Amanda Goldberg, Emma Smith, Kelsi Feriend, and Tara Bierman

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Table of Contents

3 ……………………………………………… Client Paper

5 ……………………………………………… Needs Assessment Paper

17 ……………………………………………… Objectives Paper

Client Paper

“To ensure that every guest has an amazing experience and is excited to come back.” This is the motto of the Alamo Drafthouse, a relatively new company that offers the ultimate en-tertainment experience. As a full-service bar, restaurant, and movie theater, guests can transform an average “date night” into an unforgettable experience. Servers fly through the rows, unseen, delivering food and drinks and grabbing guest’s orders — written on order cards provided at their seat — and ensuring an amazing experience. The franchise was developed by Tim League and his wife in 1997, and has developed from a single-screen movie theater to a quickly expand-ing entertainment staple. Our client — whose location opened in November 2013 – is located at 180 Portage St. in Kalamazoo, MI, but has 16 other locations spanning the country, including: 10 in Texas, one in Colorado, and five across the Midwest. At the Alamo Drafthouse, guests are of-fered a broad spectrum of customizable experiences that can accommodate the quiet movie-goer and the avid entertainment extremist alike. Guests can catch a screening of a new release or their favorite 1980s rom-com, or dance and sing along with the cast of Grease, or The Sound of Music at one of Alamo’s specialty programs. Worried about talkers? No need; Mr. League devoted the development of his business to creating the ideal atmosphere for movie lovers: no unaccompa-nied children, no talking, and no texting. If guests are not in the mood for a movie, Alamo has programming for them, too! The lobby is a warm, inviting space where trivia tournaments and card games are played every Monday and Wednesday evening. This franchise also prides itself in utilizing the resources around its locations, taking advantage of local breweries, farms, and cof-fee shops. Guests will find featured favorites from Bell’s Brewery, Founder’s, Short’s Brewing Co., Water Street Coffee, and many other local businesses. Finding a meal to enjoy won’t be too difficult at “The Alamo,” as they offer a wide selection ranging from burgers and pizzas to salads and wraps. There are vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options for those guests with dietary re-strictions.

Alamo Drafthouse hires a wide array of community members, from high school gradu-ates and college students to men and women between careers with families. As a company, au-thenticity and self-expression is a value held in high regard. There are only two required uniform pieces, and employees are encouraged to present themselves whichever way they choose. At its Kalamazoo location, there are 52 servers and 30 other employees that make up the kitchen, bar, and concierge staff. There are also six managers staffing the location, each having their own spe-cialization, including: a general manager, assistant general manager, two projection managers, a training manger, and shift supervisor. Alamo Drafthouse Kalamazoo has produced a close-knit, passionate group of employees who strive to not only get the most out of their employment, but to create a memorable experience for their guests as well.

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As a team, we possess a multitude of skills that enable us to effectively conduct this train-ing session. Our prime strengths can be found in our educational background. The four of us are pursuing degrees in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication, allowing us to work inde-pendently, but also as a group. Through the completion of courses such as: Human Communica-tion Theory, Interpersonal Communication, Critical Reasoning, and Communication Ethics, we will combine different theories and styles to positively affect the largest number of trainees pos-sible. We are able to analyze any situation that might arise during a training session and make an ethically sound decision to benefit the majority. As a team, we have taken courses in Intercultur-al Communication and Gender and Communication that enable us to use inclusive language in our presentations to include all trainees, regardless of gender or sexual identification. We are all qualified leaders, as we have taken a course in Leadership Communication, which taught us the delicate leader-follower relationship and the best leadership practices for various situations. This, along with the hour-long teaching presentation we developed for the course, enables us to read our trainees and choose a leadership style that best suites them. Technically, we are knowledge-able of the basic structure of a business and the best ways to successfully make changes; we have also completed an Advanced Public Speaking course that has improved our ability to effectively convey information to an audience. Through the completion of a Communication Inquiry course, we have broader research and development skills, which aided us in gathering information for our training program.

Our team also has many years of extracurricular experiences that accompany and enhance the skills we have developed in the classroom. The most relevant to this training program came from our years of experience in the service industry. Within our team, we have a hostess, server, in-house trainer, shift leader, and bartender; one of our group members is actually employed at the Alamo Drafthouse Kalamazoo. This previously established report with the client provided us with a distinct source of information and a good amount of knowledge regarding the current training program and areas for improvement. We also have experience in customer service and generally understand how to communicate with guests in a variety of situations. Our group has experience with public relations, as well: we have favorably represented our registered student organizations to the public and have participated in sales pitches. These experiences enable us to help our trainees to understand what we are instructing and how they will utilize it in the future. One of our group members also has experience developing a training program for a large group of employees, giving us an advantage in terms of understanding the needs of a new hire. Finally, all of our group members have completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, making us aware of our personal strengths: all members found that problem solving ranked high in their strengths, allowing us to utilize our abilities to see creative solutions.

