Clean front door…Hit the gas…

Clean front door…Equals a clean kitchen

The patrons of our hospitality and foodservice customers don’t know if the kitchen preparing their food is clean or dirty. But if the entry area, or pretty much anywhere in the front of the house isn’t spic and span they just might think that what they can’t see elsewhere may be just as dirty.

More importantly they might just suspect the kitchen where their food comes from isn’t very clean either. And if they’re thinking that way they may just take their dining-out dollars elsewhere.

That’s why we need to look beyond the kitchen to apply our skills and products. It’s not only good for their business, but it’s really good for ours.

For starters those general sanitation products sales are incremental and are also incrementally profitable. That second benefit is true because generally speaking those sales add no additional service, delivery or equipment expense.

The result: A good chance that 100% of the gross profit they create goes to the bottom line. Given that rare and absolutely true win-win situation there’s really no excuse for our slacking off in the pursuit of delivering them to all our customers. So what’re you waiting for?

Hit the gas…Or the brakes?

Having a team member who regularly needs a little bump in the posterior to get moving is its own special challenge. It can make us long for a real self-starter. But under the banner of beware of what you wish for, there’s also the guy who rips into assignments with reckless abandon and without giving much thought to how to proceed.

So in first instance the new task seemingly never gets underway and in the second it just might get totally out of hand.

But in truth you’d be hard pressed to find any manager who’d prefer mister procrastinator to that ever-ready-bunny type. And that prevailing preference is true because it’s a lot easier to reign in the overly rambunctious associate than it is to change the slow poke’s approach to life and work.

But in truth both types will always be with us and frankly that slow mover might just be the best customer pleasing account keeper on the team. So while opening new business might not be his forte, his pace might be valuable in its own way.

As for his hyper opposite, he might be the perfect guy to drive new business that can be backed up by someone who’s a bit less hyper but perhaps a lot more predictable and steadyhanded.

Next up: People by the numbers.