A bench built from the hourly team up.
A shift-lead program we have run at two groups takes the hourly team through three levels. A first-level lead learns receiving, ordering, and the POS and check audits, and walks a health audit with the chef.
The second level runs the volume shift: reservations and table turns, the pre-shift, complaints handled start to finish, and the labor and ticket-time audits.
By the third level, the lead is certified to open and close, writes the schedule to the forecast, keeps payroll and tip shares accurate, interviews candidates and sits in on the monthly P&L review of controllables.
Each restaurant carries a fixed block of development hours a week in its labor budget, with extra shift-lead hours for every manager it is short, so the bench is paid for before it is needed.
Tell us what’s breaking.
Bring your managers’ names and the next two openings.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Start with an install
The install builds the bench review, the development paths and the promotion criteria for your managers. This engagement adds the shift-lead program level by level and the manager-in-training program.
Every manager on the grid gets a written plan.
The managers above the shift leads go on a nine-box grid, placed by performance and potential. Anyone newly hired or promoted goes on it as ‘new in role’, and the GM places them within their first year.
The quarterly bench review puts the group’s depth on one page. The target is two ready GMs and one ready AGM for every GM role open or planned, and a role short of it is marked thin.
A manager a year from the next role owns one P&L line before the whole statement, usually labor. They also take one area of responsibility, like staffing and training or the bar, and report on it at the weekly manager meeting. They present their unit’s part of the weekly ops review with the GM in the room before they present it alone.
Example scope of work
Examples of what the scope can include; yours is written to the problem you bring.
The bench
- Bench tracker by unit: every lead and manager role marked filled, in training, open or at risk, with the potential leader named, reviewed each period.
- Bench assessment on the nine-box: results against plan and written leadership traits scored as one rating and read against potential, every box defined in writing, with a development form per manager.
- Quarterly bench review: the CEO and the director of operations check every readiness date against the next openings on the calendar.
From trainer to shift lead
- Cross-certification before leading: every shift-lead candidate certified in each position not yet worked, from host and bar to expo and a line station.
- Entry gate for the shift-lead program: time in role, a written request to the GM, an interview with the GM and the director of operations, an evaluation shift at dinner volume, and a behavioral assessment whose results the candidate is taught to read.
- Promotion gate by level: a mock shift run under observation and an interview with the GM, and the director of operations’ sign-off on any move into a salaried role.
- Shift-lead objectives by level: each paired with the script the manager uses to teach it, and a required book discussed with the GM at each progress review.
- Sample schedules for each level: serving shifts, development blocks and shift-lead shifts in one week, so development happens on the clock.
The managers
- Manager-in-training program: each station, then running the shift, then the inventory and next week’s schedule, closed out weekly with the GM.
- 30-60-90 launch plan for each new manager: written by the GM week by week across people, operations and training, with profit goals added at day thirty.
- Areas of responsibility as the development plan: the systems each manager owns now, and the ones added before the next role.
How it runs: a standing weekly call with your managers, and time on site where the work needs it.
Fees are set by the scope and the value of the outcome, agreed before the work starts, with any time on site built in, never by the hour, the day or the visit.
The order of the work
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 01 | The GM places every manager on the grid before any plan is written |
| 02 | The thinnest units get the first plans |
| 03 | Each step of a manager’s plan closes when the GM has initialed and dated every line of its checklist |
| 04 | Your leadership runs the first bench review with us, the next without |
If this is the problem, bring it.
The call works out where the fix starts.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Further reading
Why managers fail, and how to build a bench that doesn’tCommon questions
How do you work with our GMs without undermining them?
What if we develop our managers and they leave?
Who runs it
RANGE was founded by Jon Peck, who spent twenty years running multi-unit restaurant groups: eight brands built and scaled, twelve openings across six concepts in three years, and more than $100 million of annual P&L owned.