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Needs Assessment

The A Team met with Eshah Wilder, the manager that specializes in training and gener-ates employee schedules at the Alamo Drafthouse Kalamazoo. Our interview took place at noon on Saturday, September 20th while business traffic wasn’t too heavy. The setting allowed for an hour and a half long, intimate conversation, which in turn gave us the information we need to assess the current state of the new hire training program. Prior to the interview, we each came up with potential questions, and compiled these into one, cohesive list. We separated the questions into categories that were based on the potential modules we came up with in our Client Paper. These questions ranged from gaining general knowledge of the program as a whole to under-standing the manager’s ideal guest experience. We believe the customer’s experience is com-posed of the atmosphere as a whole, the guest’s interaction with their server, and their server’s knowledge. We tried to focus our questions on the perception of the guest experiences so that we could focus our modules on the areas for improvement.

Eshah is very knowledgeable about the company and was very open to our various ques-tions. She supported the modules we initially suggested, and provided us with the information we needed to finalize those and develop a fourth. Specifically, we asked for her opinions on the cur-rent new hire training program, how the employees cope with the point of sale (POS) system, and the areas of guest service that need to be improved upon. Eshah defined the purpose of the company as providing guests with the “ultimate experience”. She feels that there are a few pit-falls in trying to give the guests that experience, such as greeting them and getting their drinks ordered in a timely fashion. They are also having an issue with servers understanding different interactions necessary for different situations. Guests occasionally misunderstand how to proper-ly get their server’s attention, and Eshah attributed that to improper explanation of the order card system. She was very concerned with the server’s knowledge of the menu as well. This is not limited to the names of the items themselves, but also the modifiers for each menu item and how these items are categorized in the POS system. We also discovered that the order in which drinks, appetizers, and entrees are brought to the guest is a prominent issue; this issue can be addressed through proper practice of the flow of service. Based on Eshah’s view of the strengths and weak-nesses of Alamo’s servers, we created four distinct modules: menu knowledge, use of the POS system, guest service, and the overall flow of service.

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Interview Outline

1. How engaged does the average trainee seem during the training period?

2. Are there any particular parts of the training program that trainees generally seem to have difficulties grasping or adjusting to the process?

3. How familiar are your employees with basic knowledge of the business?

4. Could a majority of your employees answer questions such as; when did the draft house first open? How many theaters do you have? What time is your last movie played?

5. What areas of the training program focus would you ideally focus on more than others in proportion to each other with the time allotted for training?

6. What areas (in general) tend to get focused on during the training period for each new-comer?

7. Is there another possible module you would like improvements on?

8. How long on average does it take for an employee to place an order using The Alamo’s current POS system effectively and in a timely manner?

9. Why do you think some of them may be having problems doing so?

10. Ideally, how long would you want an employee to spend accomplishing this step? We understand every waiter should be able to navigate the effective process for the waiters in terms of the POS system.

11. From the moment the customer walks into the theatre, how to you picture their ideal experience to unfold? (greeting by the server, noise volume, traffic of the servers walk-ing from person to person, etc.)

12. How are employees handling disruptive guests in cases such as cell phone use, talking, etc?

13. Should trainees be put in certain theaters with particular movies in order to handle pos-sible disruptive guests? (If they aren’t experienced enough in handling rowdy guests, or simply people who don’t have the personality to deal with a rowdy theater)

14. Ideally, how long would it take for your employees to know the frequently asked ques-tions? (Basic knowledge of the establishment)

15. Why do you think some guests may leave unhappy?

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Interview Transcript

Emma: How engaged do your trainees appear on average during the initial training period?

Eshah: I think that they are into it… I think that the majority of people we hire are really excited to work here, and really want to know all that knowledge we provide. And they know that there are opportunities… but you have to do a really good job to get those opportunities.

I think that it also really depends on the person, I’ve interviewed people, or seen Peter interviewing, who seem perfect, but then during training they’re like a deer in headlights. It can be overwhelming if you’ve never worked as a server before, or if you’ve never worked in high-volume before, so those are things that we do look for. But we’ll really work with that, too. For example, we just hired a girl who really doesn’t have those types of experiences, but we’ll put her more on the day side where there is lower volume, and we’ll get a little bit longer to work with her. So we’ll still get what we need from that day-side position as well.

Emma: So, following up on that, do you feel like there are any areas of the training program where they (trainees) do get that deer in the headlights look, or they take a little longer grasping it?

Eshah: We do have a pretty extensive menu… there are a lot of beers that we have, a lot of modi-fiers you can do, so that can be pretty overwhelming. Learning pivot seating… which tables [are which] can be a little bit confusing. Sometimes just the initial greeting process if you’re someone who’s a little bit shy… but obviously we try to look for people who are a little more outgoing. And then I think that if they’re training in a busier show it can be pretty overwhelming, there’s so much going on around you, like I said before, our trainers are sometimes our shift leads and are in Position 1 so they’re at their busiest, which can be confusing. And you’re also almost just ob-serving if it’s that busy. Your trainer is trying to interact with customers and communicate, and they’re just flying through everything. But usually Sundays are a lot slower — on their first round, it might be a little busy and on their second round might be a little more laid back so they get time to explain things a little more [the trainer]. So all of that might be really overwhelming, too.

