Top Down Foodservice
By Maureen Azzato

You thought foodservice would be easy because your high-performing competitors and quick-service restaurants make it look pretty simple. Perhaps you dove in head first thinking the high-profit-margin category would be a panacea for your pressured retail business, but you didn’t count on high food costs and labor costs, or the intense training and focus that foodservice success requires.

There’s a reason that high-performing retailers and restaurant operators make foodservice look so easy — it’s because they live and breathe foodservice every hour of every day, according to industry experts. As most will tell you, for convenience stores to succeed in foodservice, they need to adopt a more restaurant-focused food-centric culture.

“Absolutely! You have to stop looking at yourself as a c-store and start thinking of yourself as a restaurant,” said Paul Servais, retail foodservice director for La-Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip Inc. “This is the only way you will have success in the food industry.”

The Details of Execution

Restaurants have it relatively easy, according to Chad Prast, director of foodservice for VPS Convenience Store Group, operator of 388 stores, based in Wilmington, North Carolina. “As convenience stores, we try to master many tasks — fuel, cigarettes, groceries, beverages, other income and food — whereas most restaurants just master food. This gives them a huge advantage in marketing, reporting, procedures, etc. Trying to follow their lead really helps set training and procedures apart.”

So what other best practices can convenience stores learn and apply from the restaurant industry? The most important thing is understanding the mindset of your foodservice competitors — from limited service restaurants and QSRs to other retail foodservice operators such as grocery stores, club stores and mass merchandisers — according to Dr. Nancy Caldarola, education director of NACS CAFÉ (Center for Achieving Foodservice Excellence), and consultant and management trainer with Concept Associates Inc. Caldarola brings more than 30 years of restaurant and industrial foodservice experience to her role at NACS CAFÉ, including working for ARAMARK, Church’s Chicken, Pizza Hut and Friendly’s Ice Cream.

“The restaurant industry focus is all about quality, service, cleanliness and value [QSCV],” she said, noting the mantra was begun decades ago by Ray Kroc, the developer of the McDonald’s franchise. “That old QSCV adage was his and the whole industry has been operating on it ever since, and it still works.”

S. Truett Cathy, the founder and owner of Chick-fil-A, puts a little different spin on the value part of the equation. Caldarola explained: “His whole thing is you absolutely have to have the first three elements. Focus on those three, he says, and the value is apparent.”

While the mantras seem simple, anyone in the foodservice business will tell you that the devil is in the details of execution. To win at foodservice and build a restaurant culture requires top management buy-in and support, a hospitality mindset, dedication to training, frequent and honest two-way communication with all stakeholders, and a meaningful rewards system.

Buy-In at the Top

In today’s time-pressed world where everyone — especially executives — has more on their business plates than ever before, committing to foodservice training for employees is easy. The tough part is accepting that as executives, they need training, too, according to Caldarola.

“Everyone in a management position must take a food safety class,” she said. Building a foodservice culture “starts at the top and everyone has to get trained. That is a tough pill for a lot of organizations to swallow. We hear a lot of lip service about it, but few step up to the plate.”

Another problem is that executives often over-delegate foodservice management when it needs to be their direct focus. “Foodservice needs a lot of attention and directors and managers have a lot to do,” she said. “But you can’t delegate foodservice management. If you over-delegate and are not directly involved, [you] communicate to your employees that [foodservice] is not important to the organization.”

Another way to communicate that foodservice is important to the organization is to promote those in charge of foodservice programs to senior company positions, said Jennifer Vespole, senior category manager of foodservice for Quick Chek Corp., operator of 120 stores based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

Top-Down Planning

The biggest mistake some organizations make is not spending enough time properly planning their foodservice strategy before jumping in, Vespole added. “Goals need to be set, planning done and expectations outlined so that everyone understands the costs involved and the commitment that is necessary long term.”

Curtis Watson, executive director of foodservice for Maverik Inc., agrees. Foodservice is about developing a brand and building credibility around it, which takes time, focus and “patience if you are doing more than just rolling out a new roller grill program.”

Curtis believes you also “need to understand you are brand building and… you need to spend against your brand… understand what the spend is, then create a plan — or return-on-investment scenario — that everyone can buy into and then be disciplined in your approach.”

Many convenience store industry foodservice executives with successful programs point to strong and consistent upper management support as vital. “It has to start at the top,” said Servais of Kwik Trip, operator of 366 stores. “One hundred percent buy-in about the importance of food will greatly increase your odds of success. Not only should they support food programs, they should be helping drive the ideas and procedures. They need to be hands on. It has to come down from the CEO, not up to him.”

