Pal's Sudden Service

Pal’s Sudden Service is one of my favorite Baldrige stories. The only restaurant to receive the Baldrige Award (2001), Pal’s is a small fast-food chain headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, that boasts world-class performance:

• Service speeds four times faster than its competitors
• Order accuracy at least ten times better than its closest competitor
• Employee turnover half the industry average
• Customers who come back 3-4 times per week compared to 3-4 times per month for its competitors
• Same store sales and market share that have grown for the past 24 years

A great article on SunHerald.com traces the evolution of Pal’s from a single store selling 12-cent mini-hamburgers to a beacon for best practices. The company formed Pal’s Business Excellence Institute (BEI) in 2000 to share its operational ideas with other organizations and a bunch have jumped at the chance, including hospitals, school systems, law firms, charities, churches, and more than 50 nonprofits and government agencies. Ken Schiller, head of a barbeque restaurant in Texas, brings his management staff to BEI every year. “Coming to Pal’s allowed us to know where the bar can be set,” he said. “It gave us a benchmark that we otherwise wouldn’t have even known was possible.”

In the article, David McClaskey, who founded BEI with Pal’s, describes one of the keys to Pal’s operational excellence. “Pal’s has a standard,” he said. “They’re going to train 100 percent of their people to do the job 100 percent right, 100 percent of the time.” That standard is enforced with new employees who get 120 hours of training before they start working in a restaurant. One-hundred-and-twenty hours to fill fast-food orders! How much training do your new employees get before they start their jobs?

I encourage you to read the summary for Pal’s 2001 Baldrige application. It’s shorter than most applications and delightfully colorful with unique process and results graphics.

I also encourage you to check out the Business Excellence Institute to learn more about classes and training that can help any organization improve.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...