Amanda: How familiar are your employees with the basic knowledge of the business? For exam-ple, frequently asked questions, the history, etc.?

Eshah: The employees as a whole? Or trainees?

Amanda: We can focus on trainees. How long does it take them to develop the basic knowledge to where — if someone for example was going to come to them and ask them a question like “when do you open” — how long does it take them to really get that?

Eshah: We do try to cover our history and what we do and who we are… even in the interview sometimes. And then reiterate at orientation. If we have a classroom set up… which we haven’t

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really done much since we opened, and then we’re hoping that our trainers really do cover some of that stuff, because it’s some cool information. So I would hope that by the end of their training that they’re somewhat familiar with who we are and what we do. And at the very least have the basic skill set to deal with those questions. I’d say that 80% of trainees by the end know who we are.

Emma: What areas would get focused on ideally during the training program… based off of what is going on that day, what subject are focused on more proportionally compared to others…

Eshah: Guest satisfaction is most important to us. So guest satisfaction I think needs to be fo-cused on, and I think it needs to be focused on more than it actually is. We can do a lot more for the guest than I think some people think that we can. And just to really make sure they’re having a really good time.

Um, the menu — just because it’s so expansive — needs to be focused on in relation to the POS… pretty much all of you guys’ topics are the big ones that we need. And knowing how to order something on the POS system so that the kitchen understands it, because our kitchen guys are great, but every once in a while I’ll tell them “well, if it says ‘no yellow mustard’ and it doesn’t come with yellow mustard but it comes with Dijon Mustard, then it probably means 'no Dijon Mustard”’. And it’s little problems like that but you half to be very literal with them, be-cause they will make it exactly how you say to make it usually.

Amanda: So it’s really making sure that it makes sense on the screen and it’s not just making sense for you?

Eshah: Yeah, whether it’s a burger with whatever, or loaded fries. And then as far as guest service goes, I think that when we’re training we really need to,

almost pound it through the trainees head that our guests who walk through those doors haven’t been here before. I think around 47% of our guests haven’t been here before. The other day, for example, I had five couples in a row who’ve never been here before. And it’s especially for new releases, like when Hunger Games comes out we’ll probably have a ton of people who’ve never been here before. I think it’s really important for the trainee to know the right questions to ask, because sometimes the person will be like “yeah, I know” and then don’t know what they’re do-ing. Even people who have been here before are still trying to flag down servers … because that’s not how it works. For one thing, they probably aren’t even your server, ‘cause there’s ten runners in here, and you’re not going to get your water. And honestly, don’t flag your server down in a regular restaurant either, your server will probably check on you fairly quickly. So re-ally just making sure the guest understands how it works I think is the biggest thing and I think that sometimes even our veteran servers forget to make sure the guest knows how everything works. I told the people in here last night, if you need anything — napkins, refill, a to-go box, ketchup — and give them a few examples of things to go by, tell them to write it down. Refills aren’t going to appear automatically, or sometimes they do depending on the server and how busy it is.

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And then with the menu, you know, there’s constantly new beers for example coming in, and then another day you might come in and we’ll be out of 10 beers.

Emma: And then I know last week you said that three days was typically the length of the train-ing program.

Eshah: Yes, we do have a day four for module and training, but we don’t really use it unless somebody really needs it. We also have used server/runner training programs, which we’re kind of moved away from that, where we would bring someone in as a runner and then they’d move up from that as a server. But we don’t really have any runners anymore, everyone is just in teamwork mode because it’s really busy. And typically for the average trainee three days is ade-quate. Emma: So three days would be the ideal?

Eshah: Yes, the ideal, more for financial purposes and we are able to, when I make the schedule, the new hire is going to be in a lower-volume theater at least for the first week or two depending on how strong they are. And I think that everyone is really helpful and has an answer, even if they’re not a trainer.

Tara: Is there another possible module that you would like us to look into for you or make im-provements on?

Eshah: Um, I’m going to think on that for a while.

Tara: Then I’ll move on to the next questions. How long on average does it take for an employee to place an order using The Alamo’s current POS system effectively and in a timely manner?

Eshah: On average, like how long does it take them…

Tara: To place the order just on the screen, yeah.

Eshah: Like, how many seconds, or how long does it take them to understand how to do it?

Tara: Both

Eshah: On average, I would say probably takes at least 30 seconds minimum for a full order. For like an average order 2-4 people. There’s some who are super-quick.

Tara: Do you think that’s more veterans?

Eshah: Um… I think that some of it is they want to be thorough and make sure everything’s cor-rect, with the veterans anyway. And then some people catch on faster or have worked with a POS system before. And some just get frazzled when it’s busier.

