The Henny Penny Experience has never been about simply selling products.

Three Organizational Challenges that Hinder Innovation … And the Solutions to Resolve Them.

In previous blogs, we’ve shared that making innovation part of your company’s cultural DNA is a crucial step in achieving QSR success. This is still very true – however, if the end goal is innovation, there are plenty of organizational challenges that stand in the way of finding success.

In a recent McKinsey study, 70 percent of corporate leaders profess that innovation is among their top three priorities for driving growth.  But the way companies manage and govern innovation doesn’t reflect that importance. Henny Penny is successful, not because we haven’t experienced innovation challenges ourselves, but because we addressed each issue as it arose and then answered it with an innovative solution. Integrating innovation into every part of the business helps us to keep long-standing customer relationships, as well as achieve industry recognition – most recently, this happened with our 2011 KI Award for the PriMelt Oil Melter.

In my experience, there are primarily three challenges in particular that customers report encountering across the board that hinder innovation.

1. Playing Catch Up
2. Ambiguity
3. Underdevelopment

The Catch Up Game

Some organizations get caught up in thinking, “that brand is doing really well, what are they doing to have that success,” and most dangerous of all, “let’s mimic what they’re doing.” This is playing catch up – a tough cycle to break because you never really break even. Focusing too much on another company’s progress, and too little on your own, results in never having the opportunity to develop your own innovation. For example, do you know the name of the man that invented the second automobile? … The solution in overcoming this challenge is in watching the competition, but not allowing yourself to be lead by them. Instead, spend time focusing on your customer’s issues and opportunities, and solving them with valuable innovation.

The Ambiguity Trap

Many organizations suffer, sometimes unknowingly, from ambiguity. Navigating the path to innovation and success is a dead end if you don’t plan for “it.” The solution to overcoming ambiguity is in outlining a plan for your desired outcome. I personally know the value of this exercise, and use it to accomplish one of my personal objectives for the year – to spend X amount of time out of the office and in the field with key customers. This helps me anecdotally get a feel for different trends around the world and, ultimately, ensures that fresh information is coming into Henny Penny to inspire ongoing innovation.

Addressing Underdeveloped Talent

The third and final challenge is operating with underdeveloped team members. The problem with this is that when your employees aren’t growing, your opportunities for innovation aren’t growing either. The solution to overcoming this challenge is as simple as you’re probably thinking – develop your employees. Increase your brand’s opportunities for innovation and success by helping your team to develop their own expertise – ultimately they’ll bring greater, and smarter, ideas for innovation back to your company and customers. This practice is front and center within our company in the form of multiple programs, such as Henny Penny University – our requisite training program – and our Emerging Leader Program, which develops employees through formal education and hands-on experience.

In the end, every organization, whether a supplier or a restaurant, will experience challenges that hinder ongoing innovation. The marked difference between truly successful organizations and everybody else is in eating, breathing and planning for innovation.

Telling the Story: Experience Is The Best Teacher

The day begins at 6:30 a.m. Lights turned on, equipment warming up, the crew sure that everything is working … in corporate kitchens, memorable experiences begin with careful thought and preparation.

… And then the students arrive.

As Henny Penny’s corporate chef and lead trainer, I know that for executives, customers and foodservice chefs, the kitchen is the classroom, and the experiences are the lessons. A day in a life of a corporate chef is more involved than one might expect. Helping individuals experience the brand encompasses more than just the taste of the food: it’s about submerging the students and our guests in the awareness of which solutions can be brought to the surface with a well-designed, superior-functional foodservice kitchen. In sharing knowledge about what equipment to use and how to best use it, we’re building a story – a story with a beginning, middle and exciting finale.

To effectively tell this story, it’s critical to engage students in the art of the experience – offering world-class training with compelling demonstrations that connect students to the kitchen. In a recent blog post from Rob Connelly, Henny Penny’s President, Rob speaks about the critical importance of “tableside magic.” Henny Penny extends this concept every day into the kitchen. From coast to coast and continent to continent, we find that it’s the world-class experiences such as these – those that involve the participant in the story in a very real way – that make for relevant and lasting impressions.

Every Great Story Hooks You from the Beginning
At Henny Penny, we’re engaged in several different types of training, ranging from introductory courses to expert-level sessions in cooking and equipment mastery. Our Equipment 101 Class is an introduction to Henny Penny’s industry-leading family of foodservice equipment. Often, it’s here that new team members and potential customers first learn the capabilities and common uses of open and pressure fryers, and combi ovens as well. Some of our guests have been around business or restaurants for decades, but have never been introduced to food equipment before.

… So, we start from the beginning. Helping guests and executive students to better understand what each piece of equipment is, what it does, how you make it work, are all essential elements to the course. It’s also here, in the introduction of the story, that people have the potential to get engaged in the kitchen at a whole new level.

