EE034 – Scott Stanfield – Hire Train and Sustain to Succeed

Episode 34 – Scott Stanfield – 14-05-2019.mp3

[00:00:00] Exceeding expectations.

[00:00:01] Episode 34 welcome to the podcast where we try to help you give your customers a better experience which will hopefully then then lead to you getting better testimonials getting more referrals which then means you spend less money on marketing advertising. Enjoy your work more as well. A lot of the guests we have on this show have the mindset where they really try to go out of their way to think of ways that they can give their customers a better experience to try to exceed their expectations in some way. This week’s guest is Scott Stanfield who’s been in the hospitality industry for about 25 years in many different ways as a chef as a manager and even starting from a dishwasher when he was there when he was a kid exceeding expectations we have a facebook groups Please do look out look on Facebook for exceeding expectations. Join the group get involved in some conversations maybe you will start some conversations yourself ask some questions comment about something that you’ve heard it will be great. Also if you would leave a review on one of the many podcast platforms. Obviously the biggest one is I tunes and they’re the places such as Stitcher and Google Play and whatever. And if you have any suggestions for any guests that you would like to hear interviewed on the show please do get in contact. You can do that via the Facebook group. You can go onto exceeded expectations dot me or just send me an email. Tony at exceeding expectations dot me and let me know about any guests that you would like to hear or suggestions you have. Hope you enjoy this week’s show.

[00:01:49] Today I’m speaking with Scott Stanfield who has been working in hospitality for a very long time. So how are you Scott. I’m doing great. How are you doing Tony. I’m very good thank you. So tell me a bit about your I think it goes back quite a long time to your hospitality experience.

[00:02:05] Twenty five years ago I started as a dishwasher at a restaurant on Lake Murray and just outside of Columbia South Carolina Wow.

[00:02:14] And how did it progressed from there.

[00:02:16] 90 days later they offered me a job as a manager so I was either in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the right time.

[00:02:24] I don’t know which one it was but yeah. Oh you were ahead of it this way you have one heck of a dishwasher yet.

[00:02:32] I’d already progress to the kitchen where I was like you know prep cook and a line cook where I was cooking fried shrimp and fried oysters fried scowls fried flounder french fries obviously you know that type of stuff. Chicken fingers for the kids and expediting and. But yeah I end up becoming a managing partner at that same restaurant that I started as a dishwasher it was about five years later and so that really set my path on UN on that and you know I also worked on Hilton Head Island of was a direct director food and beverage at an oil refinery in the Virgin Islands St. Croix Virgin Islands for two years. I’ve been a director of restaurants for a Hilton property in Salt Lake City Utah I’ve been director of food and beverage at a hospital in Salt Lake City and also a director of food and beverage for Marriott Autograph Collection a four star property in Park City Utah as well.

[00:03:33] So where is it you are now.

[00:03:34] They mean you’ve moved around a lot clearly but where were you I’m in the mountains of Colorado at a very historic hotel that was built in nineteen 0 9. It’s a restaurant. Yes I’m I am a. Right now I’m the general manager of a restaurant for sure. What’s the name of the restaurant. Oh is cascades and whisky bar. Is in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park Colorado.

[00:03:57] Do you have any sort of speciality What is it that you do that makes you different.

[00:04:02] Well there’s over a thousand at last count was one thousand one hundred and forty nine whiskies from around the world. So we specialize in whiskies for sure. We also have our chef driven restaurant chef riches a James Beard Award winning chef. And so we’ve got great food that matches what we have on the back bar in terms of all our spirits and also with our our wine list as well.

[00:04:30] When you arrive there.

[00:04:31] Did you make a lot of changes so what was the what happy happened to you about the changes it changes the interesting thing is easy if you’re making the decision for change so you have to observe for a bit if there unless there’s something that’s just like majorly wrong going wrong about six weeks after Chef Rich and I head straight Chef Richard worked here before. I mean so this was a comeback song for him where for me it was just my my first day and so we were there about six weeks before the menu changed and at the same time as a rollout we did start training extensively on front of the House service standards on the menu and basic alcohol training because there were people who were not even trained on whether we have scotches on the menu and they were serving tables and we had over I don’t know let’s say half of that would be almost six hundred scotches that we have on them on buying the bar and a server didn’t even know if we served scotch or not. So we had to. You had the biggest the biggest piece was creating a chef driven menu and a culture starting a culture of training.

