With more than 30 years in the restaurant industry, I have plenty of stories to share about learning experiences and challenges.

Recently I had some onion rings at the Montgomery Inn Boathouse on the Ohio River in Cincinnati and remembered a book and an experience that really changed my understanding of the concept: Do It Right the First Time, colloquially known as DRTFT (pronounced dirt foot).

The Book

Philip B. Crosby's Quality is Free is a classic text on quality management, focusing on the idea that quality does not have to increase costs—in fact, poor quality is what costs companies the most.

Crosby outlines "absolutes" of quality management, which form the foundation of his approach:

• Quality means conformance to requirements: Quality is not subjective but must meet clearly defined standards.
• The system of quality is prevention: Crosby stresses prevention over inspection; the focus should be on designing processes that avoid defects in the first place.
• The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance: Companies should measure quality by the costs associated with not doing things right the first time, such as rework, repairs, and customer dissatisfaction.
• One of Crosby's most famous ideas is the Zero Defects approach. He believes that companies should not settle for "acceptable levels" of mistakes. The goal should always be to eliminate defects entirely. This challenges the common mindset that a certain amount of error is inevitable, promoting a culture where everyone in the organization is responsible for preventing errors and achieving perfect outcomes.
• Crosby emphasizes that quality is free because the costs of poor quality—wasted time, resources, customer dissatisfaction, and rework—far outweigh the costs of implementing quality measures.

The Experience

At the time I read this book I was CHRO of a restaurant company based in Memphis with more than 250 stores with 11,000 employees across nine southern states, and we were having a huge turnover problem in the Shoney’s Restaurants, our largest full-service division. 

Manager trainees were turning over during the training program at an unacceptably high rate. 

We’d hire strong candidates, put them through a six-week training program where they’d learn the menu, procedures, administrative duties, and so forth. As many as a 50% were not making it out of training: they’d quit before completing the six weeks. 

There were several training stores so our suspicion was that it MIGHT be the store or stores, but the more likely cause was that the training program itself was a major contributor to the turnover.

Because I had just read the book. I realized that we were probably not following the Quality is Free mantra, and that there were defects in our training program that were the likely cause of the turnover.

 After considerable investigation, exit interviews, discussion, and strategic conversations with members of the leadership team, we decided to take drastic action to see if we could identify what about the training program was contributing to the turnover.

So, the plan, which was my idea, was for me to go through the training program, all six weeks, myself. 

I don't remember how I came up with that idea. I did have restaurant experience. I did want to solve the problem. I could think of no other solution. 

Many times ‘boots on the ground’ can reveal more than the view from the C-Suite. Looking back, I realize that my goal was to look at our system, identify the defects, and hopefully come up with a new system. The best way to do that was with full knowledge and 'inside' information.

One of the ‘training stores’ was located in West Memphis, Arkansas, about 45 minutes from my home and about 20 minutes from the Corporate Office. It was decided that this would be the best location for me to experience the Management Training Program.

In case you were wondering, part of the plan included key members of the HR team coming to West Memphis if they needed something signed, and for one on one meetings or other important business. Once a week, at differing times, I would stop at the office on my way home from an early morning breakfast shift, or on my way in before a dinner shift.

Once the program started, I dutifully drove to West Memphis at all hours of the day and night, working six days a week, about 60 hours total. 

At first I was treated with kid gloves by the management team and the other employees, but after a few rushes on the grill, where quite honestly my skills shocked the kitchen crew, and after a few days on the breakfast/salad bar (used to be a thing in those days), and after a few shifts of running the dining room, eventually I became ‘part of the furniture’ as I used to say.

I was just another guy in a tie working the floor.

Or should I say ‘abused’ instead of working. The bottom line of the six-weeks was that the turnover was deserved because manager trainees were taken advantage of in a variety of ways.

• Since they were on salary, whenever someone called out sick, a manager trainee would be required to cover the shift. That was a no cost solution for the store.
• If there was a dirty job, for example, cleaning out the grease trap in the kitchen, the manager trainee needed to be shown how to do it as part of his or her education.
• The long-time employees of the store, bossed the manager trainees around, probably frustrated that some ding-dong in a tie was slowing things down or messing things up.

So, the punch line was that manager trainees, including the CHRO who was essentially an ‘Undercover Boss’ before it was a TV show, were treated like crap and their ‘education’ was the second, third, or fourth priority.

The simple solution we came up with eliminated a few major defects in the program. 

• We created a more structured learning experience, with weekly goals and proficiency objectives (that I sort of wrote as I went along).
• And we took the manager trainee payroll expense as a corporate expense: instead of charging the manager trainee cost to the store's P & L.

This single change did three things. 

• First, it made the manager trainee an ‘extra’ set of hands that was a bonus and a benefit to the store. 
• Second, it reduced the labor cost of the store, making bonuses more likely for the management team, and improved operations. Instead of paying a trainee several hundred dollars per week, the management could use those dollars on increased staffing.
• Third, it made the manager trainee a corporate employee with regular follow-up from the HR department.

As you might imagine, once the plan was implemented in all the training stores, trainee turnover dropped like a rock, the company saved tens thousands of dollars in not only training costs but recruiting costs since fewer manager trainees were hired.

So. putting me through training wasn’t free, but quality was free after I graduated because doing it right, or better, did produce superior results that cost less.

The Onion Ring Example

Let me give you an example of how a quality approach can make a difference from something I experienced during training.

During the six-week program, I was tasked with learning all the roles: server, cook, prep person, bus boy and dishwasher. While I was in training as a prep person, I was shown how to make Shoney’s famous onion rings.

• We carefully sliced fresh onions so they were exactly 3/8” thick. 
• Only those you could stick both thumbs through the middle were large enough to become onion rings. Others were designated for sandwiches, and still others were doomed to be diced.
• If a ring broke, it was banished to the sandwich bin or the diced onion bin.
• The carefully selected rings were gently soaked in a milk wash and then carefully covered with flour.
• Then, the milk-washed and flour coated full rings were dipped into an egg wash with some Worcestershire sauce and then coated with breadcrumbs
• They were then moved to an aluminum tray, and carefully spread out four rings by six rings for a total of 24 rings per tray carefully and slightly overlapped.
• They were covered with wax paper and carried to the cook’s line and placed in an upright reach-in cooler on their own shelf.
• When a customer ordered onion rings, the cook carefully took them out, making sure not to break them and gently dropped them into a fry basket which was plunged into the nastiest, smokiest, fryer oil you can imagine.

All that care, all that work, destroyed by the omission of one step, or a major defect between the back door and the customer's plate: the quality of the oil. A single defect, failure to change the fryer oil when it should have been changed, ruined all the hard work and caring and time that went into the onion rings.

How many things in our world are like that fryer oil? One defect can ruin the best work. When you started reading, you may have thought that Zero Defects was an unreasonable standard, but the reality is that it is the best standard and the standard that gets the best outcomes.

Every time I see an onion ring I think of this example and remember that quality is free.