Are you looking to expand your knowledge on the franchising industry? Look no further than Eye On Franchising, the podcast that provides a wealth of information and resources about franchise opportunities. In our latest episode, we sit down with Alan Rogers, the VP of Organizational Learning and Development for Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap, to discuss training and development in franchising. Rogers shares his personal journey into franchising and his experiences in the field, including his role as a field consultant for McDonald's. We also touch on the important role of franchise consultants and the benefits of investing in the restaurant business. Additionally, we discuss the importance of training and support for franchisees, including the use of micro learning and technology for employee training. Join us as we dive deep into the world of franchising and learn from the experts. Don't miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights and expertise. Like, follow, and subscribe to Eye On Franchising today. - VP of Organizational Learning & Development for Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap discusses training & development in franchising industry- Role of franchise consultants in supporting franchisees- Importance of training for franchise success- Investing in restaurant business & recruiting staff- Micro learning & gamification in training- Use of technology for employee training- Training process for Brass Tap franchisees- Importance of training & support for franchise owners- RFC team works to support franchisees & achieve 100% success- Advantages of choosing a franchise over starting a business- Chief Development Officer of Beef O'Brady's and The Brass Tap discusses importance of understanding struggles during pandemic- Call to action for audience to like, follow, and subscribe. KEY POINTS [0:0:16] Discover how Ion Franchising can help you unlock your potential and find the perfect franchise for you, tailored to your individual investment level, mindset, skill set and life experiences - for FREE! [0:1:26] Driven by ambition, Alan has achieved remarkable success, rapidly progressing from store manager to Vice President of Organizational Learning and Development for two premier franchising companies: Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap. [0:4:12] By choosing a franchise over going out on your own, you can leverage pre-established systems, reliable vendors, and comprehensive training materials to confidently launch your business. [0:7:39] Leadership is critical for success: As a team leader, it is essential to eliminate obstacles, inspire team members, and empower them with the tools necessary to reach their goals and ensure the success of franchisees. [0:9:57] With a team of experienced experts, the VP of Learning & Development provides franchisees with the powerful tools they need for success, leveraging their operational background to create comprehensive training and development plans. [0:17:6] Experience a unique and exciting night out with 45-60 craft beers on tap and a creative menu at Brass Tap, the perfect destination for those looking for a family-friendly sports bar atmosphere! [0:20:56] Our expert regional franchise consultants provide comprehensive business planning and on-site restaurant visits, to ensure flawless menu and service execution. [0:22:41] Research has shown that by leveraging micro-learning and gamification methods with video-based, condensed content, training can become significantly more engaging and up to 80% more effective. [0:25:0] QR codes are revolutionizing employee training, allowing learners to absorb information up to four times faster than traditional methods! [0:27:5] With the right learning management system, training can be tracked and managed quickly and efficiently, saving time and money. [0:40:33] Running a successful franchise business requires consistent operations - and the RFC is critical to guaranteeing that customers receive the same high-quality menu and service at every location. [0:44:52] Transform your life and unlock new possibilities with a simple click - like, follow, and subscribe now to stay connected with us on social media! --- Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising
Are you looking to expand your knowledge on the franchising industry? Look no further than Eye On Franchising, the podcast that provides a wealth of information and resources about franchise opportunities. In our latest episode, we sit down with Alan Rogers, the VP of Organizational Learning and Development for Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap, to discuss training and development in franchising. Rogers shares his personal journey into franchising and his experiences in the field, including his role as a field consultant for McDonald's. We also touch on the important role of franchise consultants and the benefits of investing in the restaurant business. Additionally, we discuss the importance of training and support for franchisees, including the use of micro learning and technology for employee training.
Join us as we dive deep into the world of franchising and learn from the experts. Don't miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights and expertise. Like, follow, and subscribe to Eye On Franchising today.
- VP of Organizational Learning & Development for Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap discusses training & development in franchising industry
- Role of franchise consultants in supporting franchisees
- Importance of training for franchise success
- Investing in restaurant business & recruiting staff
- Micro learning & gamification in training
- Use of technology for employee training
- Training process for Brass Tap franchisees
- Importance of training & support for franchise owners
- RFC team works to support franchisees & achieve 100% success
- Advantages of choosing a franchise over starting a business
- Chief Development Officer of Beef O'Brady's and The Brass Tap discusses importance of understanding struggles during pandemic
- Call to action for audience to like, follow, and subscribe.
KEY POINTS
[0:0:16] Discover how Ion Franchising can help you unlock your potential and find the perfect franchise for you, tailored to your individual investment level, mindset, skill set and life experiences - for FREE!
