Opportunity Knocks Twice; Chapter 19 cont.

Editor's Note: Utah Pulse is serializing the book, 'Opportunity Knocks Twice,' by Don Hale, as told to Mark Hale. We'll publish two chapters a week. You'll enjoy the wit and wisdom of one of Utah's great entrepreneurs, founder of Hires Big H. To buy the book, click here.

ELIMINATE WASTE AND AVOID MISTAKES

Again, with an eye towards the bottom line, we try to have our employees eliminate waste.
Sometimes employees do not understand that spooning off the foam from a cup of root beer and tossing it down the drain in order to create space to quickly finish filling the cup is wasting product and therefore like throwing pennies in the garbage can. Being patient and allowing the foam to subside back to soda saves product and therefore money.

Sometimes employees may not realize that after they empty ice cream mix into the ice cream machine there is still about half a cup of mix in the bag. Turning the bag upside down for ten minutes, letting gravity collect the additional ice cream mix, allows us to use, and therefore profit from, that remaining half cup of ice cream mix we have paid for.

Sometimes employees may not see the importance of turning off lights in the basement after everyone has vacated it. But lights left on means that electricity is being used and costs incurred to the business. All this attention to detail leads to better profits. Since everyone works hard in business, why not make as much as you can.

We try to focus on doing things right the first time by communicating clearly and by concentrating on our work in an effort to avoid mistakes. Mistakes in food product can never go into profit. Sometimes servers fail to write a customer’s speciality order clearly enough for the cooks to understand exactly what the customer wants. The customer receives what the cook thought he ordered, not what he actually wanted. When a speciality drink is made incorrectly, both the soda and the cup are wasted. When we make a mistake, we try to learn from the experience.

If you must make a mistake, it will be much more to your credit to make a new one each time.

A successful business formula is really quite simple—maximize sales, minimize expenses, and eliminate waste and mistakes to optimize profits.

MY BEST BUSINESS ADVICE

In concluding my thoughts on business principles, if I had to state the best business principle I know, or if I could only use one business principle, it would be this—use common sense As one has said,
Common sense—one of the rarest of all human characteristics—is nothing more than the ability to recognize the obvious.

As you look at and recognize the obvious in your business, the obvious will indicate what to do to improve. The obvious may be an unkempt premise, a customer complaint, or an incorrectly made product, all of which need to be addressed. For example, by periodically busing tables in my drive-in, I learned if people were enjoying the food based on whether or not it was eaten. When food was left uneaten, I figured we either had to change a recipe or do a better job preparing it.

Pay attention to details—little things often turn out to be as big as big things.