[00:05:45] And so how would you go about something like that what what would you do say that would be different from how our restaurants would go about that.

[00:05:51] Well most training programs are well you know here’s here’s your number. You have to log into the computer go follow Sally. She’s the best server we got go shadow her and we’ll see how you’re doing in a couple of days and we’ll start giving you some tables and go from there. That’s what mostly happens. What I understand is that people learn dead in different ways some people learn by listening. Some people learn by reading some people learn by doing. So my first rule when it comes to day one is that it’s an orientation day. We’re going to give you some stuff to read but we also are not going to allow you to talk to guests because you don’t have any answers to the questions that they have. So what we do is we give them information and we require people to actually sit down with us in the office and go over it. So they have to say it. They have to do it as well. So we want to make sure that you know in the heat of the moment table side or behind a bar when it guest ask them a question that they they they have they had the answer or they they have the verbiage to be able to say you know I don’t know the answer that question let me go find out and I’ll come right back you know because you may not.

[00:07:00] We don’t know every nobody knows every single whisky on the on the bar but we can find out the answer for that I mean when we were talking before the code started and we kind of touched upon the whole training issues and you were talking about some Disney what was it you were talking about DNA and how that relates to China.

[00:07:19] Well you know what I do is I find sources or examples in other industries so I can train my staff about you know how we can do something on a larger scale or do something on a better place so what happened was at my last position we had a very reputable steak franchise Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

[00:07:43] There’s a hundred and fifty locations worldwide and they have a a tiered pricing structure and we have been. And it goes from one to seven seven being the highest.

[00:07:55] And what happened was is that we were restructuring our pricing and matching tiers and our first step was figuring out where we were and our pricing was between a two and three. And then so we went to a Tier 4 pricing and as we were making the transition into a Tier 7 pricing which is the highest that they had at the time we were getting pushback from some of our guests where we’re even getting pushback from some of our employees about thinking about how the prices were too high.

[00:08:26] And so I used this example from Disney because I asked him I said Does anybody know what Disney did with their prices during the recession you know 2007 2008 you know for their theme parks and everybody’s assumption is that the price went down but what actually happened is is that they raised their prices five times and then I asked them I said How do you think Disney can raise our prices five times in the worst economic times of our life. And nobody really knew the answer. But the answer was trust. What happened was is that the brand had established such a level of trust with the customers and the people who wanted to come that people were willing to pay the price even though the prices were going up so they could experience what that brand was about and so by using that example we were able to overcome the objections or the value score that you would get on say TripAdvisor or open table reservation system.

[00:09:35] You know because a Break-Up the scores for your reviews into different things food service value on Beyonce those type of things then you know when you’re charging you know you know ninety four dollars for a porterhouse steak or one hundred nineteen dollars at that location for four tomahawk steak or one hundred and fifteen dollars for seafood tower as an appetizer.

[00:09:58] You know you’re going to get some pushback you know when people save up money to come once a year to celebrate their anniversary their birthday that the prices have gone up since last year that they were there. Maybe we’ve had to price when we did. Sometimes we we we had a price increase more than once as seasons changed so based ambushing that and then saying OK. Then training your team how to establish trust was was really big but a big thing for us. So how do you establish trust. Well consistency they trust that they know they’re going to get the same service and the service is going to be you know the Greek time is going to be you know 30 seconds or a minute from when they’re sat down and meeting or exceeding all their expectations and anticipating what the guest needs and getting an entire team of people to focus on that gets you can move the needle to a level where you’re you’re ranking on TripAdvisor may go to from like we for instance we were 18th when I started working there and two years later we’re ranked number one out of 200 restaurants and so on and so that’s important because as you’re as people look at reviews online they consider it the same as if they’re getting a recommendation from a close friend. And so if you’re restaurants in the top two or three for your city and there’s a large amount of restaurants in that town then they know and trust that when they walk in the door they’re gonna be treated with respect with dignity and they’re going to get what they pay for or maybe even more when than what they pay for. And so then prices can be raised and scarcity can be created at that point as well.

