Lack of Consistency In Everything - Recensione dipendente - Shift Leader presso Zoës Kitchen

Zoe's says the goal is to "Deliver Goodness" but fails in many areas to give the employees the tools and abilities to do such. Corporate/Home Office seems to be the source of 90% of the headaches those of us actually working in-store have to deal with. Zoe's claims to be "People First" but falls short in many aspects. In no particular order: - Lack of Menu/POS consistency/naming conventions. Pictures of menu items long discontinued are printed on new menus that don't have that item listed, so when a customer asks "What's this sandwich/item? I want that!" the employees have to inform the customer it's no longer available (even though said item exists on the "Secret Menu" page in the POS). This leads to disappointed customers. Other items on the menu are listed differently in the POS, and print differently on the kitchen tickets. A few examples include: 1.) "Harissa Hummus Taster" on the menu, "RP (Red Pepper) Hum 2 oz." on the POS, and "2 oz Harissa Hum" on the kitchen ticket. 2.) Harissa & Tzatziki are spelled differently on POS buttons (eg Harisa/Harissa, Tzatziki/Tatziki) 3.) Printing errors for "Gluten-Free" symbols lead customer to believe that menu items that are not actually gluten-free are indeed gluten-free. On the current menu, the Mediterranean Chicken is listed below the Mediterranean Salad Trio Bowl. The Med Chicken is indeed gluten-free, but the bowl has both orzo tabouli and pesto farro, both of which contain gluten. I've had to explain this to numerous customers with gluten allergies to avoid a potential life-threatening situation. - Training materials from corporate are commonly riddled with spelling and grammar errors. It is difficult to take a nationwide corporate brand seriously when their materials appear to lack any proofreading. - A strong push to hire Hispanic kitchen workers who often do not speak fluent English makes communication between FOH and BOH terribly difficult. Attempts to communicate special modifications to dishes and allergies are often met with a confused look and orders being remade numerous times. This leads to longer ticket times and unhappy customers. - Cleanliness. I understand it is important to keep labor in check, but cleanliness always falls by the wayside because stores are understaffed. Customers see a dirty restaurant and don't come back, which makes sales even lower, and thus fewer people are staffed. When it does get busy again, the staff is stretched thin and cleaning tasks go uncompleted, the store becomes dirtier, and the customers see this. Also, if say the dish machine malfunctions and half of a bucket of detergent is poured into the machine, the restaurant has no way of ordering more because there is so little in their cleaning supply budget. Cleanliness and sanitation should be of utmost importance, especially in food service. - Little to no advance of promotional events. When the Snack Boxes were introduced, an emailed coupon was sent to customers to get a free Snack Box with purchase of an entree. Most stores were not aware of this until a few days before and were having difficulty keeping up with demand. - All training is on-the-job training: new-hires are essentially trained as they go and makes learning the job much more difficult and leads to higher turn-over. New employees spend their first month (or more if they work less than 15 hours a week) learning the little details of many aspects of the job. Even when trying to switch from FOH to BOH, there is little opportunity to learn and so most employees are stuck doing the same tasks day in, day out. - The Goodness Fund: I made a request to take advantage of the Goodness Fund (a program to help out in times of financial struggle) over two months ago when my electricity was at risk of being shut off. After explaining my situation through email, no follow-up or resolution occurred. This can put employees in tough situations and could push them to seek better employment opportunities. Again, "People First." - Aloha POS restrictions: if an employee rings in an order then clocks out for the day, no changes or refunds can be made to the ticket. I had to explain to a customer whose order was made wrong that I could not give her her money back because the employee who rang in their order had already left. I am not sure if this is a restriction built into Aloha itself, but if isn't, this needs to be changed immediately. It is immensely difficult to try to win a customer who found hair in their food by offering more food/dessert/gift cards. - Online Ordering/Loyalty Program: with the recently released overhauled mobile app, every customer had to sign up again for the new loyalty program. Many customers were unaware of this and lost a number of redeemable coupons with the old app. Many are also experiencing numerous issues when placing online orders and have to either call the store to place an order or give up entirely. - Lifeworks: the online employee portal is an absolute joke. It was described to me as "YouTube meets Facebook" but lacks all the things that make those websites good. While social interaction between employees in different stores/regions is commendable, there is almost zero reason to ever visit the site aside from mandatory training materials. - Micromanaging by corporate: FOH managers have to complete four (4) temperature checks daily, with another being added in soon for hot items. Managers/shift leaders have enough on their plates as it is with the tedious checklists, opening/closing the restaurant, submitting invoices, doing inventory, writing schedules, while also having to tend to customers. Food safety is absolutely a priority in a restaurant, but it sets everything back when a shift leader has to interrupt the kitchen staff to do temp checks while they're trying to shut the kitchen down at the end of the night. - Rational Ovens: Extremely technological, self-cleaning ovens. For prep, they work wonderfully. For trying to bake an appetizer, it's a nightmare. Zoe's expects an average 7 minutes ticket time; if a customer orders a Baked Feta appetizer, the cook must go to the oven, select the "Baked Feta" option, wait 4+ minutes for it to preheat and then spend 6 minutes baking. 10 minutes for an appetizer with 7 minute ticket times is impossible. To add to this issue, not all stores in my area have these ovens. If the store has a conventional oven that's always preheated, ticket times with Baked Feta appetizers are usually met. This is not the case for those with Rational Ovens. - Newer stores get the fancy gadgets, and this creates inconsistencies in food between stores operating in the same area. Some stores have a heated grill press, so piadinas and roll ups are made to order. For those that don't, their roll-ups are made ahead of time and kept in a hot-hold cabinet. The taste and texture varies in the product between the two stores, and the customers know this and thus pick and choose which Zoe's to visit based on what equipment that store has. - Employee meals: during the first year employee's get 50% off their meal up to $5. So a $9 sandwich costs about $4.50. After one year, it is 100% but only up to $10. So if an employee wants steak kabobs, they still have to pay a couple bucks because their meal is only comped up to the $10 limit. - Raises: at my store, a cook who had been working 6 months while barely expanding their responsibilities got a raise. Myself, as a shift leader, has been there over 10 months, helped out at other stores, regularly has to help in the kitchen, but has been offered no additional compensation or offers for a raise.