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It would probably take an actual two weeks or so, on the floor before someone is actually comfortable with Aloha. And then if you don’t know that this is a wine and this is a beer, it will take longer.

Kelsi: We talked about in our Client Paper that the menu had to be a big thing to focus on.

Eshah: Yeah, or even if you don’t know a cheese pizza is a kids item, you’re going to look for it all day. So definitely menu knowledge ties in with the POS system, I agree with you there.

Tara: I guess that ties in with my next question, which would be why do you think they are hav-ing trouble navigating the system?

Eshah: Definitely the menu. That’s probably the biggest question that I get, is where blablabla is. They don’t always know what category to look under.

Tara: Would you like us to look into examining another system? Or would you rather we base our training program on Aloha?

Eshah: Yes, that would be okay. (Training on Aloha)

Tara: How long ideally should an employee spend learning the POS system?

Eshah: Normally it’s just for one whole shift, which I think is a good start. I know when I went through training that whole part was more condensed, so I had to get some extra practice in.

Tara: So you think one whole shift is good for learning.

Eshah: Obviously they’re not going really learn it super-well, but it’s a good start for them to sort of get the feel for it. And an average-busyness shift is great because, you know, your trainer will literally hand you order cards that are being sent out to the kitchen, so you’re getting that real training right then.

Emma: So, I actually have a question then sort of backtracking but still related to that. About how many hours per day for the training period, or what are the time periods there?

Eshah: Normally what we do in the ideal set-up the trainee would work an evening to round-closing shift which is normally around 6-8 hours… closer to 8 hours usually. And then either a mid or another evening-round shift which is going to be around 4-ish hours. And then an opening to mid round shift which is going to be around another 6-8 hours so that they can see all aspects of the business. That’s ideal, so all-in-all that’s about 20 hours total.

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Emma: And this may be a longer answer to work through, but the next question I have is how do you picture a new customer’s experience unfolding from the time they walk through the door to when they leave?

Eshah: As a new guest ideally — and I’ll actually touch on some of our faults as we go through this — ideally a guest will be greeted as soon as they walk through the door no matter what. I think that sometimes our front bar can falter on that, even when they aren’t really busy, they’re just not as energetic and open. I think that service at the front bar needs to be immediate, or at least acknowledge the fact that they’re standing there. And that’s just a basic knowledge and skill, and I think sometimes that gets skipped over because it can be a little lax here.

Also, within the theater, they need to be greeted by their server within two minutes, I mean, you don’t want to just jump on the guest, but if they haven’t been here before then they might not know where the menu is and stuff. Greeting within two minutes isn’t always possible, but you can always let people know you’ll be with them shortly. I think that the energy really needs to be there, you need to, you know, this is fun, this is an experience, and as a server they need to communicate that. And we have a really interesting group of people who work here and they do make it fun. And then I think that one of our biggest focuses that I try to focus on espe-cially when it’s busy, is to get drink orders in immediately, even if their food takes a little longer, then they tend to be a little happier. A few things that hopefully we’ll see in the near future are hand-held Alohas in the near future to help with that. Right now what’s happening is your servers greeting, then going back into server’s station or Aloha alley, ring in the order, go out and get it, so you’re talking where five minutes for a drink is a good time, which sometimes feels longer for the guest. And when it’s really busy — let’s say Kelsi’s in the theatre and all the guests in her row come in at the same time. Your initial feeling is that you want to greet everyone who just sat down, but you can’t. You want to greet the first few people, run and get their drinks, but let them know you’ll be right with them. That way you’re not slamming the bar with30 drinks at once and they’ll get their stuff in a timely fashion. As the server, you want to talk to your guests and get as much face time as you can, but sometimes it’s very limited. And learning to have a short greet and quickly answer questions and know when to pull away…. all needs to be discussed in train-ing. Because your gusts thinks they’re the only one you need to talk to, especially if they’re new and have a lot of questions.

I think that any other things for training to focus on would be making sure that drinks go first rather than food, and they get rung in right away. Like, come back later to ring the food in, you don’t have to do it all at once. I know Kelsi’s seen it before where someone gets their pop-corn before their drink, and who wants salty popcorn without that. So just things like that needs to be covered thoroughly in training and it’sreally reiterated.

Emma: Yeah, I was thinking just now… since right now we have our general “guest service” module, so maybe splitting it somehow.

Kelsi: We could do one on the Golden Triangle

Eshah: I don’t see why not

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Kelsi: We have this thing called the “Golden Triangle” and its like, you are in your theatre and take orders, ring in your drinks, go pick up the drinks and run them to the guest, then you check for food and run that, then you get order for refills, more food, so you’re constantly checking…

Amanda: So it’s the order of how things should play out?

Kelsi: Yeah, it’s the flow of how things should ideally go and I think that it’s messed up here a lot. And if you’re not doing it for your theater because it’s not busy, you should be doing it for other theaters… and that’s not happening. So I think we could do that because that would split off the greetings and frequently asked questions.

Eshah: Yeah, and I think that would be something different. I’ve heard it before in other places called something different if you want to think of another name. You could split guest service into 15 categories if you wanted to.

