What started as one store is now eight brands thriving across multiple countries, with over 750 stores. Sizzling Platter began operating in 1963 as a mom-and-pop with a single Sizzler location in Sugar House, Utah, and a dream to be more.
Over sixty years later, the company continues to grow daily, with more than 13,000 team members and renowned brands, including Little Caesars, Wingstop, Jamba, Dunkin', Jersey Mike's, Sizzler, Red Robin, and Cinnabon.
Consistency is key when managing eight different brands simultaneously. That’s why Matthew Smith, Sizzling Platter’s Learning and Development Specialist, is an essential part of the team.
While there is plenty of overlap in operations across the brands, each one has slight differences that provide unique challenges, meaning that a “one size fits all” mindset simply doesn’t work. This is why Matthew must understand each brand on a deeper level and evaluate what the most important drivers of operational excellence will be for each individual brand instead of just trying to force the same exact programs onto all the different brands.
So how does he do it?
Matthew recently joined Crunchtime’s Ops Innovators webinar panel on Delivering Excellence at Scale Through Ops Execution to provide his insight.
With many well-established brands in play, along with so many different projects and rollouts, it becomes difficult to determine which individual factors to implement as brand standards across the board. Finding these overlaps in brand standards can be hugely advantageous to Sizzling Platter. Every brand has strengths and challenges, but finding things that have worked in one brand that can also work across the others helps Sizzling Platter to maximize its efficiency.
Despite each brand having differences, the main focus for operational excellence remains the same across all brands. Matthew believes the biggest drivers of ops excellence, independent of brand, are people and culture. These are not only the foundation but the driving force behind any rollout that Sizzling Platter attempts. Matthew stated, “Having great tools is important, but they are only as great as the people using them.” Sizzling Platter is committed to investing in its culture and people, including adding more district managers to help shrink down the district size, allowing them each more in-store face-to-face time with employees. This allows them to ensure everyone has a common goal, and having good people to begin with makes implementing new technologies or processes much easier.
Matthew emphasized the importance of having the right people in place and communicating openly with those people. He mentioned that when you are consistently in the room with those people and give full transparency on what they are implementing and why, initiatives become more effective and are adopted in a more timely manner.
Matthew added, “If you can sell the idea or show the value of something and you have a great organization set up, it becomes much easier for it to start at the top and work its way down.” Matthew has noticed each implementation becomes easier and more effective, now that they have created a culture that emphasizes visibility and transparency all the way from the top of the chain to the bottom of it.
When discussing how much training is required for rollouts to each of the various brands, Matthew once again disclosed that they have to avoid the one-size-fits-all approach and really focus on the fragmented challenges of each brand. This is accomplished by the training department having a team of senior training coordinators that are specific to a brand, allowing him to keep up with each of the individual brands without needing to devote exorbitant amounts of time to the task. Outside of these individual challenges, Matthew did have one recommendation that he believes is always good advice independent of brand needs: to make use of the “rip off the bandaid” approach. In other words, Matt believes that if you are going to do an implementation or a rollout, the best strategy is to go for it 100%.
For more information about driving operational excellence and supporting growth across unique brands, view the webinar in its entirety here.