Inner and Outer Communication Through a Restaurant

For my post this week I decided to interview Scot, who is my Proprietor at Outback Steakhouse. His number one way of how he likes to communicate is face to face. If communicating that way is not available then he chooses to communicate through telephone and through e-mails.

When Scot communicate with his boss, they are mostly through e-mails and phone calls. With his boss living in a different area and having to take care of other Outback's in the area, it is a little bit difficult for them to always meet one on one. They usually meet either once a month or once every two months. When his boss has to give him information about a new item that we will be featuring he will send him e-mails; stating when he needs to order a certain item, when he needs to send his kitchen manager to a meeting so that they may learn how to make and present that item, and the date when that item needs to come out. Important information like that one is more useful when it is presented through an e-mail, so that Scot will be able to go back and re-read that information. They will communicate through telephone when Scot's boss just needs to remind him that his invoice is due or something else that doesn't involve too much detail.

When Scot deals with his purveyors he prefers to sit down one on one with them when they come to his restaurant once a month. For example, today there was a purveyor from the Budweiser Company, who came to the restaurant. When Scot was in the office with this gentleman, he had asked Scot if he was ready to get rid of Sam Adams Boston Lager on draft and replace it with Shock Top. However, the other day when Scot was going over his draft beer numbers for last month; our highest selling draft beer was Sam Adams at 262 and with Bud Light coming in at 200 drafts sold for the month. Even though Sam Adams is our most expensive draft beer, it is the top seller draft beer. After sitting down with the gentleman and explaining to him the numbers; he agreed with Scot and how we should not get rid of Sam Adams, well at least for now.

Finally, last but not least, is how Scot communicates with his employees. When asking Scot how he feels how he communicates with his employees, he states, how he feels that he is like their parent and mentor. Scot lets all of his employees know that they can come and talk to him about anything. When his employees want to talk to him, he usually likes to do it at the end of the shift, because he then will have nothing to do and he can give that employee his undying attention. Scot likes to make all of his employees feel good about working at Outback, if Scot takes care of his employees, then his employees will take pride in doing their work. When being at work Scot knows how to talk to his employees and let them know when they are doing something wrong and when they are doing something right, he will reward us when he feels as if we deserve it, and he will let him employees move up in the work area.

Over the years from working with different managers to being a manager to becoming a proprietor and owning his own store. Scot has been able to see what works and what doesn't work. Scot loves to talk to people and meet new people and by doing that he loves to communicate face to face. Out of all of the ways to communicate, Scot chooses face to face because to him it is the most accurate and most productive way of communicating.