Member Blog

Thought leadership from the brightest minds in hospitality training. Subscribe to our Training Flash E-Newsletter to get the latest articles right in your inbox.

The Visionary Trainer

I have a CHART logo compact mirror with “Visionary Trainer” written across it. It was an Atlanta conference gift. While using it the other day, I thought about what it means to be a visionary trainer or leader. It involves having a vision, being accountable for executing said vision, creating engagement with others around the vision, and commitment to carry out the vision.

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Why Millennials are the New Lifeblood of Restaurants

Patrick Yearout is interviewed by QSR Magazine on this topic. For Patrick, having different generations on staff is an essential part of success. It provides diversity of knowledge and perspectives, which keeps the brand relevant. Members of Generation Y are often tech-savvy and can help provide fresh insights on products, marketing, management styles, and more.

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The Law of Brevity

The ironic thing about the Law of Brevity is the word brevity itself. In its essence, it means short, compact, and concise. So it’s a longer word for “short,” but it means to keep it short? Okay, but for our purposes The Law of Brevity is a fancy way to say, keep your training programs and learning initiatives short & concise. Also, it sounds way better than The “Law of Short."

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15 Ways to Get Employees to Follow Your Dress Code

Like almost every other hospitality organization, Rubio’s has a dress code for its employees; ours consists of clean and wrinkle-free shirts, blue jeans, nametags, non-slip shoes, and an assortment of related grooming and conduct standards. And like almost every other hotel or restaurant company, our employees occasionally struggle to follow these guidelines. Sometimes they forget their shirts at home, sometimes they spill salsa on their pants while working in the kitchen, and yes, sometimes they show up looking like they slept in their work clothes (sigh).

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Culture Cultivators Dig Deep for Impact

Ultimately, we CHART trainers have a responsibility to intentionally create and maintain an environment for the growth and development of healthy and effective organizational culture. Through a number of internal discussions, and seeking input from many CHART members, here are a few of the shared questions I have found that help us dig deep into Culture creation. Perhaps they will spark some discussion within your teams, too!

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Sitting is the New Smoking: 12 Ideas to Get You Back on Your Feet

In the world of hospitality, too much sitting is not something that most employees have to worry about because they are typically very active helping, serving, directing, cooking for, and cleaning up after guests. Most of them rarely sit down, and if they were to count up their steps, I’m sure some of them easily reach 10,000 when working a long shift. But what happens when operations folks get promoted up into training positions?

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5 Great Nuggets from CHART Members at the NRA Show

Four years ago, I wrote a column for the CHART blog encouraging hospitality trainers to attend the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, and I feel that all of the reasons I listed in that piece are just as relevant today. The event provides a venue for those on the training side to forge stronger connections with their colleagues in operations, familiarize themselves with new vendors that offer products and services for managing and delivering training, and sample some amazing cuisine in one of the country’s best cities for restaurants. Here are 5 great nuggets of advice I picked up from attending the various CHART member sessions.

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Speaking with Confidence: Overcoming Fears, Fillers, and Forgetting

Whether you’re presenting to a large audience or speaking at a meeting, you want your message to be clearly heard. You want people to believe in your credibility. Sometimes you just want to get through it without making a fool of yourself. Public speaking is a greater fear than death for the average person, but fortunately, it is a learnable skill. It is also one of the keys to attaining executive presence and all of the benefits that come with that.

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Confessions of a "Trainerholic"

After 40 years in training and development, it’s time to confess. It started at a simple interview in 1972 when I was asked to be a Food and Beverage Trainer. I just graduated from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and was successfully managing a high-volume Swiss German Restaurant celebrated by locals as one of the best places to eat in Las Vegas. Why would I want to leave success to work for Holiday Inn hotels as a company trainer opening hotel restaurants? Why indeed would I want to take a 50% cut in pay and what exactly does a food and beverage trainer do?

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Reduce Repair Costs with Virtual Technology

Hotel buildings exist as living, breathing organisms; with complex engineering and structural systems that work in tandem. General Managers (GMs) are responsible for keeping the building well-maintained, however, most GMs are lay people who lack the technical knowledge and skills on specific asset protection and maintenance topics regarding their property’s roof, façade, landscaping, parking lots, HVAC, plumbing, electrical systems, and many more.

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Hospitality’s Image Problem (and What You Can Do About It)

As the economy has gotten stronger during the past few years, it has become harder and harder for employers in almost every industry to find qualified workers. In fact, according to a 2016 report from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, more than two-thirds of surveyed organizations said they were having difficulty filling certain positions, a statistic that increased from 50% in 2013.

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Learning Strategists Grow the Future

Spring is such an exciting time! Gardeners are hard at work, not only preparing beds for planting, but also looking ahead and creating long-range plans to frame their decisions; considering, for example, what will happen in the sunniest spot when the sapling nearby grows to full height. Will that part of the yard become a shade garden in the next five years? Jim Knight reminded us in a recent keynote of a proverb that reminds us of the importance of both foresight and action: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.”

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