Speed of Service

The Goal
When I first arrived to Federal Heights, the speed of service was very slow. We were averaging just less than 3 minutes a transaction. At the time there were other issues that I deemed more serious than our speed (i.e. Repairs and Maintenance, Food Quality, etc), so I did not place a significant focus on our times.

At the beginning of January, I decided that it was time to really focus on lowering our average transaction times. Success does not happen overnight, so I split the big goal into two parts -by the end of January I wanted to be averaging less than 2:30 per transaction, and by the end of February I want to be averaging less than 2 minutes. While I recognize that 2 minutes per transaction is far from stellar, I feel that lowering our speed of service by an average of 1 minute per transaction in 2 months is a significant achievement.

The Plan
From the very beginning, it was important to me that the team accomplish this goal without my help. I only wanted to encourage and strategize and process with them. It would not benefit the next operator of Federal Heights one bit if I were to single handedly achieve this goal.
I started with leadership. I cast the vision of what I wanted to see happen, and then we had about an hour discussion on what needed to be done to achieve this goal. We determined that this was not a result of one or two people underperforming. Rather, it was a matter of changing the culture of the restaurant. Our strategy involved 5 steps:

1. Training to encourage fast service and to share best practices
2. Signage to track progress
3. Placing the right people in the right places
4. Team huddles before all rushes to set goals and create focus
5. Rewards for accomplished goals along the way

We also came to the conclusion that our customer service and order accuracy could not suffer as a result of being faster. We would just need to find ways to be more efficient and resourceful with our team members.

The Results
The team has responded well to our 5 step strategy. At the end of January, our average speed of service was 2:25, which puts us right on pace with our goal. The team is definitely getting stronger, and I am excited to see our February progress!



UPDATE: As of February 13th, our average speed of service has dropped to 2 minutes, 8 seconds. Also, our Speed of Service CEM score has risen 7 points this month and our Order Accuracy has improved by 2 points.