French Fries & Organizational Quality

Okay, this post is really about excellence and quality in organizations, but the getting there is half the fun. Hang with me.

Our kids did great in school again this year, so my wife and I took them out to Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers last night to celebrate. With 5 kids ranging from a high school sophomore to a brand-new 5 month old, any public excursion is always an adventure. Dinner was no exception. Here’s what all went down:

1. 20 minutes to get food ordered. (Who’s saving their ice-cream-substituted-for-medium-drink until after you eat?)
2. Spilled root beer over the seat. No, it wasn’t the kids, this time. Aren’t we glad that didn’t go all over the baby’s head?
3. Oops. Knocked over 2 tubs of ketchup getting the baby out of the way of the root beer. Uh-oh! In the chaos, the 8-year old just grabbed a handful of fries out of Dad’s basket. Now there’s ketchup all down her arm. Where’s the napkin? Get the baby’s hands out of the plate of food…
4. Here comes the manager, smiling, pushing a mop bucket. “Hey, let me clean that up for you. I’ve got kids and that always happens to us.” (Did I mention it wasn’t actually the kids this time?)
5. Whew. Let’s eat… Hey, stop feeding the baby fries!
6. The manager and I converse about their onion rings. He says they’re really good. I say I’ve never had them but I like onion rings. I’ll have to try them next time.
7. Manager returns with fry cook carrying a basket of onion rings.“Here, try the onion rings! On the house! He just cooked them and wanted to bring them out to you himself.”
   “Wow! That’s great! They look good. Thanks for doing that.”
8. Ice cream time for the kids. Oops. Something got left off the receipt. Up to counter to talk to teenage staffer. Confusion over what we were supposed to have. Teenage staff is trying their best, but things are busy.
9. Manager walks over, waving ticket. Let’s see what you guys want. We’re going to take care of it. Who wants ice cream?
10. Only the girls ordered some. Son #2 now wants one but we didn’t order it. Manager tells him to pick whatever he wants. It’s on the house.
11. Momentarily, manager brings all three ice cream orders to the table. Sure, I’ll get you an extra cup and spoon!
12. At neighboring table, a just-delivered strawberry malt hits the floor just as daughter #1 walks by the table. “Sorry!” Feeling bad for perplexed look on man’s face. Owner of said strawberry malt? “Did you knock that off?”“I don’t know! I said I was sorry!”
13. Now what? Should I tell him we did it? Should I buy him another malt just in case?
    Wait. Here come the manager again, still smiling, pushing the mop bucket…again.“What’s with this corner over here tonight?” Joking, thankfully.
14. Chase down the manager under the guise of my wife’s request to get more ketchup. Offer to pay for the lost strawberry malt. Manager won’t hear of it. I insist. Doesn’t happen.

By this point, the teaching opportunity for my kids is far too powerful. I slip over to the corner table where they hover over their ice cream like vultures. What was it this manager did that was really showing care and concern for people?

They nailed it, of course: free ice cream, cleaning up, helping.

Daughter #1 is rightfully skeptical: “But he’s the manager, Dad. Of course, he can do that. He’s in charge.”

Good point. “I’ll bet that any of the employees here can do that,” I reply, “I think they are trained to take care of their customers like that if they think they need to. Let’s see if I’m right.”

Employees at Freddy’s absolutely can do that on their own, the manager tells us. Taking care of their “guests” (not customers) is the number one priority for everybody. The goal is excellence in service and a quality experience that keeps people coming back.

Even the french fries are done that way, he says. French fries stay under the heat lamp for 2 minutes and then get thrown out, no matter what. Even if we’re in the middle of making your order. If the french fries are more than 2 minutes old, we’ll drop new ones and bring them fresh and hot out to your table.

Always fresh, always hot. 2 minutes. The staff at Freddy’s can happily give away ice cream and onion rings, clean up messes, and replace spilled milkshakes because 2 minutes mattered to their idea of excellence. The commitment to high-quality and excellence in the organization goes down to that level of detail. Their philosophy in the little hidden things translated into their philosophy in the big visible things.

I wondered what it costs the company to throw perfectly good french fries out every two minutes. After all, surely they’re good enough? Why not 4 minutes?

Two fundamental principles of systems thinking are at work here:

1. The easy, obvious solutions often aren’t either easy or solutions.
2. The best solutions are usually the least obvious and involve making small changes at the right place.

This is the systems principle of ‘leveraging’: the right small, non-obvious decisions and changes can produce significant, substantial improvements in the long term. In this case, the obvious, short term decision would be to reduce costs and increase efficiency by not throwing out the french fries. But by thinking in terms of the whole big picture, Freddy’s recognizes that the small act of the 2-minute rule ripples out into all other areas. The philosophy and value behind the rule contributes to sustaining what proves to be a very large, significant value in the organization: Freddy’s always takes care of their guests, no matter what. A culture of excellence happens first in the hidden, non-obvious, ordinary routines and practices.

So lesson of the 2-minute french fries?  Create a culture of organizational quality and excellence by paying the price for excellence and quality in the little things.