Mater Artium Necessitas

For those of you who never took (or slept through High School Latin) “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” Often, necessity is the mother of lots of things. I’d like to share how necessity helped improve productivity for a restaurant company that I was involved in. The restaurant served made-to-order meals in a casual setting where the lunch period represented more than 60% of all revenues. In other words, “lunch time was crunch time.”

We developed a process that served over 400 meals in 90 minutes. Guests placed their order with a cashier, watched their food being prepared as they proceeded along a display kitchen to the pick-up area where their food was either bagged for carry-out or served on a tray to be enjoyed in the dining room. It was about high quality food, served quickly at a great value.

In addition to the lay-out, equipment and operating system we needed 13 employees during the peak revenue period. Each employee was well trained, knew his or her specific role and worked well as part of a team. We were convinced that 13 was the magic number for a well-staffed lunch period. That is until Pedro called in sick!

We had a quick meeting with the entire team and asked them what needed to happen to ensure that things would go smoothly during lunch. Adjustments were made and we never missed a beat. After lunch we had another quick meeting and shared our observations. 12 was now the magic number. That is until Mary quit!

Do you see where this is going? Same drill, same result. 11 was now the magic number. That is until Fred left to go back to college. The new magic number … you guessed it … 10!

By this time we woke up and challenged how we were doing things. After all, the Mother of Invention didn’t raise a dummy! We challenged everything that we had been doing and explored ways to simplify our processes without sacrificing food quality, service speed or value. To make a long story short we were able to improve throughput with a staff of 8 people. Now, make no mistake. These were 8 highly trained and motivated people.

As we streamlined the process and reduced waste, inefficiency and labor hours we also increased wages for the remaining team members. They took pride in working well together, serving great food to customers and being well paid. All because Pedro had called in sick!

What event could lead you to your Mother of Invention?