Managing the 10%

We have such great technology now in the food business that there should really never be a problem with the Quality of our products. Because of the equipment we use today, food safety regulation, and wholesale product production and performance, in almost all cases the Quality of food products served to a customer is 90% built in; now it's true we do rely a bit on the other 10% to insure that all these components are working because the other 10% of Quality is the human factor, but with humans comes error! We have checklists in our restaurants that help my managers achieve the 90% built in factor of Quality, but it is the other 10% that I am constantly focusing on - training, working conditions and common sense. Let me give you an example; today I am at my office readying for a meeting with my Restaurant General Managers and needed a quick bite to keep my energy up as I pounded away on the meeting agenda, and while I had pizza the last 3 days, even I needed to change it up a bit. So I reached out to one of my favorite cold sandwich shops (who I won't name, but they seemed to have grown from 1 location to about 8 locations in downtown Seattle overnight) like us they have an easy online ordering program and they consistently deliver quickly; two things I desperately needed at that moment. I always order the same thing so that makes things even easier; I simply hit "repeat last order" and BAM, it's done. Although this time I had to add a note to my order that simply read: "Please use a fresh roll as my last 2 orders were stale". I then hit complete order and I went back to working on my agenda. Sure enough 15 minutes later a gentleman was there with my order, he was very polite, and I tipped him $3 on a $7 order. I went back to my office opened the bag and pulled out a sandwich that was clearly on day old bread... and I even asked politely. I wasn't angry, I ate what I could, but this was the 3rd time and while they get evertthing else right consistently, they always seem to get the bread wrong, and who aer we kidding... the bread makes the sandwich! How many team members overlooked the quality of the bread? What checklist didn't get done this morning to remind the manager to chuck the old bread and use the new bread? Where was the common sense? Was my note read? Does anyone care? We as restaurant operators must use the best equipment, the best products, and hire the best people. It starts with us and if we don't treat and train our team members well and are not completely honest about how we are operating our restaurant we will never achieve our goal of 100% Quality! Needless to say they are out of percentages I and will take my cold sandwich business elsewhere. You can also bet good money that this has been added to my meeting agenda! I want to hear from you if we are falling short delivering on our own 10% - you can visit us at www.tellmadpizza.com and let me know or email me personally at info@madpizza.com. "We're Committed" to getting it right!