As anyone familiar with the restaurant industry can tell you, fast-food companies are uniquely predisposed to high employee turnover. Jamaican fast-food franchise Juici Patties has developed a simplified operational design that keeps training costs to a minimum and allows new employees to get started with little to no training.
As Managing Director of Juici Patties USA, Stuart Levy knows that he can’t solve the problem of high employee turnover singlehandedly. However, by creating clear, straightforward operational procedures that require no skilled labor, he makes it possible for franchise owners to navigate employee turnover without losing out on profits.
“When Daniel [Chin, CEO of the U.S. branch of Juici Patties] and I sat down and conceptualized this whole thing, we knew that high turnover comes with the industry,” Levy says. “So the architecture, the foundation of Juici Patties in the U.S., was to have an operation that didn’t rely too heavily on any one person besides the franchisee. It’s a lot of pushing of buttons and serving.”
That might sound like an oversimplification of what goes on in each Juici Patties location, but it’s not.
“We knew that hiring skilled labor would be daunting and would come back to bite us,” Levy says. “The most skilled person at the line level in a store would probably be the baker, right? You’d think that you’d need an experienced baker who understands recipes, but we don’t want any of that.”
Instead, Levy and Chin devised a system where employees need virtually no training, and most roles are interchangeable.
“If you’re in high school and you’re working part-time, you take these patties, you put them on a tray, you put them in an oven, you press this button. And once the oven beeps, you take those patties out, and then you put them in a warmer,” says Levy. “You’re a baker at Juici Patties, but you can be rotated to a cashier. You could be a server. You could be anything like that in one store and rotate in the job.”
Given the significant turnover in the industry, this type of system promises to save franchise owners thousands of dollars over time. When a food-service job requires skill, employers must invest time and money in employee training. There’s a significant chance that a newly trained employee will leave soon after, giving the employer no choice but to make that same investment in another employee.
At Juici Patties, an employee can learn their role in a matter of minutes. Training doesn’t involve much time, money, or effort, so the impact of high turnover on the franchisee is minimized.
The streamlined operations at Juici Patties stores also allow new franchisees to get their locations up and running as quickly as possible. Once Levy and Chin implemented the simplified operation procedures, new franchisee training was condensed from 28 days to 14.
“We take one week with the franchisee to show them this role and train them on how to bake,” says Levy. “It’s pretty much showing them the point-of-sale system, showing them how to bake, showing them how to look at their numbers. They’ll do that for a week, and then they’re ready for opening. The second week, we’re intermittently just watching from the side to help if they have any questions.”
Juici Patties restaurants aren’t automated, but they’re about as close as a restaurant can get. By harnessing the power of technology and perfecting the art of streamlined operations, the company has been able to achieve lightning-fast growth without sacrificing the human element.
Written in partnership with Tom White