[0:1:26] Driven by ambition, Alan has achieved remarkable success, rapidly progressing from store manager to Vice President of Organizational Learning and Development for two premier franchising companies: Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap.
[0:4:12] By choosing a franchise over going out on your own, you can leverage pre-established systems, reliable vendors, and comprehensive training materials to confidently launch your business.
[0:7:39] Leadership is critical for success: As a team leader, it is essential to eliminate obstacles, inspire team members, and empower them with the tools necessary to reach their goals and ensure the success of franchisees.
[0:9:57] With a team of experienced experts, the VP of Learning & Development provides franchisees with the powerful tools they need for success, leveraging their operational background to create comprehensive training and development plans.
[0:17:6] Experience a unique and exciting night out with 45-60 craft beers on tap and a creative menu at Brass Tap, the perfect destination for those looking for a family-friendly sports bar atmosphere!
[0:20:56] Our expert regional franchise consultants provide comprehensive business planning and on-site restaurant visits, to ensure flawless menu and service execution.
[0:22:41] Research has shown that by leveraging micro-learning and gamification methods with video-based, condensed content, training can become significantly more engaging and up to 80% more effective.
[0:25:0] QR codes are revolutionizing employee training, allowing learners to absorb information up to four times faster than traditional methods!
[0:27:5] With the right learning management system, training can be tracked and managed quickly and efficiently, saving time and money.
[0:40:33] Running a successful franchise business requires consistent operations - and the RFC is critical to guaranteeing that customers receive the same high-quality menu and service at every location.
[0:44:52] Transform your life and unlock new possibilities with a simple click - like, follow, and subscribe now to stay connected with us on social media!
---
Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA
---
Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising
Lance 00:00:00 Welcome to Eye on Franchising. Are you looking for business opportunities? Well, you are in the right place. We represent over 650 franchises and business opportunities. We will help you find your perfect franchise for free. We even have a free assessment on our website that will help us determine what the best businesses for you based on your investment level mindset, skill set, and life experiences. This is Ion Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. I'm your host, Lance Graulich. Each week we will speak to fascinating folks from the world of franchising, franchisors and founders, franchise funders and franchisees. Are you looking to find your perfect franchise? Or perhaps you are an independent business owner looking to grow and scale your business by setting up a franchise. Either way, our team can help you Eye on Franchising, where you will learn the A to Z's of franchise. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another fabulous episode of Ion Franchising. You might know me. I'm your host, Lance Graulich. So in the world of franchising, we have successful franchisees that get to tell you how it's done. And we have all kinds of executives, founders and top executives of different brands. Today I have a guy that is phenomenal. He's been in the world of training and development. He's the VP of Organizational Learning and Development for Beef O'Brady's and Brass Tap. Welcome to the show, Mr. Alan Rogers.
Alan 00:01:44 Yeah. Thanks, Lance. Really excited about being here. Thanks for having me on.
Lance 00:01:48 it is my pleasure, Alan. today we're going to talk all about training and operations and organizational learning and development. So let's start off. Let's go, way back, way back. What did Alan want to be when he was in school and how did you end up in the crazy world of franchising?
Alan 00:02:08 Yeah, so when I was going through school, I always wanted to be kind ah of a business leader. I loved, always looking at people that were in charge of business and just always thought that was great. And that was where I wanted to head. And I started off, in high school, working for a small McDonalds franchisee. They were kind of family friends. My brother worked, uh, for them through, college and high school, and I started working with them in high school. had a family at a young age and that's what really kind of made the decision of, like, hey, I probably ought to put full time efforts I was going to school. But as far as career wise, I put my efforts into being a business leader for restaurants. And I got promoted to store manager my freshman year of college.
Lance 00:03:01 Wow, that was quick.
Alan 00:03:02 Yeah, it really was. So I was a shift manager before I graduated high school, and then, they expanded by one store when I was a freshman, offered me the job as store manager and was, going to school and working and after about four or five years of being a store manager there, their daughter was the supervisor. And we only had four stores. And I was like, well, they're probably never going to fire her. So if I want to move up, I'm probably going to have to go somewhere else. so I went into retail management. Actually was with retail, uh, for six years, about six and a half. Toys R US for five, target for a year and a half. And various, store leadership positions. and then McDonald's came calling back, to be a field consultant for him.
Lance 00:03:53 Love it.
Alan 00:03:54 Yeah. I always thought when I was a store manager, that guy has the coolest job. He goes store to store. He's helping these, entrepreneurs, these small, business owners, be successful. He'd come in, do training classes for us. And I was like, I'm all into that.
Lance 00:04:12 for those listening, a lot of people are listening and wondering, is a franchise right for them? I have a lot of people that tell me, I don't know if I need a franchise, I might be able to do things on my own. So describe that. Field consultant is someone that's responsible really for the success of individual McDonald's stores. They're assigned a certain amount of franchisees that they're following up with on a regular basis. I mean, every franchise has something like that. But describe exactly a little bit further, a little more detail what you were doing.
Alan 00:04:46 Yeah. So you're kind of the primary contact and the conduit between the franchisee and all the resources that a corporation or a company has to support their franchisees. So obviously you've got marketing. You've got it. Construction, development, training, purchasing. Purchasing. So that franchise consultant works with the individual franchisees in their restaurants on how to be more profitable, how to run a better restaurant. And they're bringing that expertise because, they usually have a lot of operational expertise and they're bringing that, but they also help line up the other resources. so if they think, hey, we need to do a local store marketing plan, they're going to go to the subject matter experts within the company and they're going to help facilitate those meetings between the franchisee and the company. Like here, uh, with beef O'Brady's and, uh, brass tab. We have a great, uh, CMO, been a CMO for 18 years. And it's phenomenal. We have a field marketing department. So you got all those resources there. And that's what that franchise business consultant, or um, McDonald's called them field consultants when I was there. I think now they call them franchise partners, success coaches. They're helping you in every facet of the business. whether it's managing your profitability, helping coach and train your team. They'll come to us, uh, here, and we'll put on maybe a ServeSafe class. Or we'll go out and do some prescriptive training on how to run better food cost or leadership training. When you're buying into a franchise, you're not just buying the name on the sign, you're buying all the resources that come with that brand. And I always thought that was the coolest job and that's kind of how I got back into restaurants, ufrom retail.
Lance 00:06:50 I love it. Yeah. If somebody was five, hundred pounds and wanted to lose weight, they're going to hire, a personal trainer I hope, because it's that important. In addition to a nutritionist who knows a functional medicine doctor, you never know. And really that is what, u that success coach or franchise field consultant? Franchise business consultant is in franchising. And it's so important. Kind of like the Navy Seals. You go in, you have a niche, you really need to improve and fix and take care of problems. But hopefully on a proactive basis, you're making sure there aren't too many fires ever to put out. Right?
Alan 00:07:34 Yeah, I think that it's real important that the, RFCs is what we call them here. And they schedule routine business meetings with the franchisees to evaluate their business, talk about what their goals are, develop action plans for helping you meet those. But we're also involved early on when a franchisee first identified, we help them if they need help, uh, doing a business plan. If you're going to go and get an SBA loan, they're going to require you to turn in a business plan. And so a lot of people maybe haven't ever really done that, especially for a restaurant. And so we've got the expertise to help people out with that too. And that's where that RFC is, helping out from the very beginning. they partner with the franchisees well before they open their restaurant.
Lance 00:08:24 Love it. Well that's all wonderful stuff. All right, so restaurants, McDonald's, retail, let's fast forward what's next on your resume.
Alan 00:08:35 Yeah, so actually probably the last ten years, well, I guess I would say ten of the last eleven and a half. Had two stints at Huddle House. Corporation. one is Director of Op Services and also had field training for some years with that was there five years went and actually was a brand president for a really large Wingstop franchisee group and uh, they were selling their investment. Huddle House recruited me back and I was there for the last five years as a Senior Director of Training and Development and Op Services. And then got recruited to come on, uh, this opportunity, which I think is a fantastic opportunity to be vice President.
Lance 00:09:21 I love it. So Vice President of Organizational Learning and Development. So talk a little bit about what encompasses that fancy title, all that you do, and then for those listening after that, talk about describe Brass Tapo Brady's.
Alan 00:09:40 Yeah, it definitely has the most letters of any title I've had in there. So I usually just, boil it down to, uh, VP of L and D, uh, uh, but that's really what it's about is training and development. And I really bring my operational, uh, background into how we form, our training plans and our development plans and what tools and resources. I think that's one of the kind of unique things, is that I spent, the first half of my career in all Ops based, whether it was company Ops, franchise Ops, and then got into training later in it. And it was mainly due to, the fact that I developed really good teams and we were really successful from that. And eventually leadership started saying, hey, that guy, he knows how to develop people. Let's have him develop the programs that develop people. And so really, that's what we do is I've got a fantastic training team here one of the things that really excited me about the opportunity. We've got a professional videographer on the team. We got a professional instructional design person. We've got three really great, experienced, uh, uh, field trainers that are a kitchen expert. our bar in front of the house, he's a Cicero, a level two Cicero, which is like a Salmonier for wine beer. Yeah, he's that on the beer side. It's amazing just to listen to the guy. He talks about so much stuff. I'm like, I'm learning so much about beer, just by being around him. So we've got a phenomenal team that's really well rounded, and we go out, we listen to the field about, hey, what is it that they need help with or what do they think would make them more successful. And then we build tools around that using everybody's expertise.