Servais feels so strongly about it that he believes companies without top-to-bottom commitment shouldn’t get in the food business. “If you are not going to go all the way, don’t bother getting started.”

Hospitality Mindset

While convenience store operators and store-level employees might understand customer service and be competent representatives, foodservice requires a little something extra, according to Vespole.

“Successful restaurants are more focused on hospitality versus customer service. There is a difference,” she pointed out. “Good customer service in the c-store industry can be described as being clean, in-stock and getting people in and out quickly. Hospitality takes it to another level. You engage the customer and have a friendly exchange. You view them as a guest and not just someone who is buying something from you, and you go out of your way to make the entire experience enjoyable, exceeding their expectations.” guests because they come in stores once

Caldarola calls this vital ingredient a servant’s mindset. “I don’t mean servant in a subservient or bad way; I mean it in the hospitality way. That’s what you try to look for in people when you hire them to work in your stores.

Foodservice training programs can cover a lot of ground, but they can’t fundamentally change someone’s ingrained personality. “That’s why it is so important to hire the right people for foodservice jobs,” Caldarola said. It’s not for everybody, and a good foodservice manager needs to recognize those good job candidates when they walk in the door. “I can always train someone about food or how to cook, but I sure can’t train them how to smile,” she said.

But employees can be trained to view customers as more than transactions. “For years in the QSR business we tried to get our people to remember guests and greet them by name and it never worked because they would see the same guests maybe once or twice a week,” Caldarola said. “In the c-store industry there is such a great opportunity to connect with guests because they come in stores once or even twice a day. That’s a big advantage over QSRs.”

But customers aren’t the only guests. As a believer in the Ritz Carlton guest services model, Caldarola said employees should be treated as guests as well, from the top down. Employees who are treated with respect and demonstrate exemplary guest services by example are more likely to deliver that same respect and service to customers, she added.

Communication and Rewards

Once retailers have a strong network of employees with a hospitality mindset, the next step is retaining them and helping them grow professionally, which comes through training and retraining, communicating effectively and rewarding their efforts.

Part of the challenge for convenience and fuel companies is communicating the importance of foodservice to existing employees, especially those who may not work directly on the foodservice side of the business. Communicating with employees about company performance and how all the moving parts are integrated — and the important role employees play in that success — is critical, Caldarola said. They need to understand that “no one is going to advance and get ahead if the sales and profits of the company don’t increase, and today that’s going to come from food,” she said.

It’s also key to communicate the company’s goals and mission to employees through all means available, said Vespole. “Proper training, constant communication from headquarters to the store and throughout the store reinforces the message,” she said. “You have to be serious about foodservice and communicate that to your customers.”

VPS has a foodservice specialist that works closely with district managers, store managers and store-level employees “to ensure that the culture at store level is explained and discussed with everyone in the organization,” said Prast. Developing a foodservice culture and mindset is ongoing and takes years, he said. “Our stores that have had strong food programs for years usually have the entire store involved. The ones that are new still are working on getting everyone to embrace the programs. The longer you are in food, the better you get at it.”

And few things inspire employees more than rewards, recognition and sampling, said Servais of Kwik Trip. “Let them sample the food. Show them how profitable it can be for their store and the company, and then tie incentives to it” by running contests or paying bonuses on food sales.

Caldarola said recognition can be as simple as offering bus passes for a month, gift cards, service pins or earning the privilege of wearing a different color or style shirt, a successful program she ran at Church’s Chicken years ago. “That stuff works,” she said. “You have to reward them for knowing their products and building relationships with customers.”

Training, communications and rewards are particularly important for companies just getting into foodservice and that are demanding substantial change and flexibility from the rank and file. To foster change, you have to rally the troops, Caldarola said. “Training has to be planned and set up properly to get people’s brains hyped up for change,” she said. “The pep rally to get them to embrace change has to come before the nuts and bolts of foodservice training. Make them believers first and then train them for skills.”

Shifting the mindset and culture of a convenience store business from a focus on in-store merchandise, lottery and gasoline to foodservice will not come easily or quickly. It will take time, a steady focus and a long-term commitment from top executives. Store-level employees will buy into it, according to industry experts, when they see a firm and consistent executive commitment to foodservice.

Maureen Azzato is a freelance content developer and editor with 20 years of business publishing experience. Most recently she was the publisher and editorial director of On-the-Go Foodservice, a publication for cross-channel retail foodservice executives.