[00:11:45] And when you say you were ranked number one out of 200 do you mean out of 200 steak restaurants or restaurants Johnson was probably about seven or eight steakhouses but that was of all the restaurants in Park City Utah so therefore you would I imagine you would get a situation where people would look upon you as being you know top restaurant in town or in the city and said they would therefore. That would be the restaurant I went to go to a special occasion.

[00:12:11] Absolutely and that that’s the that’s the whole point. So is it you want people there who were celebrating life celebrating you know a great. You know when graduation happens at the local high school or or if there’s a university in your town or their anniversary where they’ve coming and you want to build it where you have you know multiple years in a row consecutive years in a row people celebrating their anniversary and that just builds and builds and builds upon itself and in so that that’s a yes a great way of building a small part of your business but also that is consistent and grows over time.

[00:12:48] And what kind of numbers are you able to accommodate.

[00:12:52] We sat 225 people at one time.

[00:12:54] How far ahead of people have been to make their reservations to get a place.

[00:12:58] It depends on the day. We from the debt from the back deck. Bruce Chris at Hotel Park City. You can see the fireworks that that Fourth of July and people would actually make their reservation for the next year. On that day. So a year in advance on some days. And sometimes you know you know three four six months. But you know in advance but in restaurants right now the trend we’re seeing is about 46 percent of reservations are made the day of the dining event. Unless it’s a special event such as you know Valentine’s Easter Mother’s Day Thanksgiving. Things like that people are getting in. You know because that’s where the scarcity comes in because as you get more popular as you consider the best restaurant in your in your town people have to call earlier and earlier and earlier to make reservations and some people who are used to the environment being where I could just walk in and now they can’t and not even any seating in the bar is available as overflow because you’re so busy you actually sometimes frustrate some of the guests who’ve been coming there supporting you when you are a little bit slower and the business wasn’t as popular before we saw the record and you mentioned about there was a couple.

[00:14:10] I think you said it was last week who were amazed by some of the personal service that you gave.

[00:14:15] Yes. The chefs that I work with now Chef rich and Ryan had gotten in and ran a special four tomahawk steak which is a two pound or 32 ounce steak.

[00:14:28] And you know the culture here at a restaurant that hasn’t really served that high end stuff or high end food on that level that was selling for ninety nine dollars.

[00:14:41] You know there was nobody really trained on how to. How do you serve a two pound steak to two people three people for people to one person and because of my experience at restaurants. We were trained as managers to just to serve this table side on a tray with a tray Jack and have a boning knife and explain to people you know why. So the first thing is you try to get the whole steak in front of somebody so they can take a picture so it could be posted on social media so they will obviously tag you when they like Hey I was here at Cascade and whisky bar and we had this Tomahawk. So that’s the first thing is you’re trying to do as you’re working on this marketing edge to build organically through social media. But the second thing is is you’re actually explaining it’s like there’s two parts of a rabbi. There is a decal which some people call the rib cap and then there’s the eye and said well basically what I’ll do is I’ll split these two pieces apart and then I’ll cut them both in half and then I will and using French service where you use a fork and a spoon in one hand you put them on the separate plates where they need to go and realign them the right way to where you’re the eye of the rib eye is in front of the person. And the decal is in the back and then you’re serving the lady first and in serving the gentleman and doing that and and so there is just one couple that were older and I I asked him I said do you want to do you want to take a picture of know with a steak in front of anyone and they were of the age I would imagine they were late 60s early 70s. They didn’t have the phone with them. They had no way of taking a picture at all. And so I had my phone in my back pocket. So I set the steak in front of the lady I said I’m going to do you mind if I take your picture and I took a picture with her with the steak and I said I’ll email this to you. And so then I pull the steak back I carve the bone off. Then I split it between the two of them separate it serve them and each and because now the general manager is out on the floor interacting with them on that level. I can now come back in and have a little bit deeper conversation with them you know and ask them how their steak was cooked and and those things and really connect with them. And and then once I did that I got their email address I emailed them the picture and the gentleman e-mailed me back and he said it was absolutely getting chills right now. Thinking about this but he goes. The experience was absolutely amazing. Thank you for bringing back the legacy of service to the Stanley Hotel. And it was absolutely that was that was a heartwarming email. And you know when when you think about the legacy of the Stanley that was built in 1989 by F. O Stanley who he and his twin brother created the Stanley Steamer car you know you think about an entrepreneur and you know somebody who’s innovative as he was you could only imagine how the service would have been at a hotel he built one hundred and ten years ago and that that’s carrying on that legacy is as important to me unless you assign it made me think about Cookie you mentioned about a whole kind of social media side of it as well.

