From Recipes to Rules: Crafting a Comprehensive Policy and Procedures Manual for an Unstoppable Restaurant
Our client is a family-owned BBQ restaurant in the community, known for serving mouth-watering traditional dishes to its loyal customers for years. They partner with meal delivery initiatives and local rescue missions/soup kitchens as part of their community outreach.
Situation:
Despite the challenging circumstances brought on by the pandemic, our client, a family-owned smokehouse BBQ restaurant, persevered by securing a loan from a local COVID-19 emergency program. This provided much-needed financial stability that enabled our client to pivot and focus on opening a new location.
However, after relocating to another state, our client encountered several challenges in remotely managing the original location. These included staffing shortages, operational inefficiencies, and a need for standardized policies and procedures for effective communication. Our team's top priorities were to address these issues and ensure a seamless transition to the new location before its grand opening.
Challenge:
Using a design-thinking methodology, our team tackled the challenges faced by our clients in their transition to a new location. One of the major challenges was to document and transfer their operational procedures and values to the new location to maximize their productivity. We also aimed to address the issue of employee management by creating a comprehensive onboarding guide for new employees. Our approach focused on developing creative solutions that would solve operational and management problems, resulting in a seamless transition for the client.
Approach:
As a team, Rem and Co. tackled the challenge of promoting brand expansion and providing stability for internal operations for our client, a family-owned smokehouse BBQ restaurant. Our approach included analyzing current operations, customer Yelp reviews, and field observation to develop a comprehensive growth strategy. The three deliverables we identified as part of the strategy were establishing workplace policies, defining operational procedures, and creating a step-by-step employee training manual.
We chose Slite as our platform after thorough market research to execute this strategy. Slite's guides, resources, and templates were instrumental in improving the recruitment and retention of new employees during the onboarding process and maximizing communication between new hires and our clients. With the help of Slite, we were able to develop robust training material and a formalized policies and procedures manual that could serve as a resource for the company's expansion.
Our team was able to streamline the process and reduce the time consumption required to create and implement a comprehensive expansion strategy by building out these tasks. With the new policies and procedures manual and employee training guide, our client is now well-equipped to transfer their workplace culture to their new location and maximize productivity.
Impact:
Our partnership with the family-owned smokehouse BBQ restaurant significantly impacted our clients and the local community. Our research and deliverables provided a valuable training program that improved the hiring process and organizational structure. We created a comprehensive collection of guidelines, checklists, and job responsibilities to ensure that employees were well-informed about the restaurant's vision, values, and culture. By developing a detailed policies and procedures manual, we successfully captured and transferred our client's workplace culture to their new location, ensuring a smooth and seamless transition.
Team Breakdown:
Team Lead: Lauren Maynard
Strategist: Olivia Baker
Strategist: Kennedy Roese
Strategist: Grace Keller
Strategist: Caris Kim
Relevant Background Information:
Business Type: Minority-owned Business
Industry: Restaurant Services
Location: New Jersey
Rem and Company is a global nonprofit initiative dedicated to helping small business owners succeed. Since 2020, we’ve been on a mission to “keep doors open and dreams alive.” Through our free small business accelerator, we provide entrepreneurs worldwide with business development support, digital strategy, marketing guidance, operations consulting, financial planning, and more. Whether you're growing, pivoting, or rebuilding, Rem and Company is here to help. Join the hundreds of small businesses already benefiting from our free two-month accelerator program. Apply now.