At Love and Quiches, we communicate a lot; we meet a lot. We hold daily huddles, weekly management meetings, weekly executive meetings, weekly cap-ex meetings, team-building meetings, and ongoing training meetings. We also have monthly town hall meetings during which we share news about our plans and our progress, as well as discuss any issues. We do not talk down to or patronize our employees at these meetings; we need them. I urge you not to listen to those who complain that when there are so many meetings nobody can get anything done. Meetings are important; businesses need to communicate to make sure everyone is marching in the same direction and to avoid working at cross purposes. Differences of opinion, conflicts, and conflict resolution are prime reasons for meetings; do not avoid them. But once a decision is made, the team needs to implement it—even those who do not quite agree.
Effective meetings are one of the most essential ingredients of a successful company. Meetings are where decisions are made and agendas are set, and good meeting behavior is important to avoid descending into chaos. We learned some of this the hard way, and as a result, we have decided to hang a sign on the door to the conference room: “No Cell Phones or Egos.”
Here are my suggestions for meeting protocol, my rules of the road:
Make sure to start and end on time, with a $1 fine in the pizza kitty for every minute late.
Think about having a meeting standing up if it promises to be a short one.
Have an agenda. Time cannot be replenished.
Have someone take notes, or set up a white board/flip chart on which to record decisions and action items. Note how these action items will be implemented and the person responsible for that implementation, along with time lines and an end date.
Discuss the progress being made on all of the action items at the next meeting.
Don’t allow multiple idea discussions. Focus on the topic at hand.
Don’t allow any interruptions when a person is talking.
Don’t tolerate any side conversations.
Don’t tolerate any personal attacks. Never! And treat each other with respect and dignity.
Keeping People Motivated
Your company culture depends on a group of employees who are motivated to do their best work. So how do you keep them invested? At the end of the day, money talks, but so does recognition, and we devote equal measure to ensuring both motivators. Our employees understand that their best job security is the success of the company and vice versa. We need each other, and we all know it.
We hold State of the Company meetings in which we inform all of our employees, from our porters to our managers, of our progress, and during which we express our appreciation for their good work. Our transparency is appreciated by our employees and keeps them engaged. We share financials with some levels within the hierarchy. We also recognize and reward longevity with gift cards, announce Employees of the Month from each department, raffle off TVs and other prizes when production goals are met, and so on. But when necessary, we do not hesitate to discuss any issues that need addressing so that we can all participate in the solution.
Our employees share in our profits based on performance—a great motivator. And everybody who works here knows that we always look to promote from within before going outside. So all of us have skin in the game and the same goals at stake. We treat our employees as partners; we show them respect, and that goes a very long way.
Management by walking around is making a comeback, but I never stopped. I wander around in the back a few times each week, greeting employees and identifying issues. Our production workers look forward to top management spending time with them. To my production workers, I am “Miss Susan,” while Irwin is known as “Poppy.” This is how we do it. This is the Love and Quiches philosophy in the short form.
________
We have chosen to remain a private business, a family business with the second generation in place. This is key to the future of Love & Quiches Gourmet (our new name as of 2013, which you will learn about in chapter 14, “Marketing and Branding”). I have my partners—my husband, son, and daughter—at the top with me, as well as a few other essential executives.
I think being a family business provides a comfort level to the organization as a whole and encourages our teams to participate fully as we move forward. The process of improvement never stops; we are never good enough. Innovation can emerge from anywhere within the organization, and our employees are empowered to improve our company systems and products. We tap into those abilities across the entire organization, salute good work, and understand that mistakes will be made, which is fine as long as they are recognized and corrected as quickly as possible.
But each and every employee’s performance is also crucial to our future. Our cake pans need to be clean and ready for the next day’s production, and what we will bake depends on the orders we’ve received, which need to be scheduled properly so that they can ship on time. (And with hundreds of products, this is no easy task.) We need orders, so our sales force must be out there making it happen; our marketing department needs to help them by spreading the word; our R&D chefs need to keep the new products coming; our quality assurance department needs to make sure everything is perfect; our CFO needs to be “Chief Bean Counter.” And that is only the start.
From the top, we try to generate a hunger for needed changes and initiatives rather than imposing them. We try to share the decision-making process, which means sharing the risks and the rewards. Real leaders don’t have all the answers, and that is how it should be. We need people better than we are in their particular areas to become a great company. At the top, we need to be visionaries. We need to set the direction in line with our resources while at the same time inviting the input of everybody below. And this implies some risk. As leaders, we guide our employees to overcome the fear of that risk, the fear of change that creates barriers to moving the organization forward. And just as I had to overcome such barriers without any help, the strength of our numbers now helps us to overcome these fears together and keeps the dynamic going. We need creative ideas to tackle the barriers, which further means we need our people to generate those ideas. Fortunately, the employees of Love and Quiches have always been and still are a passionate group, and the ideas keep coming!