Lance 00:11:46 Alan it's exciting because I'm an old Ops guy, I own Wingstops and Krispy Kreme donut shops and created my own brands as well. So living in restaurant operations, and I don't care whether it's a restaurant or a, home services brand, it's amazing. I am hearing your passion and your excitement for training and ensuring that people are successful in their business. I mean, people are putting their hard earned money into a business. And whether it's beef O'Brady's or brass tap, your job is to make them successful and make sure they get their really good ROI. And some people are going to be outrageously successful because that's just the nature of some people's personalities and competitive nature. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a second. Describe befo brady's. What is bifo, Brady's? For those listening that do not know as well as breast tap?
Alan 00:12:42 Yeah, so Bifo Brady's, and we're going into our, 38th year with Bifo Brady's.
Lance 00:12:47 I knew it was around a long time.
Alan 00:12:49 Yeah. And so just, ah, a really great, uh, brand that it's really a family sports bar concept. and it's where you can bring the whole family. Dad can have a beer, mom can have a glass of wine. The kids there's actually some games. there, it's got a restaurant layout. It's family oriented, uh, as far as the concept there goes. So it's really a great family atmosphere in a lot of towns that we're in. We're the only game in town and for sports bar and people can bring their whole family in in a lot of cases. We're gate night, too, in the towns that we're in, we're in big towns, we're in smaller towns. kind of the franchisees that person that really wants to kind of own their town and be the person that provides the gathering place for families in their, town. Love it concept. And then the Brass Tap side, it's a bar. and now it does have full liquor, beer, wine. It also has menu, um, options. Not as many as Beefo Brady's does, but it's got some really great, more like kind of gastro pub. A little bit of a menu there that's a little really creative. Small bite menus. Does have entrees as well. But it's a bar, it's got a great vibe.
Lance 00:14:22 And how many beers on tap?
Alan 00:14:24 Typically? Typically 60. Yeah. So somewhere between 45 and 60 we've got a beer database, because we have to enter in everything into our It system and our beer database. The other day they said we have over 42,000 beers that have been into our system. Because with that Brass TAC concept, you really want to get those local, uh, breweries on your menu. So we work with the franchisees on helping them get the local brews, uhon their menu.
Lance 00:15:02 I know a little bit of something about beer and I know there's hard to get kegs. They might make, certain bourbon barrel age beer and they might only make like 50 kegs locally. You want to get on that list so you can promote the heck out of the fact that you have that special,, keg or whatever.
Alan 00:15:24 Absolutely. Yeah. There's sometimes, like you said, they might only make five of something. We have that relationship where we're going to get like three of the five. And so it really,is a great opportunity to, come in and really be the bar of choice in your community there. Really exciting. The way that I actually got exposed to the concept was at my last job, we had a quarterly meeting where I brought my whole team in and we wanted to go someplace, fun, for dinner that had a great environment. And we went to the Brass Tap, in Atlanta, Georgia and had a phenomenal time and I was really surprised at how great even the food was and everybody was amazed at all the taps and everything.
Lance 00:16:15 Yeah, it wasn't just bar food. I've eaten there as well. It's great food.
Alan 00:16:19 Yeah. This is a, uh, really cool concept. Great vibe, great energy, uh, and then coincidentally, like a month or two later, a recruiter reached out to me about it and I was like, hey, I'm all for that. That was a great meal, great concept, love it.
Lance 00:16:36 So let's talk a little bit about recruiting. Before we talk about staff, let's talk about franchisees. Who are the ideal franchisees? You're new, you've been there a couple of months. Um, but who are typically the ideal franchisees for either Brass Tap or Beef O'Brady's? Is there something similar or not, for that matter?
Alan 00:17:01 Yeah, there are similarities, um, and there are some differences. On the Brass Tap side, it's a newer, younger, little more hip concept as far as energy and vibe, it's late night hours, so, uh, typically you might have a little bit of a younger, um, franchisee.
Lance 00:17:22 Younger and less families.
Alan 00:17:24 Yeah, exactly. And then on the Beef side, you, uh, might have that kind of more of an established, um, more mature franchisee. Not that our, uh, brass Staples aren't established and immature, but uh, as far as demographically, you might see a little bit older person doing that. They're really kind of more of a leader in their community and really going to open up a restaurant that's for families in their area. So a little bit different as far as kind, uh, of what type of restaurant or bar that you're wanting to invest in. If you're wanting to invest in more of a family restaurant, uh, you're going to invest in Beefo Brady's. If you want to have that bar in your area, you're going to invest in Brass Tap.
