Read With Love and Quiches Online
Authors: Susan Axelrod
Building a strong culture makes everyone’s time at work more enjoyable, and just as importantly, your company’s cultural values affect how your customers will be treated and thus how they see you. If most of your people have “9 to 5” syndrome and fly out the door as early as possible, your level of service will drop. But if your people are invested and committed, your customers are going to get truly great service.
You may recall that one of my first lessons in what customer service truly means was when I was just starting out, and Gertrude of Gertrude’s, one of the top “in” restaurants at the time, made me get up in the middle of the night to drive to the city and bring her four Chocolate Mixed Nut Pies. I did it because even back then, I knew I needed to answer when my customers called. It was a mere $20 sale, but she did me a great favor. One of my next lessons in customer service was
changing to ten-inch straight-sided pans for my cheesecakes instead of forcing my then current nine-inch pie-shaped versions down the throats of my customer base because that was the only size pan I had at the time.
In short, I learned early on to do whatever it takes to keep customers happy, and that became a cornerstone of the Love and Quiches culture. There were plenty of initial lapses in customer service that were both stressful and harmful, but I was learning a whole new business language and didn’t know any better. The company finally reached a level of reliable customer service in the mini-factory in the late 1970s.
It is not enough to have a high-quality product; the service and spirit behind it have to be high quality, too. Our employees are taught that the image conveyed to our customers and the industry in general is what, at the end of the day, pays our salaries. There are plenty of other choices out there, and our products alone don’t tell the entire story. We must give customers and prospects myriad reasons to choose
us
over our competitors, including polite demeanor on the phone
or
by email, responsiveness to their needs, flexibility (within reason) to emergency requests, on-time delivery, and good fulfillment rates.
Our company culture trickles down throughout the organization, both the front and the back of the house, and it is management’s responsibility as part of the training to convey the image we want to show to the outside world. In particular, we want a
consistent
image. Manners count, and we have a dress code (informal, but neat; no jeans), both for ourselves and because we have frequent visitors. And this consistent image extends way beyond our customers; we must show the same professionalism to our vendors, truckers, freight forwarders, and agencies, as well as to anybody else we deal with in the course of conducting business. We then both provide good service and get good service in return.
So at the end of the day, as a supplier, our most important strategy is to engender in our expanding customer base the confidence that we can flawlessly meet their needs for service, quality, and innovation in
order to help
them
distinguish themselves from their competition and
us
to distinguish ourselves from
ours
. We partner with our customers and participate in their dessert development and planning processes, even halfway across the world. But more importantly, we try to strategically balance the needs of the company with the needs of our customers.
On occasion, we see the other side of this coin. When a customer is
too
demanding (and this does happen, but thankfully not too often), it can become demoralizing and disruptive to the teams and the organization as a whole. Then a decision has to be made to walk away for the good of the whole.
Every company has meetings, but not everyone realizes that how meetings are handled is a vital component of the company’s culture. Meetings are where people come together; they’re how we keep it all running smoothly. If your meetings are long, boring, and full of patronizing behavior, company culture is going to suffer. On the other hand, if you do meetings right, you can give your team’s morale and effectiveness a huge boost.
At Love and Quiches, we communicate a lot; we meet a lot. We hold daily huddles, weekly management meetings, weekly executive meetings, weekly cap-ex meetings, team-building meetings, and ongoing training meetings. We also have monthly town hall meetings during which we share news about our plans and our progress, as well as discuss any issues. We do not talk down to or patronize our employees at these meetings; we need them. I urge you not to listen to those who complain that when there are so many meetings nobody can get anything done. Meetings are important; businesses need to communicate to make sure everyone is marching in the same direction and to avoid working at cross purposes. Differences of opinion, conflicts, and conflict resolution are prime reasons for meetings; do not avoid them.
But once a decision is made, the team needs to implement it—even those who do not quite agree.
Effective meetings are one of the most essential ingredients of a successful company. Meetings are where decisions are made and agendas are set, and good meeting behavior is important to avoid descending into chaos. We learned some of this the hard way, and as a result, we have decided to hang a sign on the door to the conference room: “No Cell Phones or Egos.”
Here are my suggestions for meeting protocol, my rules of the road:
Your company culture depends on a group of employees who are motivated to do their best work. So how do you keep them invested? At the end of the day, money talks, but so does recognition, and we devote equal measure to ensuring both motivators. Our employees understand that their best job security is the success of the company and vice versa. We need each other, and we all know it.
We hold State of the Company meetings in which we inform
all
of our employees, from our porters to our managers, of our progress, and during which we express our appreciation for their good work. Our transparency is appreciated by our employees and keeps them engaged. We share financials with some levels within the hierarchy. We also recognize and reward longevity with gift cards, announce Employees of the Month from each department, raffle off TVs and other prizes when production goals are met, and so on. But when necessary, we do
not
hesitate to discuss any issues that need addressing so that we can all participate in the solution.
Our employees share in our profits based on performance—a great motivator. And everybody who works here knows that we
always
look to promote from within before going outside. So all of us have skin in the game and the same goals at stake. We treat our employees as partners; we show them respect, and that goes a
very
long way.