Chapter 13
Constant Learning
You have to know where the dots are to be able to connect them.
—Paraphrased from Steve Jobs
When I started my business in 1973, I was a blank slate. My story was written one quiche at a time, and in the very early days, Jill and I learned primarily by making mistakes. Learning from your errors is indeed important, but you can’t stop there. As soon as I bought Jill out, I knew that the time had come for me to learn as much as I could about running a business and about my industry, and I knew I had to do this rather quickly. That process of gathering as much relevant knowledge as I could has never ended. All along my path with Love and Quiches, I met more and more people from whom I could learn, and I began to create outside support systems to which I could go for advice.
In any industry, markets are constantly changing and evolving, and you must likewise constantly watch for and react to those changes, offering new products, new price points, new packaging. This process of constant learning ensures that you will not fall behind. I have learned that the only way to stay ahead of the game in an ever-shifting (if not completely transforming) world is to take in knowledge from wherever I can get it.
For an entrepreneur or business owner, the sources of this continuing education are truly endless, and insights can materialize in places you’d never expect. It’s a process of constant learning—from mentors, from networks, from the competition, from customers and suppliers, and from industry counterparts. Some of my most reliable sources of learning have helped keep both my company and me at the top of our game.
Learning from Mentors
Finding a mentor is a good thing; finding a mentor who grows into a sponsor, someone
who can offer concrete support (such as helping you find that job, or funding, or putting you together with a likely partner for a new business venture) is even better. I have had many throughout my career.
You might recall from the beginning of my story that my first mentor was Marvin Paige. I was introduced to him through a friend while I was still hawking frozen quiches from my home kitchen to local accounts on Long Island. When Marvin set up my first appointment in the big city at O’Neals’ Baloon, that was the beginning of the rest of my life. That was the catalyst; I was off and running.
I adored Marvin. He knew a lot of people, and he always had time for his friends. He spent his entire career in foodservice, owning several restaurants that were all very hot for a while. Before I met him in the 1960s, he was a partner in what was arguably one of the first theme restaurants, the Tin Lizzie, and he later opened a restaurant called Claire’s in New York on Seventh Avenue and 18th Street; it was in the Chelsea area and catered to the gay crowd. The food was delicious, and we went there often. He opened another Claire’s in Key West, and he later developed another concept, Hamburger Harry’s.
From the early days on, Marvin would speak with me for countless hours, teaching me all about the restaurant scene in New York City. One of the best pieces of wisdom I got from Marvin was this: “Watch the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.” It was a vital lesson that changed the way I ran my business. I was in the city at least three days a week on sales calls, and I often set aside time to stop in wherever he was at the time to get off my feet and chat for a half hour. Irwin and I would often meet Marvin for dinner with whomever he was married to at the time. We remained friends for decades until his premature death a few years ago. Ironically, given how good his advice always was, Marvin was a poor businessperson, and he ended up running all those previously mentioned restaurants into the ground. Nevertheless, I learned to always listen to what he said, not imitate what he did; the former was gold from the start. Meeting him truly changed everything.
Although none of them matched Marvin’s influence on my career and business, there were other mentors in my life, including Jack Harris, my equipment dealer; restaurateur Stuart Levin; and two of the executive chefs at airlines Love and Quiches supplied. I picked mentors up from across the industry, wherever I could get them. If you find someone who’s open to mentoring you, even on a limited basis, jump at the opportunity. You never know who the Marvin of your business will be. My daughter, Joan, now serving as our executive VP of sales and marketing, is following in my footsteps and has more than a few mentors she looks to for advice. And now she’s doing what all of us who receive mentoring must eventually do—mentor others in return.
Learning from Your Network
For any entrepreneur, a strong, well-cultivated network is a vital source of informal business education. New relationships are forged, old ones are cemented, and opportunities are identified at trade shows, conferences, luncheons, dinners, and on and on. Each time I met somebody, I listened and learned something.
And today, of course, tremendously powerful and instant social networking is possible over the Internet.
Whatever method you use to do it, networking can ease the transition from employee—where you may have had lots of camaraderie in a larger company setting—to entrepreneur, which is a very lonely place at first. Whenever you can, network with other people who are in the same boat. Today, you have so many options for doing so. A good way to start out is to join networking organizations related to your field. The help offered there will be invaluable and may just make the difference between success and failure. These organizations connect people and support them by creating a community that fosters their ideas, provides necessary tools, and encourages them to keep going to reach their potential.
