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Structure in sales

Earlier this year I attended a seminar that explained the success secrets behind Primi, a South African restaurant that is famous for generating the highest profit per square foot in shopping malls. The outcome for me is that I now look at restaurants to spot all the things that people do right and wrong.

Last night, my mother took a big family party out to a mid-market chain pizza restaurant and in our 45 minute wait after sitting down before our drinks were served we could see how a lack of basic organisation meant that the five waiters and three kitchen staff kept on hitting log jams.

One of Primi rules is that all the waiting staff walk the whole restaurant all the time and look to serve people straight away - especially those on tables that other waiters have served. Last night, we could see three waiters pretending to be busy while two waiters were hopelessly overworked. This was presumably a result of a random allocation of tables as diners arrived.

The manager at the end, apologising to my mother, complained about a lack of support from head office. She was right but not in the way that she was thinking. The problem is that the business processes are not designed for success.

Local retailers need to think about how they staff their stores too. Organise your thinking about how to serve by thinking about what your shopper's needs are likely to be, how you can prompt them to buy more, and how you make them happy. Not by sitting down and doing the rota first.

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