[00:17:51] So how how has social media changed restaurants and what you do is changing dramatically.

[00:17:58] I think it’s raised the pressure on what we can do what mistakes we can make. Because everybody that comes in there for all practical purposes can be a food critic or service critic or. And so the old adage of you know somebody who has a bad experience tells 10 people who tells 10 people who tells 10 people now one hundred people know still rings true.

[00:18:21] But I think there’s another thing too is that we can get you know more direct feedback from people who are maybe afraid or or apprehensive to tell us.

[00:18:34] Table side what’s going wrong. And so I think we can use it as a tool that helps us to get better. On a day by day basis versus looking at it as a negative in Seth Golden’s book Purple Cow he says your business should be something that’s remarkable and he defines remarkable as something worth making a remark about. And I think that goes both ways. I think something can go so bad that it’s worth making a remark about something can go so good as worth making a remark about and so that’s our focus with that. You know when I when I started this business 20 going on twenty six years ago I didn’t have a cell phone. I had no email account. We were still calling the bank to see if our credit cards went through each day when they passed after the batch was out and writing it down on a legal pad. I mean it was you know for people who were you know have a smartphone now that seems archaic because you can even scan documents and use Excel spreadsheets on your phone. It’s just really amazing the technology and how far has come. So you know adapting as you know and using these tools for for good instead of looking at it as a negative I think is really the most important piece of them.

[00:19:46] You mentioned before about you know I mean you’ve obviously done e-books in many different places over this over the past 15 20 years or so and you mentioned to me about a franchise you were working in it taught you about you learned a lot about pricing When Ruth’s Chris on the fiftieth anniversary rolled out a menu they called the 2.0 menu where they they’ve they changed some of the appetizer stuff.

[00:20:07] Now the starring roles are still obviously Prime great stakes. You know the flame and yarn as you know served on a plate you know 500 degrees sizzling in butter. Know and but what happened was is that when we were rolling out the new menu we were looking at where our pricings fit into the the tears and and we found that we could you know once once we had gotten good enough that the question of whether we were serving you know you know a steak on a plate of a of ballot card you know could that the question of the value went down in the score of further value went up as our as we our reputation went up and as our service went up and as our team got better how do you try to ensure that you stay ahead of everyone else.

[00:20:57] You know it’s not about everybody else. It’s about being the best we can be as a group as organization.

[00:21:04] Obviously the metric we have is how are we compared to other restaurants on social media and how that happens. You know with like Yelp and Facebook in you know even with Google Plus was around and you know or even back in the day the old Michelin star peace unit you know you know how that was the only thing in town. You know there which is still a big piece of what we do is you know in the restaurant world. But for us what I focus on is not how we compete against the other person but how can each individual and their station be the best they can be. And then also as a collective how we can as a team be the best we can be and as long if we’re the best that we can be then we’ll be the best restaurant.

[00:21:47] And so does that mean actively keeping a watch on the reviews that are posted about you on on sites such as TripAdvisor.

[00:21:56] Absolutely. Just this morning there was a review that came in that was a three star and it said it was it was on open table and I have the open table Apple my phone and I was looking at. I took screenshots and and I figured out who was and I looked at our our app that has our scheduling and I look at who the schedule hostess was and the server that was assigned to the table. It looks like that the server was switched at some point and I didn’t know why. And so and the review was rather odd where it said that they had to wait 20 minutes while the host was still on the phone which we don’t typically have phone calls at last 20 minutes at the host stand so I don’t know what happened there and they said they had to wait 15 minutes for the server to show up.

[00:22:41] So basically what I did is I took screenshots of this on my phone and then went into the message the app the messaging portion of the scheduling app and sent it to the the manager and the people who worked on that day and asked him I said this just seems kind of odd it doesn’t make sense to me. Can you help me understand what happened here. And so yes we do. We actually one of the things we do do is um we put up what I call scoreboard and so on the office door we have by each month we’ll break down what. Which platform. So it turns out the logos for each platform that we’re focussing on right now is OpenTable on TripAdvisor and we’ll write down what our beginning average score is for the month what our ending average score is at the end of the month and then also every review score so five five five. Hope they’re all 5 5 5 5 4 3 and then we’ll give an average for the month and then we’ll look at other things like intent to recommend score on open table because that’s something that we think is important as well. And then so at the bottom of at the bottom of the door we have right now is December than we have January February March. So we’re we’re putting this scoreboard up and for the current month to actually post the actual reviews that were written and we do the bad ones and we do the good ones will highlight the good ones with people’s names are mentioned we’ll give them you know we’ll give them recognition card that they can take to H.R. and get a prise for and and so scores are big thing we’re posting those we’re keeping up with those and we want our staff aware of of what the scores are. And it’s really funny because we had an we had a server when I first started here that tend to come across kind of short with the guest. And then once we started recognizing people for giving great reviews that server’s name started popping up as giving great service. So all we had to do was post to reviews put it in front of them make them aware of them and it started changing the nature of where people were getting recognized they weren’t getting recognized for their sales and weren’t going to recognize for how much they made in tips they weren’t getting recognized for not calling in sick they were getting recognized for actually getting their name mentioned positively in a five star review and a change started changing the whole culture of the entire organization and all we had to do was take it up on the wall I mean obviously China is a big thing for you that the people that come to work for you.

[00:25:06] Do you get remarks from them along the lines of Wow you know this is what you do in China and you do is completely different to other places I’ve been working at the most recent quote was Scott would never work for anybody that actually took restaurants so seriously. But yes I do get I do get a lot of this is very unique.

[00:25:27] Nobody’s really cared as much about us as a you know as an organization you know or express as much empathy or has been this calm didn’t yell at us.

[00:25:38] So yes I get that I get that a lot I might add that also then therefore makes it more enjoyable for them to work there.

[00:25:48] You know that’s the whole goal right is to have fun. You know we the restaurant world hospitality world. I mean if you ever have looked at a front desk you know at that check in time and it you know three thirty four o’clock at a you know it’s can get intense because I’ve got sometimes have to check in you know pencil size of the hotel you know smaller hotels is even more intense because people won’t like checkouts at resorts and then there then that puts the crunch on housekeeping to get those rooms flipped and sometimes two to three hours before check for four check in at four o’clock. So those front desk people have intense jobs when it comes to check ins and restaurant. People have intense jobs because you have to really think about this is that we have raw materials coming in the back door sometimes that morning and we turn that into a product.

[00:26:41] Our sales team sales that we deliver that product in 20 minutes or less. And we try to do it on a very high level.

[00:26:50] And we take that and then we we we get payment for that and our our service staff is being judged to see in America we there’s a tip based system. So they’re getting they’re getting judged on every aspect of service to make their to make money so they can pay their bills or even go on vacation or whatever they’re going to do you know with that. And so and they have different things happen at different times you have four or five tables section and you have one table you’re green and you get one you’re giving dessert. You got one that’s on entrees it needs to be cleared. Another one was another bottle of wine. So you’re having to balance all those things at one time and so it’s a very high stress situation.

[00:27:30] And so the last thing that a leader needs to do in that type of environment is create more stress. You need to be the calming piece of that and help them in any way you can. And if they something turned sideways to be the one to help them fix it.

[00:27:45] You mentioned that social media has really changed the industry over the last five 10 years. How do you see things changing in the next five 10 years.

[00:27:55] I think the intensity in which people intensity in which people go out to eat and expect a high level dish you know meaning that they want to see on their table in front of them. A lot of people what they see on Chef’s Table on Netflix right. And their goal and their expectations are rising. The other thing that’s happening to is that this is one of the big things I’ve seen happen over the last two years is that the speed in which was hit it that the trends that are on social media in terms of food and then is eating the grocery store typically are broad line suppliers are slow to react to those trends and you can’t get those food items you can’t get those into the restaurant fast enough typically.

