Training Articles (formerly Member Blog)

Two years ago I posted a blog on the CHART site titled, If I Had to Choose Just Three, in which I wrote about the three books that I couldn’t live without as a hospitality trainer. I still refer to all three of these books today and use them very regularly in my job as Director of Training for Ivar’s Restaurants

Is your field personnel stuck waiting on a broken escalator? In Atlanta, I shared how and why you should teach your field managers to get RIPd - rapid improvement programs. Training is operations and operations is training. It is key that you put together tools for them to use which will then improve profits, sales & people performance/retention

Move beyond Social Media to Social Reality. In Doug Busk's CHARTtalks session at our Atlanta conference, he shared that consumers are now providing you feedback directly and expect someone to be listening and responding to their compliments and complaints

Back in 2013, I wrote a blog post for CHART’s website titled “Hiring for Hospitality” ### (http://www.chart.org/blog/view/id/351/) in which I discussed recruiting and hiring strategies that hotel and restaurant managers could use to find the most qualified employees for their businesses.

There is a video of my CHARTTalks session in Atlanta that I urge you to watch. It's only 8 minutes long and if nothing else, you'll get some great hashtags to use!

At CHART’s 86th Hospitality Training Conference, which took place in the summer in 2013 in Miami, we were extremely fortunate to have Ty Bennett serve as our closing keynote speaker. Ty’s topic then was, “The Power of Influence,” and attendees began raving about him before he had even left the stage. Many touted him as the best speaker we had ever had at CHART, and he eventually received the highest scores ever for one of our keynotes on our post-conference survey.

Don't worry, you didn't leave the gate open. I meant that figuratively :-)

With the economy improving and unemployment rates low, the labor market for the restaurant industry is getting tighter and tighter. At the same time, many restaurant chains are planning for aggressive growth, especially in the Fast Casual segment. New store openings are key to driving that growth, but staffing those stores, especially finding qualified general managers, is becoming increasingly difficult.

I recently had lunch with a friend and co-worker at a popular Denver-area sports bar. I remember the occasion well because that’s the day I had a “Garbage Burger” for the very first time. The experience forever changed the way I think about the connection between service, selling and repeat business.

In Atlanta, Michael White was one of our CHARTtalks presenters. He shared statistics on the growing number of technology options and the consumers who are more accepting of using technology. In fact, other industries, such as gas stations and banks are automated so it's time for restaurants to embrace this trend.

None of us want to become obsolete. In Atlanta, I challenged everyone to find one training program to focus on. Find a new route and put emphasis on collaborative learning. Your training must evolve. Break away from tradition and integrate social and informal learning into your training.

Welcome to 2015, everyone! To celebrate the New Year, I thought I would provide a list of 15 ways that you can transform your year by learning, sharing, growing, and caring with CHART during the next twelve months: