Inside Track by John Harrington
Karen Forrester has a novel way of letting staff know that a poor attitude would not be accepted at TGI Friday’s UK. “I was in San Francisco a few months ago and I took a photo of Alcatraz. I sent it out to our business and I said, ‘I bought it, I bought Alcatraz - all the people with bad attitude, we’re going to ship them out and we’re going to open a restaurant in Alcatraz with all this bad attitude.
“Now if we get a complaint about attitude I will just say, ‘Alcatraz awaits, or Alcatraz recruiting now’.”
Sending under-performing employees to a floating island-prison is possibly not on the cards for the time being. But the episode is indicative of Forrester’s desire not to let standards slip across the business, which she is credited with turning around since becoming managing director more than five years ago.
Speaking at the Pub Retail Summit in November, she explained that under her leadership turnover among frontline staff reduced from 147% to 47% over three years. The company recently reported a 7.1% increase in like-for-like sales in the year to 30 December 2012, with pre-exceptional EBITDA up 7.5% to £17.2m.
Last month TGI Friday’s came third in the Sunday TimesBest Places to Work 2013 award, and in 2012 Forrester was voted Retailers’ Retailer of the Year by her peers. In recognition of the business turnaround, Carlson Restaurants, its parent company, earlier this year promoted Forrester to its executive team where she’s been sharing her experience across the group.
But despite the achievements, when asked if the turnaround phase is now complete, Forrester is unequivocal. “It’s absolutely not complete. I think we’ve fixed the fundamental piece, around the personality and the service of the brand and that’s been through our people-led strategy. We get the right people in, we’ll train them really well, we’ll motivate them and they’ll deliver a great guest experience.”
For Forrester, it’s a “continuous journey”. “Something that frustrates me no end is inconsistency. We now have 56 restaurants across the country but I could not say to you right here, right now, that every restaurant, every chef, every time is exactly perfect, because it’s not. Because it’s inconsistent.
“It’s a constant job to make sure, a) the long-serving people are constantly keeping on top of the developments and b) that we are training all of the new people on the service as it is today, not as it was five or six years ago.”
Speaking to M&C Report from the company’s site in London’s Covent Garden, Forrester, the former divisional director at Mitchells & Butlers who was recruited to lead the American restaurant/bar brand in the UK in 2007, stresses that there’s been no let up on the people front. Each year in February the company re-assesses every employee and carries out one-to-one interviews to decide whether more training is needed. A strategy is devised so they know what’s expected from them across the year.
The list of staff initiatives is substantial and growing. This year will see a re-run of Friday’s Legends, its scheme to recognise unsung heros across the group, with staff nominated by their colleagues and treated to a VIP party at a five-star hotel. Another initiative will involve employees being asked to determine their own “signature” on the business, how they go the extra mile. Forrester plans to produce a book called Legends of Friday’s, with 12 stories of exceptional performance from staff members; those whose stories are included will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas.
And in January, 400 employees were flown to Florida for a party.
“It’s all these things we do that just constantly reinforce that our people come first. It’s about the fun, the excitement, something different.”
Evolution is also most definitely on the agenda for the physical outlets. “We have continued to innovate in the design, which you would see in our later openings. This one [Covent Garden] is three and half years old now in terms of the conversion. This already looks fairly dated to me because we continue to innovate.”
Forrester bemoans the “cooky cutter” approach to brands, stressing that constant evolution is necessary to keep up to date. She highlights some common design features that are being introduced across the business.
“We no longer want to have rows and rows of tables crammed together, where we get big groups in that dominate the restaurant and create a lot of noise and mess, and crash the kitchen and crash the bar. We’ve deliberatively moved ourselves away from that.”
Forrester adds: “In all of our new restaurants we have open kitchens; that started in Birmingham four years ago.
“We then said let’s put the broiler to the front so people see the flames rising and see the food cooking and the chefs make eye contact with the guests. And then in Manchester we’ve pushed the broiler out into the restaurant, with a big hood over it. The next step is to join the bar and the kitchen together. That’s what I’d love to do - to see the chefs and the bartenders working together and interacting.”
There’s also been a move towards what Forrester calls “polished dining” - enhancing “everything that the guest sees and feels and touches”. Examples include introducing thicker, more polished tables, higher quality cutlery, more contemporary menus, and replacing white napkins with more appealing black ones.
The approach to memorabilia has also changed, becoming “much more grown up, much more contemporary”, and less “overtly American”. Design elements relate to the local surroundings. For example, the Halifax site features cats’ eyes on the wall in homage to their creator who came from the town. The restaurant in Sheffield’s Meadowhall displays a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was made using steel from the city.
“We love that we’re able to tell stories and make it real again. That’s something that we really do focus on. That is something that had been lost completely over time. We had things like plastic M&Ms on the wall. You think, ‘what’s that really got to do with anything?’”
She adds: “I was trying a while ago to categorise Friday’s. Are we casual dining, are we casual dining-plus, are we a bar with food, are we a restaurant-bar? And I thought, we are all of that and none of that, we are Friday’s. My view now in terms of casual dining is there’s everything else, then there’s Friday’s.”
Forrester also wants to take the food offer to “the next level”. “Our food has always been credible but is it fantastic? No. It needs to get fantastic, so we really need to shift the bar on food.” Cocktail evolution is also planned to ensure it stays ahead of the pack.
Looking ahead, Forrester reveals plans to develop a new version of the concept as its expansion programme continues apace. The business opened its latest site in Leeds earlier this year, with another five planned for 2013 and eight for 2014; the next openings this year are set to be in Bristol, Glasgow, Braintree in Essex and Brighton.
Forrester says: “We’re looking at maybe a smaller-box Friday’s that we can take into smaller markets with relatively smaller populations, but a bit more affluent. So we would look at something of a next generation Friday’s to do that with.
“I’ve always believed that the core Friday’s can get to 80 [sites], maybe a little more. There are smaller towns that I think would welcome it, but it’s almost impossible to get 7,000/8,000/9,000 sq ft [premises]. So we’d want to make sure that if we went into a smaller footprint, a smaller box, we can deliver the Fridays experience. We’re working on that.”
Forrester also hopes to open its first site at a transport hub within the next 18 months. “I think once we get one I’m sure that will open up the doors to the others.”
She said TGI Friday’s would “work wonderfully” at train stations or airports, saying that its rivals in these locations tend to be “functional”. “What we can do, at train stations or airports, is really break up the day and cheer you up before you travel on.”
Forrester adds: “The design is the easy bit. What we want to ensure is that we can really deliver a great Friday’s emotional connection. I think that would really make a difference to people travelling.”
She says it’s “too early to say” how many sites she thinks TGI’s could grow to under these new formats. “I’ve never ever been in the camp of saying, ‘we can grow to this [size]’. Let’s make sure we execute brilliantly and see what happens.
“When we started this journey, we set a financial target for three years’ time that we hit in the first year. After that we thought never mind the financial targets, they will be what they be. As long as we focus our energies on the experience, what’s what matters, so that’s what we’ve done since.”
In the meantime, there’s plenty more innovations in the pipeline this year. Like almost every operator, the company is expanding its digital capabilities and is due to release a new app in late May or early June that will let customers instantly upload live content such as pictures from their night out at TGI Friday’s. The aim is not to provide information, but to share memories of their good times.
“With Friday’s it’s really important that we keep it very personal, keep people together in the real world rather than the virtual world.”
In a similar theme, this summer will see a double decker bus driven around the country where there will be stop-offs to showcase what TGI Friday’s is about. “That’s about bringing people physically together under the Friday’s banner,” says Forrester. “As every one becomes much more technological, we will endeavour to find a way to do that but keep the personal connection.”
Forrester is a big fan of many concepts, both new and established, that are currently making waves in the sector. Among her particular favourites are Jamie’s Italian, Drake & Morgan, Wahaca and Hawksmoor. She also declares a fondness for independents, flagging up Spuntino, the New-York-speakeasy influenced bar in Covent Garden, as a case in point. “I think it’s a really, really exciting time for the industry because there’s so much innovation going on.”
But Forrester doesn’t pull any punches over criticism of how some sections of the industry treat their employees.
“In this industry there are a lot of people who still treat people badly - that’s pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels, you name it. A lot of them treat them brilliantly, but there’s no standard to it, which I think there should be.”
She suggested there could be a Scores on the Doors-style rating for how businesses treat their employees, possibly administered by a body such as the Hospitality Guild. “It’s absolutely right that if you’re a five-star rated restaurant, then people are going to say that it’s safe to go and eat there. Why don’t we have the same for employment? Why can’t we be a five-star rated employer? Why can’t we be a zero-star rated employer?”
Her comments come as the industry’s Perceptions Group looks to change the common view that the sector doesn’t offer a serious career path.
“A lot of the perception is true,” says Forrester. “I’ve got members of my family who have worked in brands that we all know and have been treated so badly - no training, put behind the bar on the first weekend… just horror stories.
“A lot of the bad reputation is founded on bad operators treating people badly. So many of them still exploit. It’s tragic.
“I honestly believe that we need a standard in the industry.”
Giving her success, Forrester is widely viewed as one of the most capable and dynamic operators in the industry at this time, so has she been approached by other companies keen to benefit from her expertise? She smiles and replies: “Well naturally, you would expect that wouldn’t you! I couldn’t possibly say which brand. What I would say is my job’s not finished at Friday’s, I’ve got a lot to do.
“And this is more than a job to me. We talk about the emotional connection we have with the guests - the emotional connection that I have with this brand is incredible. That’s going to be really, really tough act to follow.” No doubt TGI Friday’s would feel the same.