Emma: How long would you say (right now) for any given meal, drink, etc., what’s like the av-erage wait time for the guest to get it. Like, for the guest to order, the server go through the POS system…

Eshah: I think on the average time, for the average drink, unless waters are prepped in there, it probably takes about 5-7 minutes at least on average for a drink to hit the table. And for food, it really varies depending on if it’s an appetizer. So appetizers probably take anywhere from 5-7 minutes, and popcorn cause it takes the same amount of time, to about 10 minutes for easy appe-tizers. And then entrees will take anywhere from 15-30 minutes on average.

Emma: would you say all of those times are where you’d like them to be, or should they be shorter? And if yes, then how much?

Eshah: I think drinks should take no more than five minutes. Ideally less than that, but with the size of the building, until we get handhelds, isn’t really possible. Appetizers are good, unless that get forgotten, which isn’t too often. 30 minutes is considered a long time. Burgers and pizzas and stuff should go out in 15 minutes. It’s also important to keep in mind that people to come togeth-er want to eat together. That’s also the POS system right there too, ringing things in sometimes I’ve seen appetizers listed on the ticket as an entrée. One thing about our service model is that sometimes you don’t know if they want it as an appetizer or as an entrée because someone else pulled their card. So you’re running food and one of your co-workers pulled their cards and you don’t want to have this long conversation with them about what they ordered. The other day I had two people ordering two appetizers as an entrée, and a pizza for an appetizer, and of course I had already started ringing it in the other way. But sometimes you really need to just put yourself in a guest’s shoes and have a lot of regular service knowledge instead of ringing everything in on when ticket, you don’t want an appetizer, entrée, and dessert coming at the same time.

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Amanda: How are employees handling disruptive guests?

Eshah: This is a good training subject as well. Ideally we don’t want the server to be scolding their guest. However, if there’s another server in the theater, maybe ask them to tell them, you know, “You can use your phone to see the menu, then you need to put it away”. And if you see a potential issue, it’s important to tell management. Servers don’t really need to do a whole lot, they just need to be observant, and if they feel comfortable, reiterate the no talking/texting policy that’s fine if they’re doing it politely then that’s okay. But tell the managers so we can observe them and get them out of the theater if need be. And if somebody just does something small. If you have the movie-goer of the year and they might throw a card up when they hear one whisper, but if you can’t hear them then that’s not really an issue, but if you can it needs to be addressed. And usually the guests are receptive to it. Sometimes they’ll look at you like “I wasn’t talking” and you’re like “I could hear you… and I could see you, I have eyes.”

Amanda: We thought we could we could come up with a way to approach those situations in the customer service module.

Eshah: And that’s okay. They just have to watch their tone and facial expressions. But yeah, no, don’t yell at them. That’s the last thing you need is a pissed-off guest in your theater. We don’t want to tell people they need to leave the movie they paid for. But sometimes that’s necessary. And that’s another thing, servers need to know when to get a manager, and check I.D.s in the dark. Kelsi, and most of our shift leads, are really good and telling us about any potential issues and it’s good for us to build a report like that with them.

Another thing is knowing that certain movies will get a lot of late-comers, like horror flicks where the audience is younger. Whereas a comedy might be a little older and lower-middle class, so getting to know demographics. And knowing you might get 20 guests as soon as the lights go down and you’re in drink-running mode. So that’s something that needs to be dis-cussed.

Amanda: Why do you think some guests leave unhappy?

Eshah: Our biggest reason why people leave unhappy is not getting their food/drink, getting someone else’s, or getting sold someone else’s food multiple times. We try not to auction food off. I’ve had people go “my server was so fun, but it took an hour for my food.” And for training purposes, you want to make sure that people’s cards are being taken care of. You don’t want to tell guests they might have to wait long. And sometimes I’ll let guests know we are always work-ing on our service model because it is so new. Sometimes I’ve had guests go “I didn’t even see my server after blablabla," and I’ll be like “good, you’re not supposed to”. And check-backs should happen all the time, but you’re just peeking. Or guests a lot of times won’t even say any-thing about not getting their food until after the movie.

Kelsi: We didn’t really talk about the menu, we should go into that for the module.

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Eshah: Yeah, definitely taking the menu home to study, trying the drinks and food. That basic knowledge of the menu is important. We do have a pretty expansive drink menu, and there are food items that aren’t ordered as often might get forgotten. I think that sometimes, because we do hire people who haven’t been servers people, we’ll ask “what’s your favorite beer?”, which is tricky if you’re underage, to see what they are sort of familiar with. Having the basic knowledge of that is key because we’re a drafthouse. Just know a couple varieties of beers is important and I think, you know, no one want to take home their job, so even if we give them menus to study, I think only maybe 1in 5 actually do that. So maybe to giving an actual menu test. But it’s harder to do all that stuff when you’re only training two or three people at a time. And the menu spe-cials, as part of the ongoing training, is important to touch on as well.

