Your employees are your competitive advantage.  Treating your employees as well as you treat your customers will make you an employer of choice, enabling you to attract the best talent in your market.  Additionally, reducing staff turnover will positively affect your bottom line.  The key is to focus your attention on your high producing employees, not on trying to raise the bar of your low performers.  Most employers do just that – spend money and time training the low end staff and ignore their star performers thinking they don’t need extra training and attention.  This mindset keeps you from assembling that rock star team you dream about.

I had lunch today at Panzari’s Italian Bistro in downtown Rochester.  The owners, Stan and Reema Debkowski, are doing it right – they have assembled a front of house and back of house team that clearly enjoy their jobs and working together.  It was all business – everything about delivering top quality product and service.  But to watch the employees interact with customers and one another, it was a rare experience to see a happy well-oiled machine at work.

Thinking of opening a new restaurant?  Stop in, observe and learn from a successful operation.