[00:28:43] And I’m seeing that I’m seeing that change where in the vegetarian vegan world there’s this new burger garden new product called The Impossible burger. And it’s something that just barely is just emerging. You know and but it’s really big and in the vegan world. What happens is we have it on our menu here. But I just saw on linked in this morning that Red Robin is going to have that and like every restaurant that they have. And and so here’s a vegan option is make it into I think it’s like 400 locations in relatively quickly to where someone who like me who’s cared about their health for a while. I can go to a grocery store health food store or Whole Foods and then I try to get a product for my to put on a menu that I like I think is a better product.

[00:29:35] And then being told by my sales rep be going well you know retail and wholesale or different you know supply chains and we can’t get that and so I think that’s one of the things it’s going to speed up because our customers are putting pressure on us.

[00:29:50] Therefore we’re putting pressure on our suppliers to get these items that are in the grocery store and prepare them in a way that they would like them in a restaurant.

[00:30:00] Do you think people generally are more health conscious these days and is that being reflected in what they ask for when they come to your restaurants.

[00:30:08] This in pockets really depends on the city and or the you know where you’re at or what type of restaurant you’re in. I think we’ve seen a big an increase huge increase in gluten free. There’s a lot more people who are gluten intolerant here in the States than there have been in the years past that was something that never ever came up in my first probably 15 years working in the industry and never even knew what gluten free was and then and now it’s like something that happens whereas it needs to be listed on the menu so people can make choices and you still have to train your staff on what that means. You have to you know the chefs obviously have to know what that means. And so there’s other things that happen you know. Now you’ve got people who are ketogenic which is low carb high fat moderate protein a paleo. And so I think that what the definition of healthy is a very broad.

[00:30:58] But there are there are there are that is growing and in a way for sure and we’ll be respectful of your time so before we finish what are your thoughts on exceeding expectations and over deliver.

[00:31:11] There’s no other way there’s no other way. If if we do not exceed expectations we have failed. That should be one of your top goals.

[00:31:24] So I start with why I try to bend our staff’s reality a little bit and try to explain to them that money is the result of what we do it’s not why we’re here why we’re here is to deliver the best dining experience and the chef driven restaurant this located in an historic hotel and if we make all our decisions based off why we’re here. Like if somebody asked me Well you know it’s kind of slow can I go home. I might well. Well let’s think about this for a second is spring break we got we didn’t you know last night we had 45 walk ins and it it may appear it’s gonna be slow but if you went home without help us as a team deliver the best dining experience to the people who walked in that we don’t know this coming yet. And so they would kind of look at me go. Well you’re right. Okay. Or if they really were self-centred they would say look I still can I go home because I really care. All right. So then you got to bend the reality a little bit more say you no Ashley you can’t go home I really think I need you. And then monitor their attitude from that point forward.

[00:32:29] And in that in that time. But if your focus is delivering the best experience whatever your business is where there’s this hotel stay. Best dining experience at a taco stand on a street corner. Best dining experience a chef driven restaurant or. You know I don’t know if you sell costumes and balloons. The focus should be on exceeding expectations so that guests will actually have an experience. And I’m going back to the purple cow. That’s remarkable enough to make a positive review on whether it’s through their friends or their family or all mine.

[00:33:04] If people want to find out more about you and about the Cascades and everything that you’re involved in where should they go.

[00:33:11] Well like the Cascades you can find out more information about that at the Stanley Hotels.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Scott R. Stanfield and then I have you know then you can find me in other places there. But but yeah that’s that’s where you find it fantastic but all of that will be included in the show notes. I really appreciate you at times. It’s been a pleasure speaking. My pleasure. Thanks for having me Tony.

[00:33:42] Next week episode 35 is with Jessica Schwartz she’s a book author and writer and she tells us a lot about about the book world and some of the experiences she’s had and how she’s been able to help people. Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode as normal. Please do leave a review. Get involved in the Facebook group may be posting questions and I look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great week.