Loading...
Loading...

Do you create a new policy every time something goes wrong?
Real-world food truck training in about 10 minutes. Profit, pricing, food cost, speed of service, marketing, events, and smart systems—no hype, just what works.
Enjoyed this episode?
First Hit Follow on Spotify so you never miss a new one: https://bit.ly/3LkAF4w
Then go to https://nsfva.org/join/ and become a member today!
This Easter skipped the ordinary, and whip up something golden with melty creamy
velvita cheese. From scalloped potatoes to rich mac and cheese, velvita turns
every bite into a crowd-pleasing celebration, bringing the extra to the
ordinary, transforming simple sides into lips-macking, satisfying moments. So go
on, make it melt, make it cravable, make it indulgent, velvita, respect the drip,
visit velvita.com slash Easter for some recipe inspiration.
Have you ever noticed this? You're at work, and you've done 47 things right, and then your boss
is going to talk about the three things that you did wrong, and ignore the other 47 things.
You promise yourself you're not going to do that at your food truck, and then you do.
You have 200 amazing guest interactions, but you build new rules around the one dude that tried
to gain the system. Let's talk about leading by exception. Hi, my name is Bill Moore,
I'm the executive director of the National Street Food Vintage Association. Let's talk about
why leading or managing by the exception doesn't really work. You've got a solid crew. They show up,
they hustle, they're trying, and then one day someone's late, and you're a little bit stressed
because you're busy right when you open. Somebody forgets to stock the cups right when you reach for one,
and there's no cups. Somebody gives out a little bit too much sauce, and you notice that as the
bag goes out the window. Customer complaints, it gets loud, they want to refund, and they want
free food. Now what happens? The manager brain, the stressed out food truck owner brain,
goes straight into exception mode. You tighten everything. We call a meeting, we lecture the whole
team, even though only one person made the mistake, we create new rules, we start watching people
like they're trying to steal from us, and the team is thanking the whole time. Wait, I've
been busting my butt for months, and they're acting like I'm the problem. Most employees are not trying
to break the rules. Most guests are not trying to scam you. Most days are not utter disasters,
but typical managers talk like the exceptions are the norm. Just read a Facebook group. When you
manage like everybody else is about to mess you up, you created three toxic results. You trained
fear instead of pride into your staff, you get compliance with the rules instead of ownership,
and you stop reinforcing what is good, the things you do want repeated, because you're only
discussing the mistakes. So let me say that again, if you don't reinforce what good looks like,
your team won't repeat it on purpose. Do you remember the moment you started guarding sauce
cups like they were gold bars? You see it all the time, it usually starts with one customer. The one
person that says I need 14 sauces, and now the said you decided to ride a new policy, sauce only
with purchase, one part item, as for more extra charge, that's a new policy. The intention is good,
because you want to protect your feed cost, but if you roll it out like a punishment, and especially
if you roll it out like your team caused it, here's what's happened. Your best customer feels like
they're being nickled and dined. Your staff feels overpolicied. Your line slows down, because now
you got explained to everybody, your team gets more awkward with guests, because they don't want to
get yelled at for giving out one more sauce than they're supposed to. Your service vibe devolves into
conflict management instead of guest service. And it's all because you built the whole experience
around an exception. Managers fall into this trap. So why do we do it? Why do we notice the
exceptions? Because they're loud. Our brains look for the differences automatically. Why do you think
those little puzzle things where compared this picture to that picture and find the differences?
Why they're so popular? We feel like success when we find all the differences. Bad behavior becomes
memorable when you point it out constantly. Mistakes create rework. Complaints hurt your feelings.
So all of those loud things get pushed to the forefront when 95% of the whole rest of the day was
awesome. Quiet doesn't trigger your stress response. You're relaxed. It feels good. So when things
aren't quiet, those exceptions happen. You become stressed. Your brain starts treating the
exception as it's a threat. We all know that a threat, that point of pain, is something to avoid.
So the manager becomes a firefighter. We talked about this on many other podcasts.
Putting out yesterday's fire by soaking the whole thing with gasoline. That doesn't work.
What you want to do is manage the standard, not the exceptions. Here's what I want you to do.
Define the standard in plain language. Not a novel, not a video that takes 15 minutes to watch,
not in a binder, not in a company policy that no one's going to read. Or remember, you want to make
it simple, plain language. We greet every guest within 10 seconds, no matter what. We confirm the
order before payment, no matter what. We restock between rushes, not during rushes. We fix mistakes
fast and with respect. You're going to make mistakes. Next thing I want you to work on is catching
people doing it right on purpose. And I'm not talking about pretending or fake cheerleading.
I mean, specific and real callouts, just like when they make a mistake. I saw you pass out five
saucers. You can't do that. You were very specific on that because you were wound up in upset.
You need to take that same intensity and the same specificity and apply it to the good things they
do. The other 95% of the time they're working. And it's simple. I saw you repeat the order back.
Good job. You stayed calm with that guest when they were complaining. That's awesome. Thank you.
You prepped the line before the rush that made it so much easier when we got busy. Thank you so
much. You picked up the bring without being told. I appreciate that. That's called being a good
manager talking to your team through the position. Handle exceptions privately and precisely.
Whether it's a guest complaining or one of your employees messing up something. You talk to one
person. The guest that comes up to complain. You say, hey, dude, meet me at the back door. Let my staff
take care of the line. I'll take care of you. And you get them away from the crowd because they
will set the expectation that you suck in front of 10 other people. Get them away from the crowd.
But you handle it calmly and employee that messes up something. You talk to them calmly without
making a big deal of it in front of their co-workers. Don't build 10 new rules when you figure out
something isn't working the way that you would hope. That's just an adjustment. That's just a tweak.
You don't need 10 new policies. If you got a customer who's figured out a way to scam your system,
just figure out how to handle that one exception. No big deal. You don't need to have a 10-step policy
and then set up some type of courtroom procedure to make it happen. It's got to be simple. No one
likes hearing company policy. So don't create one for every little exception. It could be as simple
as that guest that complained wanted to refund and more food. So you have a choice. You can have
a refund. You go about your day or you can have the food remade but I keep the money and we still
go about our day. Your choice. If they ate all the food, sorry no refund. We may give you a free
sandwich in the future but we're not refunding money after you've eaten all of it and you just
got to be tough about that. But you don't have to make a whole new policy and make everybody feel
uncomfortable because one person trying to scam you. Here's one line to remember. We reward the
standard. We correct the exception. You have to reward the standard. That's when people are doing
stuff right because you already said this is why you make a burger. This is why you make a taco.
When they do it right, reward it and it doesn't have to be with a bonus, you know, $500. Here you go.
Did awesome. Hey dude. Good job. I appreciate you making that the correct way. So you're gonna do.
Let them know you're paying attention. You don't want it to go the other way around and you only
talk when something's wrong because then your employees will dread here and you talk.
Because sooner or later they're either going to quit or they're going to quit trying
and either way you lose. So write down the things that bug you the most and decide are you just
worried about that exception or is there a pattern to this that we do need to create a standardized
but simple policy to handle. Don't get mad and go oh my god look at that.
Steal in napkins and then writing a whole policy to cover. The one person that comes up was too
lazy to walk to the original food truck they bought from and they grab your napkins. You're worried
about a quarter. Create the goodwill. Thank you guys so much for listening to the Tim and a food truck
training podcast. If you enjoyed today's podcast do two things. Number one, whatever platform you're
listening to, like, subscribe, follow whatever the platform does. So that way you can know when I
upload another episode. And then the second thing I want you to do is go to nsfba.org.
Join our association today. We have all kinds of training this geared to helping you become
successful as a food truck.
