Christin Marvin: 0:08

Are you curious about how to hire, motivate and manage Gen Z employees in your food and beverage business? If so, stick around, as I'm going to introduce you to someone who is a total badass in this area. Alex Taylor is the area manager for Sweet Cow Ice Cream in Colorado. This area. Alex Taylor is the area manager for Sweet Cow Ice Cream in Colorado. She oversees seven locations and is in charge of all things operations, production, hiring, training and development of 50 plus leaders and over 250 employees. In this episode, alex and I will discuss how she's found success in hiring and developing Gen Z employees, dive into the key aspects that attract Gen Z to employment and how she has created a strong bench of applicants to fill open positions immediately when someone gives notice.

Christin Marvin: 0:59

Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, Christin Marvin. With Solutions by Christin, I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. This podcast is sponsored by ScheduleFly. Schedulefly provides a simple web-based and app-based restaurant employee scheduling software backed by legendary customer service. If you are using pen, paper, excel or fancy scheduling software with tons of bells and whistles that you don't use, schedulefly is perfect for your business. When I was a regional manager handling seven locations, schedulefly was our go-to for scheduling. It's hands down, the easiest platform that I've ever worked with, and their employee scheduling tool is awesome for shooting out mass messages about crucial restaurant updates. Visit scheduleflycom and mention the no Hesitations podcast to learn more and get 10% off. I hope you enjoy this episode, hi.

Alex Taylor: 2:23

Alex, what's up? Hello, what's up. How are you? I'm just so great. How are you?

Christin Marvin: 2:30

I'm good Thanks. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. You know I so. For for the listeners here, alex Taylor and I worked together for a brief time at Sweet Cow Ice Cream in Denver so Sweet Cow has seven locations, yep. And I was thinking back the other day after we talked about when we first met and do you remember we were? You came in and we you came in for an interview and we went out back and sat on milk crates in the back alley next to the walk-in and that was where we interviewed.

Alex Taylor: 3:06

Taylor's oldest time. Yeah, we sat on a couple of milk crates in the back alley.

Christin Marvin: 3:12

It was amazing. And then and then I remember my boss was like look, can we not do interviews on milk crates? I was like well, it was really busy.

Christin Marvin: 3:24

Yeah, I think that the shop was really busy and I think the seating was taken, but no, I just it it. It was funny because we've been, I've been talking so much and writing some content around, like you know how to create a great experience for employees, and it really starts with the interview process and I just thought it was hysterical that you know, here we are, here we were interviewing a GM candidate on milk crates in the back alley. So anyway, just a little fond memory of how I first met you.

Alex Taylor: 3:51

So yeah, I have that memory embedded in my brain as well, so it was a great way to meet.

Christin Marvin: 3:57

Awesome. So again, I'm super excited to have you on the show you know again. So a little bit of background. You came on with Sweet Cow to take over in a GM role, to take over one of the busiest locations in Denver in the Highlands in at 32nd Lowell, and then eventually worked up to take over the area manager position when I left, which was just incredible to have you as an awesome partner in crime in that in the short time that we were able to work together.

Christin Marvin: 4:29

But one of the things that I'm super excited to share with listeners today is your leadership style and your approach to working a transitioning into a shop that was struggling from a cultural perspective and from a turnover perspective and from a perspective of kind of having a little bit of a divide between operations and leadership in my mind and I was obviously the middleman for that. So that was super challenging, working with the management team that I had at the time and your ability to really connect with your team, to invest in the people that you were working with, to strategize about building the perfect schedule, about how to motivate your team, inspire your team, and I really loved how you were able to build a bench internally. That was one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen from an operator standpoint, and I'm totally in awe of what you did during that time and what you still do, and I'm just super excited to share all of those wonderful leadership skill sets with the listeners today.

Alex Taylor: 5:49

Oh, thank you for all those kind words Very sweet.

Alex Taylor: 6:15

Yeah, absolutely so. Again, let's talk a little bit about your, your background before Sweet Cow Mm. Hmm, I had a passion for kids, and so there was a moment when I spent a lot of time just with very young people in after school programs. And then, when I moved to Denver, hospitality came up again because I really wanted to meet more people. My age and I embarked on my journey at Whole Foods.

Alex Taylor: 6:40

That I didn't know was going to be a journey, but I started out just as a team member.

Alex Taylor: 6:44

That I didn't know was going to be a journey, but I started out just as a team member, and throughout seven years with that company I was promoted 10 times and really learned a lot, not only about hospitality and food but about building relationships, working with different types of teams, working and developing others, and also I had some really great mentors there that taught me skills that I use to this day.

