment they then believe that all of the money invested into the POS system should be used. Recently visiting a Country Club where this was the case - it was noticed once again. The resentment towards Executive Chefs commanding good wages is childish and immature – especially when you look at the number of hours that are typically worked in the job position – 60 to 100 per week in high season and 60 to 80 hours per week in the low season. The fact that the POS system should be used is actually very good. POS In the back of the house can crunch food costs and keep a menu up to date by the hour. Labor can be quickly analyzed and overtime wages prevented easily. One can easily establish high and low limits to trigger alarms. For instance, let’s say the General Manager comes in and asks the Food and Beverage Director ( F & B) for food costs on ten items off of a 150 item menu. Before the F & B can get a chance to answer, she relies is that there has been food deliveries this morning of probably 400 different line items. Judging from how busy the chef has been in the kitchen - the probability of him having had the time to sit down and type in the latest food costs for each item is slim to none! And that is where the mistake begins. Everybody wants POS and related software to be affected and efficient to provide usefulness to the operation. However, Having a $60,000.00 year shaft sit in his office for five hours typing in the latest receipt prices is a complete waste of money – when it comes to evaluating the price per hour that you are not only paying the

Martin CJ Mongiello

Friday, January 15, 2010 3

individual – but consider they lost the amount of time held in the operation that he is not present. It is for this reason that it is highly recommended to have a minimum wage worker sitting in the office doing nothing but:

1. Menu typing 2. Email answering 3. New food supplies ordering based off of instructions from the chef –

phone time can be up and kill the chefs at hours instead of being present in the kitchen with instruction, coaching, mentoring and examining items coming off of the line.

4. Inventories and crawling around storerooms for two days counting boxes one of the time and jars of spices. In no way does this mean the Executive Chef is off the hook for responsibility.

5. The answering the phone and taking messages. 6. Typing in the latest prices on stacks and stacks of receipts. 7. Typing up last minute daily specials that the front of the house has

asked for three times already!

These generalize duties can completely eat up a chef’s time as it is related to POS and all back of the house functions. At no time does the Executive Chef get relieved of responsibility! However, judging from the things that were liked and disliked about POS during the visit – it pretty well matches up to over 30 years of experience. Which has been the same old thing, A senior manager who’s angry and jealous over the amount of money being paid - figures, “to heck with him – let him wriggle and squirm all over the floor. Soon enough he’ll crack and everyone knows, we can just bring somebody else in.” This type of behavior and attitude towards and operation is extremely detrimental to the flow and financial success of a country club. Stability and excellence in mature leadership has always lead to highly successful and financially sound operations. In fact, it can be noticed that the most successful clubs do not go through managers every three to four years and do not go through chefs every couple of years.

Martin CJ Mongiello

Friday, January 15, 2010 4

If you’re looking for signs of poorly to ship in the business world – one only needs to take a look at the history of their own country club that they are a member of. Success in business within the professional world led a group of people to open up a club – the same success should be evident. There is no excuse For lackluster performance on the P & L statement and human beings are not to be listed on the Liability side of the ledger – good and happy humans are assets!!! Carroll, Charles. Leadership Lessons From a Chef: Finding Time to Be Great. Wiley, 2007 Cullen, N. C. The world of culinary supervision, training, and management. Prentice Hall, 2000 Huo, Y. H. “Information technology and the performance of the restaurant firms.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. 1998: 239 Scornavacca, E. and Prasad, M. and Lehmann, H. “Exploring the organisational impact and perceived benefits of wireless Personal Digital Assistants in restaurants.” International Journal of Mobile Communications. 2006: 558--567}