The Three Most Magical Words in the Learning Model
Because credibility is important in the kitchen and in the field, the next part of the story is built around the details – speeds and feeds, specs and decks. Chefs are, ultimately, teachers, helping other culinary workers (and those who depend on them) to gain a greater appreciation for discipline and art of cooking. In a quest to accomplish this, I try to encourage people to communicate with three small words that go a long way in building kitchen credibility: “In my experience …” These three small words powerfully build lasting credibility and instant attention to the details and dialogue that follow in the learning process.

Every Great Ending Has a Compelling Finale
At the conclusion of a three-day experience in my kitchen, I want every participant to walk away with a new appreciation for their cooking abilities and kitchen know-how. Ending any training with a great experience, like a great story, is the very best way to solidify the lessons learned.

At Henny Penny, we’ve found that our own version of the Iron Chef competition (dubbed our “Stainless Steel Chef Competition”) provides just that. In this competition, everyone receives a set of ingredients, thirty minutes to design a menu, and then another half hour to prepare the meal.

The dinner is prepared. The meal is judged. Awards are given. But in the end, everyone wins because they’ve experienced it for themselves. Whether they’ ve won matters far less than the fact that they rose to the challenge and met the goals of the competition – most likely doing something they’ve never done before.

Thinking of training unfolding like a great story makes the learning experience meaningful and long-lasting. Whether you’re deepening knowledge of a particular piece of equipment or cooking for the very first time, embracing the story and getting involved within the roles is a recipe for success. And in the end, the teacher can create the gateway to a new passion, profession or art. The story is one students will tell – themselves and others – over and over, and will add to as they continue their professional journey.

How To Choose The Right Kitchen Equipment Supplier

The QSR industry has many intricacies that make it one of the most demanding businesses to be in today, but if you can provide compelling value, the rewards can be significant.

Factors such as food quality and consistency, throughput and efficiency – to name a few – are some of the daily, ever-changing concerns that must be balanced with the essential tasks of maintaining and growing a restaurant business. To achieve success, QSR operators must first and foremost deliver front-of-house reliability to customers and that means making strategic back-of-house choicesfrom the get go.

Working with customer-focused, smart equipment suppliers is a vital component of this when fried foods are on the menu. Here are three tips franchising customer Buffalo Wings & Rings shared as useful in choosing the right fryer equipment supplier.

1. Commitment to Tableside Magic

While the primary goal of the average QSR is to build a strong brand and sales, achieving and maintaining this objective is ultimately linked to customer satisfaction. Knowing this, components such as surroundings, staff and menu items must be on point at every patron’s table. Equally on point in the kitchen, a smart fryer equipment supplier will not only represent its own strong brand, but will also embrace yours.

2. C = Consistency

Brand loyalty, return customers and high quality, consistent foods are closely intertwined. While having passion, drive and resources is valuable, unfailing delivery of good product – as both ingredient and finished plate – is the number one mode of transportation for achieving your restaurant’s end-goal. The right fryer equipment supplier will offer kitchen intelligence that eliminates causes of frying inconsistencies, such as overextended oil life and human error.

3. Surefire Simplicity
At the core, an equipment supplier is in the business of making a QSR operator’s life easier. When in doubt, skip the bells and whistles and determine what kitchen features are critical in improving efficiency. For example, low oil volume fryers will significantly reduce oil expenditure, straightforward programmability will increase productivity, automatic filtering will free up manual hours … and the right fryer equipment supplier will be there with an answer to it all.

Minimize Turnover, Maximize Efficiency

There are a few key elements any QSR professional should consider when dealing with high turnover – a common occurrence that affects even the best, most successful brands. From personal experiences and discussions with Henny Penny customers, I’ve found that simplicity is a common theme in combating this systemic problem. To build a loyal and consistent team, whether in the restaurant or in the office, simplifying and streamlining tasks and processes is key. Making things as easy as possible, without sacrificing quality or customer-focus, is a key ingredient in creating a positive work environment, which in turn feeds positively into employee retention.

Training
Operations should be simple to learn, especially if high turnover is an inevitable challenge, and employees are frequently being trained. POS systems, open fryers and combi ovens should be intuitive and easy to understand. This ensures that simple to learn operations are in place, which helps to increase employee longevity and, better yet, reduces time and money spent on orientations. If an objective look at the equipment and processes in place reveals unnecessary complexity, an immediate and long-term approach should and could be enlisted to remove it. This could mean enlisting employees’ opinions and suggestions while beginning an effort now to articulate the company’s needs for new equipment when the current pieces you use need replacing in the near future. Emphasizing the need for ease of use and operational simplicity in future bids or RFPs will only help you gain the equipment most compatible with your long-range goals.