Lance 00:18:15 Got it. Now, uh, let's talk about recruiting staff. A lot of people still talking about there's people out there that don't want to work a little bit harder to find staff maybe, than it was in the past. So, uh, what are your, uh, tips and tricks for that? Being in the restaurant business for as long as you have been?
Alan 00:18:35 Yeah, I think the first thing you got to do is you got to always be recruiting and not just uh, external people, but you got to be uh, continuing to recruit your internal people and retain them and describe that when.
Lance 00:18:50 You talk about recruiting internal people.
Alan 00:18:53 Yeah, I think that it's. Finding out, hey, what do they want in a workplace? What are they looking for? What are their goals? You got to be a lot more flexible nowadays. So what are their scheduling needs, what are their family needs? And then also just getting to, uh, know and care about them. That way they see that, hey, this isn't just a job. That's not just my employer, but that's somebody that cares about me, cares about my family, cares about my situation. And then the other part is helping them develop, uh, into being a leader, if that's their goal. Sometimes in, uh, today's world, people, they just want a job and not a career. But there's a lot of people that want a career, too. And so you got to be able to provide both of those, uh, kind of career paths or kind of tracks for each one. If somebody wants to just be a great server, a great bartender, a great cook, hey, we need those all day long. But if they want to be a manager, if they want to run their own restaurant, we've got a leadership, uh, development program that we're building out. It's one of my biggest priorities coming, uh, to both of the brands is to help really build out a, uh, develop from within leadership development program so that we can take somebody that wants to move up through all the different levels and have a leadership module for them. From going from hourly employee to keyholder, uh, keyholder to shift lead shift to assistant, assistant to GM, and then eventually an above restaurant leadership development program as well. Um love it. That's a great way of recruiting right there, keeping the people that you got.
Lance 00:20:42 Yeah, you have a lot of responsibility in learning and development. And, uh, again, when people talk about franchise, uh, versus doing their own thing, I mean, look, how do you compete with the depth of knowledge and experience of yourself? And I'm sure everybody in operations and these franchise business consultants. You mentioned that one of the priorities was building out that program. What else? I mean, when you come into an organization, you've been doing this forever in franchising, what else did you notice? I mean, building out the sort of succession planning and development like you were just describing. Um, talk a little bit more about that, because you mentioned the videographer earlier, and it struck me. It hit me because I'm 56, I've been in franchising, in restaurants virtually my entire life. And I remember at Krispy Kreme Donuts them handing us, um, VHS tapes and a big fat manual that looked like it was the biggest three ring binder I've ever seen in my life. Right there wasn't even email or nobody knew anything about YouTube for a video, even if you're going to create your own and now there's learning management systems out there. Everybody could learn from their phone. Talk a little bit about that, um, as to how things have changed and what you're doing for beef O'Brady's and brass tap in that department.
Alan 00:22:15 Yeah, I got to tell you, I love, uh, that's one of my passions, too, is innovation and training and using technology. And that's something, like I mentioned, excited me about here, was because of the expertise of some of the team that we have with an instructional design person and with, uh, a professional videographer is we can really create a lot of kind of micro learning that's more video based. You, uh, look at, um, some of the trends for training, and two big ones are micro learning and gamification, and.
Lance 00:22:52 Describe micro learning a little bit, a little bit more.
Alan 00:22:55 So micro learning is just taking your, uh, material and really condensing it down to just small bytes. Uh, nowadays you've got to really appeal, uh, to, uh, your people a lot quicker. You got to keep them engaged. I read a statistic the other day that 80% of Internet traffic is video now. And you think about like, instagram reels TikTok, and everybody's getting their learnings through small bytes of video. And so that's kind of what micro learning is now. It doesn't have video based, but just smaller bytes. It could be. One of the things that, uh, we're playing around with is through our LMS is just sending down LMS is a.
Lance 00:23:43 Learning management system for those of you playing along at home.
Alan 00:23:46 Sorry about that. Yeah. Learning management system, which ours is phenomenal because it does have a mobile component to it, so people can do it on their phone. Not all LMS have that, uh, but ours does. And we can push down notifications, like, we could push down to all servers. A quick five question survey, every week that just hits on a few key points for them to learn. And that's what micro learning is. It's just small bites of learning, that really help develop people. So, uh, you've got probably anywhere from a couple of minutes to no more than ten or 15 minutes that you got to, uh, kind of get people engaged in.
Lance 00:24:31 Great.