Primary Training Goals to be Addressed

After our in-depth interview with Alamo’s training manager, we have a more clear under-standing of what their employees should get from their training. While there are a few areas that we can’t address, we pinpointed a few general areas that will benefit from our training program. Overall, the management team at Alamo Drafthouse Kalamazoo wanted to see a stronger compa-ny and product knowledge base in their employees as well as more efficient execution from their servers. The A Team believes that by breaking these broad areas down into smaller, more specific topics, we have developed a program that accomplished those goals in the short and long term.

The new hires are given a rather short training period — about three days, or 20 hours — to learn a very hefty amount of information. We came to the conclusion that a large majority of the issues with product knowledge and execution came from the fluctuation in guest traffic dur-ing the training period, causing varying amounts of time for the trainer and trainee to interact. As a team, our goal was to design a training program that had modules which allowed trainers to use that short span of time more efficiently. A restaurant’s menu is almost as important as the em-ployee manual, and each trainee needs to have a solid foundation if they are going to be success-ful once they begin serving on their own. During our interview, we found that poor knowledge of the menu was leading to issues in the servers’ POS performance. Struggling to find items in the POS system was drastically increasing the amount of time it took for guests to receive food and drinks. Our goal is to restructure the way the menu is covered during training, so that trainees are able to exhibit a strong knowledge of the information before they are expected to use it. Another problem area for the Drafthouse was found in their flow of service. Many servers started out following the expected path for the first month or two after they were trained, but slowly deviated and created their own flow of service. This occasionally caused food to be served before drinks and was negatively impacting the guests’ experience. Incorrect habits of veteran servers were being imitated by new hires, so we felt it would be necessary to train both groups. We wanted to address this issue through a hands-on module, hoping that new hires and veteran servers would practice the correct flow of service.

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Finally, employees of the Alamo Drafthouse should be comfortable interacting with guests, because the company is known for its one-of-a-kind staff. We determined that answering frequently asked questions, menu inquiries, and handling a disruptive table were a few of the many facets of guest interaction. Our goal was for new hires to have a solid understanding of the various scenarios that may arise, as well as the best ways to handle them. Each trainee will give a concise, informational greet to both returning and first-time guests by the end of the training ses-sion. These are the components of successful guest interactions and what we focused on in our training module.

Modules ideas from interview results

Through the completion of our interview with Eshah, we discussed what was important to incorporate into the training program. She touched on all of the modules we previously had men-tioned, and we added one as well.

Our first module covers the menu, which is the foundation of what the trainees will work with, and what guests enjoy. Knowing the basic aspects of the menu is very important and cannot be taken lightly. Items ordered less frequently have a higher possibility of being forgotten, fur-ther stressing the importance of covering the entire menu in training. The menu module covers a wide range of appetizers and entrees, including the different modifiers guests can choose from. If a guest puts “no mustard” on their order card, a server must understand what mustard they are referring to in order to relay that correctly to the kitchen. Familiarity with the menu leads to a smooth transition from order card to POS system, and — in the end — much happier guests.

The second module is on the POS system, more specifically for Alamo, Aloha. Mastering the POS system is crucial for having an efficient ordering process. Upon completion of this module, trainees will understand the organization of the POS system in order to quickly locate menu items and input orders. To better handle the POS system, trainees will be coached through using pivot seating, a method of organizing multiple guests on one check. Basic functions of the POS system, including clocking in and out, “cashing” out tables, and checking inventory are also covered in this module to round out the trainee’s POS knowledge.

For our third module Eshah wanted to integrate guest service. This section includes the culture of the company, answers to frequently asked questions, and how to successfully handle an upset customer. It is important to know the culture of Alamo in order to represent the compa-ny. Because the Drafthouse is so unique, knowing the history and what the Drafthouse has to offer can be very interesting to a new guest. If the trainees develop a basic skill set of knowledge of the business, guests may be more satisfied with their experience and that is important to Alamo.

The fourth and final module outlines the flow of service. There is a productive and sys-tematic way for how trainees should work their way around the building. This module explains the method behind Alamo’s serving madness. The ideal flow of service starts with taking a

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guest’s order and getting their drinks to them as soon as possible, and continues with delivering their food as soon as possible. Once the food and drinks have been delivered, the server repeats the process by checking for more order cards, and inputting new food and drink orders. This process is repeated until guests have paid their bills. Trainees will be enlightened to this struc-ture, allowing them to take and serve orders in the most efficient way possible.

Issues that will need to be addressed in trainee survey:

Our follow-up interview with Eshah proved to be beneficial. We gained additional in-sight into the dynamics within the workplace and deeper problems trainees may encounter. As a team, we decided that there were three main areas that should be evaluated with our trainee sur-veys. The three categories included the trainee’s prior knowledge and experience, their assess-ment of the current training program, and their view on the current state of the business.