Daily Tasks
There is also the element of usability – slightly different from being simple to learn – which addresses day-to-day management once training is mastered. Steps for processes must be clear, concise and accessible at all times for employees to be successful. For example, it’s not reasonable to ask your team to follow 32 complicated steps and expect perfect French fries without fail. Operators may just make the wrong call or skip a step entirely. Ensuring that simple, easy to accomplish operations are in place decreases the likelihood of wasted product and, more importantly, allows employees to feel a greater sense of confidence in completing daily tasks.

Taking Charge
Finally, one of the qualities of a valuable employee is his or her ability to problem-solve without management help. When an issue arises, intuitive pieces of kitchen equipment will provide the operator with error information, steps for internal access and clear direction for immediate correction. Manufacturers like Henny Penny also have a network of worldwide service people available for support, so that when an agent is called, their time spent on-site is quick and provides minimal interruptions.

Ensuring that easy to service operations, such as technology and equipment, are in place encourages employees to use think-on-your-feet action – allowing for improved efficiency and decreased interruptions. Additionally, Henny Penny has found that actively encouraging a culture of innovation and “everyone counts” has made a tremendous difference in both product quality and the day-to-day working environment in our offices and manufacturing facilities. I can’t recommend enough taking a top-down approach to communicating and actively supporting employee initiative and leadership.

Although the QSR industry is often up and down, that doesn’t mean your staff has to be too. Running an efficient QSR with employees who can quickly recover from operational missteps is crucial, because ultimately, every lost minute equals lost dollars. To minimize turnover and maximize efficiency, make simplicity in learning, usability and maintenance an employee priority.

Give Your Customer What They Want … Before The First Order

Knowing how your customer thinks is a vital part of any strategic business plan. In the QSR market, this means understanding not only what drives decisions in the board room, but having practical, in-depth knowledge of what happens at the counter of each restaurant. Actively gathering, studying and acting on this sort of “behind the eyes” understanding gives you a holistic perspective for success and for establishing a solid reputation with your customers, as well.

The ability to empathize with how customers are feeling, understand the problems they’re experiencing, and appeal to their top priorities will help your QSR to become regarded as a trustworthy, knowledgeable brand that holds their family’s best interest in mind. To achieve this type of brand trust, three core elements become paramount: Assess, Analyze and Act.

Assess

To identify and address your customer’s needs, survey them to better understand what they feel is being done well in your restaurant, what can be done better, and what issues they may be facing that you can help solve as a member of their community. For QSR operators, this means staying in touch with the customer and asking constructive questions – formally and informally. Be it through a poll or through a casual conversation via a social media platform, be sure to use a method that works best for each individual guest.

Analyze

Assessing your customer gives you raw data; it’s just as critical tostudyand analyze the feedback as it is to gather it. Relying on information that is dated from a decade, two year or even six months ago is dangerous because customers are constantly exposed to new influencers and shifting preferences. Timely analysis is particularly important when both domestic and international customers are part of your customer set, as dining and business norms vary from country to country. Regular data collection and analysis afford you the ability to think proactively; as you come to know trends, preferences and the unique factors in each segment, you can think through each issue thoroughly, from the customer’s point of view, and develop a solution – often before the customer articulates it or is fully aware of the problem.

Take Action

Obtaining guest feedback and analyzing it simply isn’t enough. This knowledge – taken directly from customers – must be translated into actionable items to be of value. While it’s critical that your organization be ready and willing to make changes based on your assessments, it’s also very important to keep in mind that not all changes need be sweeping. Underestimating the power of small changes can be a mistake. For instance, is it more convenient for your customers to learn about new developments, improvement and the like via your company’s website, or does he/she prefer a blog or Twitter platform for quick information on the fly? By adding to or improving your guests’ quality of life, with simple yet effective enhancements to how you do business, your efforts will speak loudly about your organization’s understanding of and desire to meet their goals.

Similarly, don’t shortchange the insight people at all levels within your organization may have; don’t treat the feedback and analysis results as something only for a privileged few. Instead, strategically share the findings throughout your QSR franchise or company to arm every level of employee with the most comprehensive, up-to-date customer profile.

In the end, you will discover positive feedback and, as a bonus, find that existing relationships are changed for the better, simply from connecting with the customer of your own accord. While “assess, analyze and take action” is a major (and often challenging) effort, Henny Penny has found it to be very important. From service to product development, a system of trusted feedback has proven indispensible to our customers and our success. Our innovative Evolution Elite^®fryer, which significantly reduces costs and energy and uses 40% less oil than conventional open fryers, is a direct result of the three actions discussed above. Working closely with our customers, we heard what they needed, analyzed the requirements, and acted on making a groundbreaking fryer reality.