Alan 00:24:31 Yeah. And one of the cool things that we're doing with it, and, this is something we had done, uh, by Huddle House. we also had, seen it at, some other brands, and that's video, uh, learning with QR codes. so you mentioned, like, hey, how is it really, what some of the innovations that happen? So what we're doing is we're taking our video, of our chef making products perfectly. And then we're embedding that video into a QR code and putting it on a, uh, training material, visual training aid at the station. So right where they're making the product, somebody can pull out their mobile phone or smart device, click on it. We timelapse that video down to where it's only about 45 seconds to a minute, and they can watch our chef make it perfectly. It's got text overlay, uh, so if you're an adult learner who learns more by reading, you can read it versus just watching it. And, it really helps with getting people to productivity faster. And one of the other things that it really addresses, and this was one of the, uh, real reasons that we looked at it as a solution for some of our training, is that now, as you mentioned, it's harder to get people, and you got less people. And the workforce is also less experienced now. So you might not have that person that's been in your kitchen for 15 years. That when every new person starts, they get paired up with that person for a day. You don't have that. So now if we're shorthanded and that trainee is having to kind of get to productivity a little bit quicker, they can still get that training on every product by just watching, clicking on the QR code and watching the person make it, uh, there perfectly for them. So they get that training right there and it's right at the point of production too. They don't have to worry about watching it on a video and then 2 hours later have to come out and remember it.
Lance 00:26:38 I remember I was laughing. I remember when I was with TGI. Friday's restaurants in the late eighty s. And every location had that one individual, or possibly two that had that heritage knowledge or that historical knowledge. They've been there so long and they were like the, thesaurus or dictionary of all this great information. Well, those days are gone. And that it can all be reduced down to great videos and learning, management system with assessments. After you watch each video, take a quick assessment to gain or gauge what you've actually learned. That you are actually paying attention, that you actually retain some information. Technology is a beautiful thing, huh?
Alan 00:27:29 Yeah, absolutely. It really helps out, it helps us with tracking training, making sure we can see how many people have ah, completed each module, how long it took them to complete it, how many days into training did they complete it. And then we can also put all of our resources onto that LMS system and they can have access to it immediately. And what really makes it cool, when you go back to that big, huge three ring binder that you had when they changed procedures, how long before they reprinted that and got that back out to restaurants? Right. So now, if we change something, we can just do a search and replace, just go, hey, search for this word, replace it with this word, or search for this time. So you get a lot of great information that can be readily updated and out to your whole system instantaneously.
Lance 00:28:28 So let's talk a little bit about the training process overall. So let's just use Brass tap as an example. If somebody becomes a brass tap franchisee, when do you actually get involved with them in your department? How does that work? And all the way up until getting them open.
Alan 00:28:45 Yeah, so we get involved. So one, you're going to come through at the very beginning when you're looking at getting a brass tap franchise. You're going to come to what we call Discovery Day and you're going to get to meet all the different team leaders and they're going to talk you through the whole process of what our department does, what each department does, what they do, how they support you as a franchisee. And then I specifically talk through what your training program is going to look like, what your manager's training program is going to look like, and then what your opening is going to look like from a pre opening of store setup, training your hourly employees, the post, uh, opening training that we do. So we go through that whole thing, uh, just when you're looking at buying it so you know what you're getting into and what your responsibilities will be and what our responsibilities are and what we do for you. And then once you do sign, you kind of go through an orientation where we cover that again. And then you'll come to a training.so either yourself or, your operator and an assistant manager, it's typically.
Lance 00:29:57 At least two people, right?
Alan 00:29:58 Yeah, we want uh, two people you can send more. If you want to send a third person or a fourth person, you can. And like I said, if you're not going to be operating the store on a day to day basis, you do need to have a general manager and assistant manager. If you're going to be the operating uh, partner, or the person that's going to run the restaurant, then bring an assistant with you. And uh, you go through a four week training program. We have, like I mentioned before, kind of our kitchen expert, our um, bar expert, and a uh, management, training expert who's a manager of MIT training. that manager of MIT training is going to shepherd you through the whole training program. You're going to have some days where you do at our, um, office where you're learning kind of back of the house functions as far as computer system functions, scheduling, ordering all those things, managing your PNL, uservice.
Lance 00:30:59 When does the tasting beer come in?
Alan 00:31:02 That comes in at Discovery Day, actually. So you get to go out and taste them and see what you're getting into. But yeah, we do a four ah day just, uh, very immersive, training into bar and beer.
Lance 00:31:18 Immersive bar and beer training sign in.
Alan 00:31:21 Yeah, it's done by our head, bartender training at Front of the House trainer. he's the Cicero that I mentioned. So you're getting trained by the experts in our brands there. So we call our kitchen expert, who's our manager of Back of the House Training. He's, uh, the one that's going to train you on or get you started on Back of the House Training. Obviously, when you're cooking in a restaurant, you'll have the line cooks working with you, depending on what station you're working. But our manager of Back of the House Training is going to be there, shepherding you through that portion. Our bar trainer is going to shepherd you through that. And then our manager of MIT training is taking you through all the management development, uthere as well. So when you come out, you've got a great knowledge base of brass tap as well as. How to run a profitable restaurant.
Lance 00:32:19 And I would imagine most people, are sending a GM type that,, has some restaurant experience, but most owners probably don't. Is that fair to say?
Alan 00:32:31 Yeah, that would be, pretty typical. Yeah. They're hiring, restaurant people or bar people to run the bars and the restaurants. A lot of them are, though. They're involved. And you need to be because you got to be able to follow up on that. Because in the end, the people you hire, it's not their money, that's tied up in the investment. They're not the ones making the loan payments.
Lance 00:32:56 No, and that's a great point. I mean, look, I have a buddy that owns a whole bunch of Great Clips hair salons, and he doesn't know how to cut hair. He doesn't even have hair. But he was trained by Great Clips to understand the business of the business.
Alan 00:33:11 Right.
Lance 00:33:13 Smart people can figure that out. And I'm sure that's the same with Brass tap and Beef O'Brady's.
Alan 00:33:18 Yes, we have a program where if you're not going to be the, operating partner, you come for some training, there that's really specific to learning the systems, the, websites that you would go on and be able to follow up on your food cost, your labor cost, all those things.
Lance 00:33:39 So tell me once you, obviously support the heck out of people with training, you open the store. Let's talk about the follow up. How does that follow up work? We talked a lot earlier about McDonald's and franchise business consultants. How are you guys doing it with Beefo brady's and brass tap? We have franchise business, regional franchise consultants.
Alan 00:34:06 That's it. Regional franchise consultants. So you're, uh, assigned one of the ones that we have. We have several that are in geographic areas, and they come out, they'll meet with you, regularly as far as business planning goes. But then they also just have kind of restaurant visits that they schedule with you where they're just going to come out and kind of also help you with evaluating operations, how well you're doing with menu, execution, service execution, those kind of things.
Lance 00:34:40 Is that like the old QSC, quality service, cleanliness, all that good stuff?
Alan 00:34:46 Yeah, absolutely. Every brand's kind of got that where they got to follow up. I mean, that is some of that RFC's job is making sure and it's part of being a franchisee and a franchise or is you want to make sure people are consistently operating because, you want them if they go into Beef O'Brady's in one city and go down, uh, two states over and go to another beef O'Brady's. You want them to have the same experience as far as the quality of menu, the quality of service? Now, we don't want to be robotic in our service, but we want to make sure that we're being engaging and making that relationship and connection with the guests, uh, there the RFC is going to be out there always supporting the restaurants. They're 100% field based, so, uh, they're always out in the restaurant supporting. And like I said, each of our departments we know, hey, if an RFC contacts us about something, that's a priority, that we make sure we develop whatever plan and get the resource that the franchisees need. When you walk into our corporate, uh, office here, in Florida, the first thing that greets you is a big blackboard that has our Vision 100% Franchisee Success, and it's signed by our CEO. Uand so everybody knows when you come to work every day, that's our goal. That's not just for when the franchisees come and see it. That's when I walk in every day, I have to pass that board, too, and know that that's our Vision 100%.
Lance 00:36:21 Franchisee Success is an amazing goal. Alan, talk a little bit more about your responsibilities in your department. How many people are reporting to you, uh, and what do you do all day?
Alan 00:36:33 Yeah, so I've got six people on the team that are direct reports. And my job is with them is to one kind of stay out of their way a little bit, because they're all great at doing their job. But the other part is to eliminate barriers for them. So if they've got any kind of barrier, my job is to help eliminate that. And then I like to think, uh, that the other part is really kind of helping motivate them and just, help them be successful and develop. So just like developing people in the store, I want to know my people's goals and really work with them on helping them achieve, what they would like to achieve. So that's one part of being a team leader. But then for the brands, our job is always, how do we build a better mousetrap? So we're always looking at what do we need to do to develop a program or a resource or material to, help support the restaurant? So I spend a lot of time out in the field, gathering information directly from the end users, because I can think that a program is great. I can take it on, our LMS system, a module, and think, oh, man, that's fantastic. But if the servers and cooks don't think it's fantastic, it doesn't do us any good. So I always think, get out in the field, get what they think, about what do we need to do? What do we need to help provide for them to be, successful?
