“We have found a formula that maximises our assets, people and menu design, creating a better and better customer experience... there is now compelling evidence that Lean works in the restaurant industry. Not only is the overall result better, but when performance drops, the team is able to react quickly and independently. The case for roll out could not be clearer. “
Craig Elwin, Senior Operations Manager, Pizza Hut Restaurants
Client’s requirements
When Pizza Hut Restaurants (PHR) in the UK began a re-imaging programme in 2014, it rightly predicted a surge in footfall. But its Management team also realised the new look would take the brand only so far.
The overall aim was to ensure that customers tempted in by the redesign would become loyal customers providing repeat business and referrals. Turner & Townsend Suiko was engaged to maximise and exploit the initial uplift in sales to drive long-term profit and growth.
Our contribution
Early analysis of Pizza Hut Restaurants identified that there were opportunities to increase guest value but individual huts had individual strengths and weaknesses, so the key to unlocking their individual opportunities would be through the teams working in each restaurant. PHR worked with us to take our operational tools and develop them for their restaurant industry.
We soon realised that by successfully empowering front-line managers to measure their key opportunities, learn to review them in an effective manner and create actions to resolve, restaurants were solving their own problems and advising the central operations teams on how things could be done better. Combining the new skills of the restaurant managers along with the knowledge of the Front of House and Back of House team members provided the winning formula to make things better with the onus of creating a permanent fix.
The strategy contributed to behavioural change across the organisation, helping to better understand and provide maximum value to customers.
“I know from experience that with over 7000 team members who have the answers to their individual restaurant opportunities, we can unleash their potential and realise their value to us and themselves instead of tightening their reins”
Suzi Marshall, Operations Director, Pizza Hut Restaurants
Turner & Townsend Suiko advised on various approaches for roll out across this large organisation and a phased approach was adopted, starting with a pilot restaurant before rolling out phases 1 and 2.
During this period, a fundamental change was seen through the adoption of the management review process. This moved Pizza Hut from remote management of ‘typical financial’ measures to local Hut management, using creative flexible drivers to create their own decisions e.g. starting to unlock profitable sales by choosing when and what food to sample to guests, whether to open earlier or later. The CI ways of working helped embed new service practices.
With the restaurants in control of their own short term decisions, they naturally needed to be responsible for developing their own longer term strategies, taking their restaurants from good to great.
The Turner & Townsend Suiko ‘Why, What, How’ tool was adapted for their business to create a system that could easily identify the opportunities for the restaurant teams, to allow them to make the right decisions about which ones to tackle first, how to do it and how much they could realistically change in one go.
The end result is a business where the frontline people are upskilled and empowered to make their own decisions for the short, medium and long term with a central operations team that supports and encourages their creativity and passion.
Pizza Hut had a strong concept with an established core operations platform and we helped them to achieve 4% sales growth by giving their teams the framework to channel this energy and giving them absolute permission to pursue it!
Results
- Pizza Hut soon realised that the approach held the key to not only their financial results, but their in-store practices too.
- The performance of the initial test hut gave PHR the confidence that this was the right thing to do.
- By March 2018, results from approximately 100 restaurants showed the programme had helped deliver 4% sales growth. Which if scaled across all restaurants would generate over £3 million annualised profit.
- Team member attrition reduced by 10% as a result of the greater contribution they were empowered to help deliver within the restaurants.
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