One of the areas that we addressed in our survey was the new hire’s prior knowledge and experience in the restaurant/entertainment business. After understanding trainees’ strengths, their training was customized to focus more on the aspects they were not comfortable with. We also retrieved answers from veterans and obtained a better understanding of their retention and knowledge of the information provided during their previous training processes.

Another area that the survey focused on was the new hire’s assessment of the current training program. This information showed us how confident trainees felt during and after their three day training process. In addition, we saw how the employees’ views correlated with Es-hah’s concerns about the training program. Their answers provided our team with personal in-sight as to how confident they were with the training they have received, and what they felt can be altered for a more positive outcome.

The final area that the surveys addressed was the current state of the business, which al-lowed our team to determine the employees’ overall evaluation of the company. Knowing this information ahead of time will also provided us with certain details such as: which employees saw this company as a career, which employees were short term, issues that caused an employee to leave the company, etc. We also used this portion of the survey to get a better look at why servers felt they were struggling, and what we could do to better prepare them during their train-ing. We pinpointed the “gap areas” where servers felt uncomfortable or that they lacked skill, and tailored our training program to benefit the company.

Altogether, by focusing on these three main areas in the trainee survey, we were provided with the insight we needed to produce the most efficient and effective training program. Thanks in part to the employees’ candid responses, we forged connections between their concerns and those of Eshah’s and other managers.

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Objectives

Our survey was directed toward all current Alamo Drafthouse employees, including those who had been hired and trained within the past two weeks. We designed the survey so that we were able to access the new hires’ recent training experiences, veterans’ past training experi-ences, and veterans’ current perception of their progress. Our team has defined veterans as those servers who have been working at the Alamo for six months or more. Overall, we had 26 em-ployees respond to the survey, but due to a survey design flaw, 7 of our responses were not valid. The 19 responses we did receive, however, gave us a sufficient amount of quality data. A few of the first questions (demographic) weren’t marked as mandatory, so the 7 unusable responses had skipped those questions. The main goal of our survey was to have employees assess their person-al performance by allowing them to anonymously describe their strengths and weaknesses as an all-around employee. They were given a variety of questions pertaining to their knowledge of and comfort level with different areas of service, and were encouraged to answer honestly. We also asked general demographic questions that allowed us to run our statistical analysis, which will be discussed later. Given that we have an Alamo Drafthouse employee in our group, we decided to utilize that resource as a means to conduct our survey. The “front of house” staff, which includes servers, uses a Facebook group for general communication: we decided that this would be the most efficient way to gather survey responses. We developed our 10-question survey using an online resource – SurveyMonkey® - and posted it within the Facebook group. A few responses were also gathered in-person during one of our team member’s shifts. The survey offered a vari-ety of questions, ranging from yes/no to Likert-scale responses. Demographic questions were mutually exclusive and divided respondents into different categories, including: those who had experience in the restaurant business before working at Alamo and those who did not, and two ranges of employment time (less than six months, more than six months). Likert-scale questions assessed respondents’ skills pertaining to Alamo’s menu, the point of sale system, interactions with guests, and the general flow of service in the building. Respondents were allowed to choose from five different answers to these questions, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

In order to decide the nature of the questions we presented, we had to revisit the overall goal of our training program as well as the interview we held with Alamo’s training manager, Eshah Wilder. We created our survey in hopes that the employees’ views of their training would correlate with the management perspective given by Eshah. While we kept this feedback in mind during the creation of the survey, we made sure to include enough answer options so that em-

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ployees could respond in the most honest fashion possible. Following thorough analysis of our survey responses, we were surprised to find some contradiction between what management sees as the problem areas, and what servers admit to struggling with. We also found that, even though servers rate their skills highly on Likert-sale questions, they admitted in previous questions to having weaknesses in those same areas. To ensure that our training program fulfills our goal of addressing management’s concerns as well as engaging servers and strengthening their personal weaknesses, we will be looking very closely at each individual survey response and the overall statistical analysis: the comparison between these will be discussed later in this paper.

Survey Instrument

The following list is a culmination of all ten questions and possible answers included in our sur-vey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K5QH883):

1. How long have you worked at the Alamo Drafthouse – Kalamazoo? a. Less than 6 months b. More than 6 months

2. Did you work in the restaurant industry before working at the Alamo Drafthouse – Kala-mazoo?

a. Yes b. No

3. What do you feel is your weakest area as a server? a. Knowledge of the menu b. Speed on the POS system c. Guest interaction d. Flow of service (i.e. remembering the “golden triangle”)

4. I can list each type of burger, pizza, salad, and appetizer on our menu, and I can list all of each item’s ingredients (i.e., what comes on each burger, in a salad, etc.):

a. Answers ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

5. I have mastered my greet for guests who have and haven’t experienced the Alamo Draft-house before:

a. Answers range from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

6. I can answer basic questions about the company and about my branch in particular (i.e., “Can I pick new seats?” or “Do I need my parking validated?”):

a. Answers ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

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7. I know what the “golden triangle” is and I follow what the flow of service should be: a. Answers ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