For me, that meant joining networking groups in the foodservice industry such as the Women’s Foodservice Forum. I was active in the organization for quite a while, and I am still invited to be a panelist on occasion, but Joan is the one who remains very active there. She is the quintessential networker, a perfect poster child for it all. I also joined broader groups like the National Association of Women Business Owners, which has members from every field. Andrew’s years as a very active member in the Young Presidents’ Organization has provided him with invaluable contacts and resources with thousands of members all over the world, several of which serve on our advisory board.
Another fantastic networking resource available to people starting out in my industry today are incubator kitchens, wherein aspiring entrepreneurs hoping to start a food business can rent space in already-licensed facilities. These facilities also provide classes in business basics—as well as mentoring, advice, networking, and moral support—while the aspirants are trying to figure out whether they have something. What’s more, they provide it all without the need for substantial financial outlays.
There are plenty of places to seek advice and help both locally and nationally that didn’t exist when I started out forty years ago. You will find that your chosen field is peopled with knowing, generous, sophisticated, and (mostly) loyal participants. Take advantage of that fact by networking regularly, with the goal of learning from anyone you can.
At the end of the day, of course, networking does more than support your constant learning—it also keeps the company in the public eye. Today, Love and Quiches is still learning plenty from the organizations we belong to and the events we attend, but doing so also ensures that we remain front and center.
Learning from Customers
Selling is an art, and if you watch and listen carefully, your customers can help make your business successful. Pay attention to what your customers tell you; listen to their feedback. They are another valuable source of constant learning.
I learned early on that I had an innate ability to sell, and over the years I learned to read the needs and personality of the person or organization I was targeting when I cold canvassed. I asked each and every potential customer what they needed in the way of products and service. That included not only the product but also the price per portion, shape of portion, packaging, ease of use in the kitchen, shelf life, and other factors.
I did my research: I checked out every prospect’s menus, and menus from similar venues before each appointment. I went in knowing which products would fit; I knew what to suggest. Now we have a cadre of sales professionals who service our customer base, and we partner with these customers to fulfill their needs exactly without sacrificing our own. Our vice president of R&D often travels to customer headquarters to work side by side with their executive chefs to develop products in line with their current needs. Our test kitchen gets many of its freshest ideas from finding out what our customers want and need; after all, we wouldn’t want our customers to become bored with our offerings.
Customers want to be assured that we can fulfill their needs as authoritatively and decisively as we can, which gives us yet another reason to stay as informed as possible. They want assurance that we care that they buy from us, that we continually develop our knowledge base, and that we remain aware of the latest trends in the industry.
The other side of the coin is that we make sure our sales staff learn how to get to the decision makers, that they present our product to the person who has the power to say “yes” to the sale. We keep good records of our sales staff’s activities and the results of every sales call; the “no” this time around may be a “yes” the next time we contact the customer—existing or potential. (We also have learned that, on occasion, a potential buyer will hand our proposal and product samples to our competitors for duplication and a competitive bid. It happens, and there is nothing that we can do about it unless there is a signed non-disclosure agreement. If the project we’re pitching has a lot of R&D effort behind it, we do not proceed without such an agreement.)
In most cases, if you are a loyal supplier, the loyalty will be returned. We have been servicing some customers for decades. Sometimes,
for whatever reason, customers are lost; you must accept that nothing lasts forever. But usually you will be given the right of last refusal.
Learning from the Competition
As I pointed out in Part I of this book, the difficult economy of the early 1990s “did in” many of the smaller dessert companies—and as we all now know, those years were a mere warm-up for the coming decade. So now we have fewer competitors, but the friendly fighting between us is fierce. It took a while, but we now see that there is enough business to go around if we stay calm and focus on what we do best. There is room for all of us, and the stronger the competition, the better our situation is because strong competition pushes us to do everything that much better.
No matter what industry you’re in, you stand to learn a lot from what the competition is doing. We make a habit of constantly watching our competitors: We look at their booths during trade shows just as they look at ours. We monitor their press, view their websites regularly, and mine the industry gossip (while minding our manners and watching our professionalism). We always keep them in our sights, look for gaps in their offerings, and fill them quickly. We are committed to the R&D process of gathering technical and market intelligence and seeing how it may benefit the company, and because we have remained private, we can quickly react to what we learn.
We strive to stand somewhat apart. There needs to be a point of difference in our products so that we can distinguish our offerings from those of our competition, as you should distinguish your offerings from those you compete with in the marketplace. Love and Quiches and our competitors all make cakes, brownies, cheesecakes, and other similar products, so the distinguishing factor may be price structure, pack size, packaging, or something else such as level of service or consulting abilities. Above all, we try to win over the market by the superb taste of our products.
With Love and Quiches Page 16