Can you set up your business to be run by high school kids?
Yes.
Thousands of businesses are run in this way every day.
Yes – most are fast food businesses. Subway, Maccas – the list goes on and there are lessons to learn about how their success was achieved.
Take Maccas for example. They have over 38,000 outlets throughout the world, 970 of which are in Australia.
The Australian outlets change hands for multimillion sums, and they turn over a lot. Most are owned by multi-unit franchisees who own more than one outlet – usually several. And these franchise owners are usually only required to visit each outlet only once a month.
Australian Maccas’ restaurants look after 2 million customers each day, served by 100,000 local high school kids.
How do they do it?
By being:
- Amazingly consistent
- Amazingly organised
- Amazingly detailed
- Amazingly systemised with great procedures and training in place
It really is worth checking out the Ray Krock book and movie to see how it was set up and why it works so amazingly today.
When the McDonald brothers established their first burger restaurants way back in the 1940s, they knew three things.
- They were going to sell only burgers, fries, and shakes
- These were going to be sold at half the price of other restaurants
- And served in half the time
They achieved this by changing the way the restaurants were organised.
- They were self-service not table service
- Meals were pre-prepped
When Kroc took over, this focus was only enhanced. Kroc was very fixated on consistency and speed. He knew this meant he had to organise and systemise everything in detail.
For instance, he wanted the burger patties to come out the same each time as fast as possible. So, he spent time with the burger flippers in one restaurant and timed how many each flipper could cook over a set time. It became evident there was a range with one flipper turning out more burgers consistently than the others. He noted how this one person was achieving this and documented their system. The others were then taught to follow the system exactly. This was the foundation of the operations manuals and training Kroc focused on.
Today, the same detailed focus on consistency and speed is followed by every Maccas restaurant globally. Prospective franchisees are required to work unpaid in a restaurant for about a year before the Maccas franchise team will assess them for their suitability. Then when they are accepted and buy their first franchise, they go into the business already trained and know their staff absolutely must follow the Maccas processes to the letter.
Back to my original question.
Can you set up your business to be run by high school kids?
Well, yes, you can – but depending on your business profile, your staff and/or franchisees might not be high school kids J.
But there are secrets to growing your business beyond the stage where you alone are necessary to manage how it functions.
- Organisation and consistency in business is key
- Today’s business is digital
- Do franchises do it better
- Understanding delegation and the importance of procedures
- Your support office
- Training
- Managing performance
- Documenting can be tricky
- Things change and your procedures need to change too
- Celebrate your successes
We’ll cover these topics each month one by one, starting in February with the key – getting your business organised is the essential first step.
