All Posts Tagged With: "Pal’s"
Ready to Go Big
The results speak for themselves:
- Same store sales have grown for 24 years
- Market share has grown for 24 years
- Service speeds four times faster than competitors
- Order accuracy at least ten times better than the closest competitor
- Employee turnover half the industry average
Pal’s Sudden Service has accomplished all of this with what may be the ugliest store design in fast-food history—and it may be coming to a major thoroughfare near you. Pal’s was recently named one of Restaurant Business magazine’s “Future 50,” which are restaurant chains that have proven their concepts, are fast growing, and are getting ready to go big.
Pal’s key concept is a management system based on the Baldrige model. The restaurant chain won the Baldrige Award in 2001. It established the Business Excellence Institute to share its best practices with other organizations, and those lessons aren’t just for food service companies. More than 50 nonprofit organizations and government agencies have taken the training BEI offers, which once again demonstrates the universality of Baldrige principles. You can learn more about Pal’s BEI by clicking here.
Pal’s did its first Baldrige assessment in 1995. As I’ve seen with other organizations, the first assessment often produces profound insights, and the same was true for Pal’s. “From…
29Jul2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedReally Fast Food
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…
18Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
