3 Common Challenges with Tasks and SOPs that Can Obstruct Unit Growth

As part of this multi-part series, we’re highlighting four focus areas of operational excellence that, if executed well, pave the way for confident growth:

1. Inventory, purchasing, and food costs 

2. Employee scheduling and labor costs

3. Operating procedures and task management

4. Employee training and development 

In this next part, we’re focusing on operating procedures and task management.

When your first store opened, you turned it into a well-oiled machine—employees did great work and completed it on time, and consistently. However, with each new location, it becomes more difficult to ensure that brand standards and food safety procedures are followed, ultimately making it harder to ensure great guest experiences on every visit.

•  Brand standards and SOPs aren’t completed consistently in stores 
•  Food safety issues and mishaps lead to unhappy customers and bad audit scores
•  HQ and above-store leaders lack visibility into store performance
  

Driving consistent guest experiences in every store is a critical catalyst for growth. But this is easier said than done. Taco Bell’s largest US franchisee, Tacala Companies, ensures quality work is done consistently in every location. 

Here are some ways they’re accomplishing this:

• Improving in-store execution and compliance
  • Providing tools that give stores lists of daily tasks, track follow-ups, upload photos, and more.

• Communicating faster and more effectively between stores and HQ
  • Rolling out new SOPs, marketing campaigns, and food safety tasks faster and tracking adoption.
    
    
• Identifying and addressing operational issues faster
  • With data about what work is or isn’t completed across every store, leaders can easily see the top issues for each store, different regions, and the system as a whole.

As a result, Tacala Companies’ managers can focus more on providing an exceptional guest experience and ensuring the delivery of safe food with kind service, which is a key principle of operational excellence to fuel growth.

Click here to learn what other brands are doing to reach their location growth goals, and look for the next installment of this multi-part series.