Management by walking around is making a comeback, but I never stopped. I wander around in the back a few times each week, greeting employees and identifying issues. Our production workers look forward to top management spending time with them. To my production workers, I am “Miss Susan,” while Irwin is known as “Poppy.” This is how we do it. This is the Love and Quiches philosophy in the short form.
________
We have chosen to remain a private business, a family business with the second generation in place. This is key to the future of Love & Quiches Gourmet (our new name as of 2013, which you will learn about in
chapter 14
, “Marketing and Branding”). I have my partners—my husband, son, and daughter—at the top with me, as well as a few other essential executives.
I think being a family business provides a comfort level to the organization as a whole and encourages our teams to participate fully as we move forward. The process of improvement never stops; we are never good enough. Innovation can emerge from anywhere within the organization, and our employees are empowered to improve our company systems and products. We tap into those abilities across the entire organization, salute good work, and understand that mistakes will be made, which is fine as long as they are recognized and corrected as quickly as possible.
But each and every employee’s performance is also crucial to our future. Our cake pans need to be clean and ready for the next day’s production, and what we will bake depends on the orders we’ve received, which need to be scheduled properly so that they can ship on time. (And with hundreds of products, this is no easy task.) We need orders, so our sales force must be out there making it happen; our marketing department needs to help them by spreading the word; our R&D chefs need to keep the new products coming; our quality assurance department needs to make sure everything is perfect; our CFO needs to be “Chief Bean Counter.” And that is only the start.
From the top, we try to generate a hunger for needed changes and initiatives rather than imposing them. We try to share the decision-making process, which means sharing the risks and the rewards. Real leaders don’t have all the answers, and that is how it should be. We need people better than we are in their particular areas to become a great company. At the top, we need to be visionaries. We need to set the direction in line with our resources while at the same time inviting the input of everybody below. And this implies some risk. As leaders,
we guide our employees to overcome the fear of that risk, the fear of change that creates barriers to moving the organization forward. And just as I had to overcome such barriers without any help, the strength of our numbers now helps us to overcome these fears together and keeps the dynamic going. We need creative ideas to tackle the barriers, which further means we need our people to generate those ideas. Fortunately, the employees of Love and Quiches have always been and still are a passionate group, and the ideas keep coming!
You have to know where the dots are to be able to connect them.
—Paraphrased from Steve Jobs
W
hen I started my business in 1973, I was a blank slate. My story was written one quiche at a time, and in the very early days, Jill and I learned primarily by making mistakes. Learning from your errors is indeed important, but you can’t stop there. As soon as I bought Jill out, I knew that the time had come for me to learn as much as I could about running a business and about my industry, and I knew I had to do this rather quickly. That process of gathering as much relevant knowledge as I could has never ended. All along my path with Love and Quiches, I met more and more people from whom I could learn, and I began to create outside support systems to which I could go for advice.
In any industry, markets are constantly changing and evolving, and you must likewise constantly watch for and react to those changes,
offering new products, new price points, new packaging. This process of constant learning ensures that you will not fall behind. I have learned that the only way to stay ahead of the game in an ever-shifting (if not completely transforming) world is to take in knowledge from wherever I can get it.
For an entrepreneur or business owner, the sources of this continuing education are truly endless, and insights can materialize in places you’d never expect. It’s a process of constant learning—from mentors, from networks, from the competition, from customers and suppliers, and from industry counterparts. Some of my most reliable sources of learning have helped keep both my company
and
me at the top of our game.
Finding a mentor is a good thing; finding a mentor who grows into a sponsor, someone who can offer concrete support (such as helping you find that job, or funding, or putting you together with a likely partner for a new business venture) is even better. I have had many throughout my career.
You might recall from the beginning of my story that my first mentor was Marvin Paige. I was introduced to him through a friend while I was still hawking frozen quiches from my home kitchen to local accounts on Long Island. When Marvin set up my first appointment in the big city at O’Neals’ Baloon,
that
was the beginning of the rest of my life. That was the catalyst; I was off and running.
I adored Marvin. He knew a lot of people, and he always had time for his friends. He spent his entire career in foodservice, owning several restaurants that were all very hot for a while. Before I met him in the 1960s, he was a partner in what was arguably one of the first theme restaurants, the Tin Lizzie, and he later opened a restaurant called Claire’s in New York on Seventh Avenue and 18th Street; it was in the Chelsea area and catered to the gay crowd. The food was delicious, and
we went there often. He opened another Claire’s in Key West, and he later developed another concept, Hamburger Harry’s.
From the early days on, Marvin would speak with me for countless hours, teaching me all about the restaurant scene in New York City. One of the best pieces of wisdom I got from Marvin was this: “Watch the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.” It was a vital lesson that changed the way I ran my business. I was in the city at least three days a week on sales calls, and I often set aside time to stop in wherever he was at the time to get off my feet and chat for a half hour. Irwin and I would often meet Marvin for dinner with whomever he was married to at the time. We remained friends for decades until his premature death a few years ago. Ironically, given how good his advice always was, Marvin was a poor businessperson, and he ended up running all those previously mentioned restaurants into the ground. Nevertheless, I learned to always listen to what he said, not imitate what he did; the former was gold from the start. Meeting him truly changed everything.