Lance 00:38:12 I was going to ask you, I would imagine you getting out in the field, your team out in the field, talking to existing franchisees, their staff, to understand what are the challenges, what do you need, what are the tools? That was always my question. What are the tools? Give them all the tools to be successful.
Alan 00:38:32 Exactly. And how do they use them? And is that how we, uh, have designed them or do we need to change it based on how they utilize the tool? that is, the majority of my job is coming up with, hey, what is it that the field needs that we can be successful and then utilizing the strengths of the people on our team to help develop that tool.
Lance 00:38:58 So let me ask you why you've been in franchising forever. Why do you like franchising so much? And for those listening that are not sure if they should even explore franchise do their own thing, whatever, why franchise?
Alan 00:39:13 Yeah. So,I'll kind of answer the second part first and then the first part second. So if you're thinking, hey, should I go out on my own or should I do a franchise? Here's why I think you should lean, more towards finding a franchise or and go with a franchise is, again, kind of like I mentioned earlier, you're not just buying the name on the sign and that name on the sign. Usually if they're a franchise or that name, it's got already a proof of concept. With, Beep O'Brady's, we've had over 30 years of test of concept. A lot of restaurants open up, they're successful and they can't always evolve each year. They don't have the menu innovation behind they don't have the vendor relationships behind them. to help them be successful. You don't have to develop, training materials. If you go with, a, beef O'Brady's or brass tap. We're doing all that for you. We got a professional videographer that's going to show our chef showing how to cook that product perfectly. You don't have to be the one showing all your people that if you go out on your own, you are biting off all of that. You're, your local store marketer, you're having to develop all your systems. Here we've got, uh, 30 plus of our own. Bifo Brady's, the guy that runs our vice president of company operations, he's been doing it for over 15 years. So he knows how to run profitable, restaurants. And he's a great resource to our franchisees.
Lance 00:40:56 I love that you guys have your own corporate locations. I was talking to somebody about that yesterday. And I like when franchisors operate a few of their own restaurants.
Alan 00:41:07 Yeah.
Lance 00:41:07 Because it's very important, you understand, especially during the pandemic, you understand what everybody's going through, during unprecedented times. Important.
Alan 00:41:19 Exactly. You understand what the struggles are. We know as well as anybody what the struggles of hiring and retention are. I can go out and meet with our store teams and say, okay, hey, how do you use this? What's the most impactful training materials that you have? What do you use the most? And then we can design things around that. So I don't have to just develop a program, send it out, and not have any feedback. I get instant feedback. We test stuff in our company restaurants, uh, before we put it into the system. Because if something's going to not, work, we'd rather it not work in a company restaurant than in a franchisee restaurant.
Lance 00:42:05 Absolutely.
Alan 00:42:06 We've got our own testing grounds, we've got our own resources, and, the other thing is we can share, we're more apt to share our financials, uh, at the store levels, with franchisees than other franchisees would be. U if a franchisee is struggling with food costs, we'll say, hey, here's what our food costs are, here's what our labor costs, our outside service costs. So we're willing to share all that to help make people successful.
Lance 00:42:37 Transparency is a wonderful thing. Well, Alan, final thoughts, final words of wisdom for those, uh, listening curious on the edge of their seats, about Brass Tap, about Beef O'Brady's, about franchising in general. Share your thoughts.
Alan 00:42:54 Yeah, I would say, we've got two great concepts that serve, I think, the entire kind of market. You got the hip, young, cool vibe of the Brass Tap Bar. and then you've got the family restaurant, uh, and Beef O'Brady. So, I think they're both great, opportunities, but even more so than that is the leadership team. When I came on board here, that was, one of the things that was really, inspired me was if you look at our CEO, has been the CEO here for 13 years, our COO has been the COO for six years. I already mentioned the CMO has been here for 15, our VP of Ops, 15. We've got a great culture. And that culture, not just here at the office, it goes through our system because it's something that our CEO and our leadership team, really breathes, every day. So that goes down through the rest of our system there. So I would say, hey, we're a great place to look. And whichever way you go, one of the things I would say is just really make sure you're listening to your people and helping them achieve their goals. That's what made me successful and that's what helped me get to where I'm at. And I would love to be able to help other people get to where, achieve their goals.
Lance 00:44:18 Great advice. Well, Alan Rogers, thank you so much for spending some time with me and, look forward to talking again.
Alan 00:44:24 Yes, sounds great. Thank you for having me.
Lance 00:44:27 Bye. Bye.
Alan 00:44:28 Bye.
Lance 00:44:28 Thank you very much for listening today. Please like follow and subscribe. This is Lance Graulich. until next time. Thank you very much for listening today. Please like follow and subscribe. This is Lance Graulich. Until next time.