8. I know where each menu item is located in the POS (point of sale) system and can access them quickly:

a. Answers ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

9. Which area of service was your training focused most on? a. Learning the menu b. Learning the POS (point of sale) system c. Guests interactions d. Learning the flow of service/”golden triangle”

10. Which area of service do you wish more time was spent on during your training? a. Learning the menu b. Learning the POS (point of sale) system c. Guest interactions d. Learning the flow of service/”golden triangle”

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Survey Analysis

The first three tables below show the descriptive statistics for the demographic questions we asked. These tables, as well as the last two demographic questions, display a different set of statistics (mean, median, mode) than the others. We chose to present our demographic material this way so that we could look at how many respondents chose each answer, because the mean of a set of answers not on a set scale isn’t very applicable. The tables below show that a majority of our survey respondents have worked at the Alamo Drafthouse - Kalamazoo for more than six months, that they feel their weakest area as a server is their knowledge of the menu, and that most of them had experience in the restaurant industry before being hired at Alamo. We chose to explore the latter topic to see if having service experience affected an employee’s retention of restaurant-related information. With this information, we can now tailor our training and include verbiage and activities that trainees will be more familiar with.

Table 1: Length of employment at Alamo Drafthouse – Kalamazoo

Table 2: Personal weakness as a server

N Mean Median Mode

TimeWork 19 1.84 2.00 2.00

Valid N (listwise) 19

N Mean Median Mode

Weak 19 1.32 1.00 1.00

Valid N (listwise) 19

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Table 3: Experience in the restaurant industry prior to Alamo Drafthouse – Kalamazoo

The following five tables display the statistics from the Likert-scale questions we asked, where servers assessed their knowledge and performance in the problems areas we discussed with management earlier this semester. We found that, although servers admitted to menu knowl-edge being their weakest area, the average response fell between “neutral” and “agree”.

Table 4: Menu knowledge

Table 5: Mastery of different greet situations

N Mean Median Mode

PrevExp 19 2.00 2.00 1.00

Valid N (listwise) 19

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean

Menu 19 2.00 5.00 3.3684

Valid N (listwise)

19

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean

Greeting 19 4.00 5.00 4.8947

Valid N (listwise)

19

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Table 6: General knowledge of the business

Table 7: Knowledge and execution of proper flow of service

Table 8: Knowledge of execution in the point of sale system

The final two descriptive tables show the statistics from the questions that gave us insight to how the employees felt they were trained. The first shows that they felt the training focused

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean

Questions 19 2.00 5.00 4.8421

Valid N (listwise) 19

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean

Triangle 19 1.00 5.00 4.0526

Valid N (listwise)

19

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean

POS 19 3.00 5.00 4.1053

Valid N (listwise)

19

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most heavily on guest interactions, while the second shows that employees wish their training would have focused more on learning the menu.

Table 9: Training focus

Table 10: How employees wish training was focused

In this next section, we ran two T-Test statistical comparisons using a few different com-binations of variables. The first tables showed the relationship between the amount of time an employee has worked at Alamo Drafthouse – Kalamazoo and their comfort level with — as well as execution of — the “golden triangle” or expected flow of service.

According to the T-Test, the value of significance was less than 0.05, indicating that both groups of employees can be treated the same. Since both groups indicated a higher level of com-fort toward this aspect of service, we will be able to give the same training across the board. Even though the employees feel that they know how the flow of service should run, Eshah ex-pressed quite a bit of concern for the servers’ abilities to execute it. In our interview, she stated that a large majority of Alamo’s guests leave dissatisfied because their food took too long to get to the table, or they were given someone else’s order by mistake. Subsequently, we will be mov-ing forward with the flow of service/”golden triangle” module, but will be rethinking the way employees view it in an attempt to increase guest satisfaction.

N Mean Median Mode

TAreaF 19 2.79 3.00 3.00

Valid N (listwise) 19

N Mean Median Mode

TTimeA 19 1.84 1.00 1.00

Valid N (listwise) 19

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Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of The A Team’s training program:

1. Trainees will be able to exhibit confidence in Alamo Drafthouse - Kalamazoo’s menu by correctly identifying 80% of the menu items from the following categories: burgers, salads, pizzas, and appetizers.

2. Trainees will display efficiency on the point of sale (POS) system through the completion of: a relay-style activity in small groups in three minutes or less; and, with 80% accuracy, an in-dividual quiz covering the pivot seating system and the general functions of the POS system.

3. Trainees will be able to explain the culture of the company, provide answers to frequently asked questions and list the five steps necessary to successfully handle an upset guest by com-pleting a quiz covering those topics with 80% accuracy.

4. Trainees will demonstrate a clear understanding of Alamo’s flow of service through the suc-cessful (90%) completion of an assessment covering the Flow of Service model and the build-ing floor plan.

The information collected from the previous three papers have assisted in the develop-ment of our training program. We are confident in the fact that this program will enhance the skills of new and current employees, and are hopeful that those at Alamo Drafthouse feel the same.

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