Revisiting Restaurant 101: Three Basics That’ll Make You Sit Up and Pay Attention

Our industry is experiencing a renewed emphasis on the core principles of business, likely due to the high volume, high turnover nature of the QSR category. Staying profitable and competitive can be a stressful juggling act, balancing customer needs, financial restrictions, and resource limitations. Three key and equal components are necessary for success in the restaurant industry:

Reliability
Whatever the specific challenges in your QSR, the solution must be reliable. This applies to your operation, your equipment and your team. Management simply cannot afford anything less than a fully functional operation while turning out high volume. When you depend on one arm of your business to deliver–from staff to processes to ovens–the other arm needs to be there to support it.

Managing Expectations
Managing expectations with personnel and equipment is another cornerstone of a well-oiled QSR machine. The best operations keep simplicity in mind, while also setting the team up for success. The development of people, for instance, relies on finding the right people and helping them develop into agile, resourceful managers and leaders, able to deal with the fast, demanding restaurant environment. Likewise, in the quest to develop smoother universal operations, organizations must integrate tools and processes that make disastrous mistakes nearly impossible. In short, make it easy for your team to do whatever it is you’re asking.

Efficiency
Efficiency, the final component in a well-run organization, has taken on an even larger role by allowing for higher production rates and the ability to give consumers what they want, when they want it. Constant attention to efficiency–not a fad or a trending topic, but in fact an ongoing business-critical element–is crucial in the restaurant business and keeps failure at bay. Within this principle, sustainability is a hot, current topic in the QSR world. Less energy absolutely means greater efficiency. At Henny Penny, one of our primary goals is to help customers save on oil, one of the largest energy expenditures in a restaurant.

To be efficient and keep costs down, many quick-serves are leaning toward smaller footprint stores, while at the same time working to produce annual sales of anywhere between three and five million per unit … a sometimes daunting goal when big brands are dominating the category. To meet QSR giants head-on, your team must be capable of delivering high volume with uncompromised consistency. Kitchen equipment, for instance, must be compact; doing more in less space.

Reliability, managing expectations and efficiency are therefore highly intertwined, key components for any success story. Although this three-pronged approach involves a careful balancing act, the good news is these efforts come back to you in a positive way. When people, equipment and systems work cohesively and grow together, the overall QSR segment also grows into something better and reaps measurable rewards.

Three Tips for Improving Innovation and Success

Innovation that directly benefits the customer is a key element to QSR success. Even with the best menu, friendliest employees and competitive prices, no QSR organization can afford to remain static while competitors, technology and consumers move forward.

I personally know the value of stressing innovation within the organization. At Henny Penny, we talk about it, we invest in it, and we celebrate it as a company. Our culture of innovation has recently garnered notice from the world’s most powerful quick-serve empire: McDonald’s.

To oversimplify, Henny Penny focuses on making excellent products, building partnerships and employees. But every company says this. The key to valuable innovation – and ultimately success – is commitment. The path to practical, meaningful innovation begins with:

1. Asking challenging questions such as, “How can we be more creative; scalable; effective?”
2. Eating, breathing and planning for opportunities to innovate – both internally and externally.
3. Regularly measuring growth and improving upon it.

There are many, many aspects of innovation and cultivating a culture of openness and forward thought we could discuss. Let’s focus on the first element above: asking the right questions.

At first, it might seem easy to suggest asking questions. After all, asking questions doesn’t really change anything…does it?

All that depends on A) the kinds of questions being asked and B) how receptive decision makers within your company are to the doors those questions open.

Some sample questions to ask that can help you rethink how you’re effecting current processes and maybe create some new ones:

How are we measuring success for each department? Each division? Does this measurement truly reflect what each organization does? Are the goals for success directly related to the company’s mission?

Are we consistently and thoroughly hearing what our customers are saying about our goods and services? Are we able to drill down into survey data for patterns and trends?

Is our company’s leadership willing to be challenged and proven wrong? Are we open to new ideas from anyone within the company? By what the company is doing, are we showing we value something else more than innovation and success serving our customers?

Does our corporate culture genuinely encourage and reward innovative thinking and problem solving? What programs and training do we have in place to foster original thinking, an open environment, and creative solutions? Are we willing to be assessed and make changes, however painful, to become more agile and forward thinking?

In the last few years, asking these types of questions helped Henny Penny create the Evolution Elite® line of open fryers, which have helped revolutionize oil usage and the filtering process – which in turn greatly impacted the areas of cost and energy savings and sustainability.

Blogging Innovation recently posted a list of things to consider when you’re wanting to energize innovative approaches at your company – and they reinforce the need to reward creative thinking and being willing to ask hard questions.

Any organization can hold brainstorming meetings, form committees, and plot product roadmaps. It takes a different kind of company to take the next steps of actively pursuing an innovative spirit.

The next in this series will discuss challenges within your organization than can hinder ongoing innovation.