Alex Taylor: 7:13

So Whole Foods was like the core of what my leadership was, and my hospitality knowledge really came from that space. Then I moved on to really finding food as like my passion and I started baking professionally after that for the kitchen Denver and eventually moved into a private chef role in Manhattan. That lasted all until COVID. So when I moved back to Denver in 2020, starting over again and really considering where I wanted to go Sweet Cow made sense to me because it was a business that I had loved when I lived in Denver before and it aligned with a lot of the values I had regarding leadership, hospitality, great quality ingredients and great people. So that's really my background in a nutshell and, um, yeah, what do you think was a secret?

Christin Marvin: 8:08

I mean, I don't think I remembered from your background that you were promoted 10 times at whole foods. Holy moly, that's incredible. What do you think the reasoning was for those, for so many promotions and for so many opportunities for you at whole Foods?

Alex Taylor: 8:26

Um well, first I started from the bottom. Now I'm here kind of telling you that Drake always go back to those Drake lyrics when I'm looking for inspiration. Um no, I I think because I started as a scooper or I'm sorry to have as a scooper, I'm in sweet cow mode. I started just as a team member at Whole Foods and I think because they had such a large footprint in general over many, many locations, many different roles existing within the company, there were opportunities that existed for me that made it very easy to find another role to continue to like satiate my knowledge and my quest for development.

Alex Taylor: 9:11

And I really found that because of the mentors I had at Whole Foods as well, there was a guidance for me to try different things so that I would be able to broaden my you know, my skillset for for like what shops I would work at, for example, so I could work with teams that maybe weren't very successful and were having issues operationally or culturally. Or I would work for teams that were very successful and already had great systems in place. And sometimes promotions don't have to be big. Sometimes it would be something small, like moving into a supervisor role and then from there, agm and then multiple roles as a general manager. So in a lot of ways, once I was promoted that ninth or 10th time, it was really more about learning new teams, new locations, new styles and that really helped me to be flexible and nimble and different environments.

Christin Marvin: 10:15

Were those opportunities that you were actively seeking out? Or were your mentors and peers coming to you saying there's an opportunity we want to consider you?

Alex Taylor: 10:25

It was both. It was both In the beginning. It was me. In the beginning I was like you know, looking back, I was probably applying for things that I wasn't quite ready for, because I was hungry and I was excited and I had ambition. And I lucked out a couple times with those positions because at Whole Foods we had panel interviews for any job you had, so you could be chosen for something if the majority of the people in the room really felt like you were that right fit. And later on in my career it was more about the people who I worked with, my mentors guiding me and saying you know, I think this is a great opportunity for you, this is a new skill set. To go to our flagship store to run the largest division that we have in Rocky Mountain region. That's how I was guided towards the end of my career.

Christin Marvin: 11:15

I, you know, obviously your success in leadership was really crucial for you know, when you and I were interviewing for part of the reason why I really I mean, obviously your personality is amazing and you're so warm and comfortable and just authentic and comfortable in your skin but your success in leadership was something that was really really attractive, because I've always really tried to hire leaders that have achieved success before. They know what it feels like, they know how to go get after it Right. There's great experience in, yeah, working for places where systems need to be put into place and there are operational challenges. But when somebody has that track record of success it really just propels their leadership and everybody around them.

Christin Marvin: 12:06

And in the Highlands perspective, you know, at that shop we, you know my what I saw with the team was that there was a breakdown in culture. There was a severe lack of energy and engagement with the customers and there was a people pleaser type of leadership style in there where there wasn't a lot of coaching and development happening and it was really impacting the progress of the team. So I want to ask you a little bit about because you had so much experience transitioning into all of these different roles with Whole Foods. What was your approach to transitioning into the Highlands location?

Alex Taylor: 12:55

For me with my approach. I feel like the first thing I like to do when I come into a new space where I don't know everyone yet is to just remember that I don't know everyone yet, is to just remember that I don't know everyone yet. It's really important for me to build new relationships, get to know people on the level they want to meet me at, not make any assumptions about where we've been or where we're going, but really try and figure out where people are at right at that moment and start making genuine connections, Not necessarily worrying about, like you know, oh, this looks dirty over here or oh, this person isn't wearing their uniform. I'm not necessarily like taking tally of those things. I'm more thinking about how do I connect with this person in the moment and try to actually get to know them, as if I was going to a party and being introduced to someone.

Christin Marvin: 13:56

I love it. One of the things that I and I struggled with this you know, the majority of the team at Sweet Cow are in high school or college and I'm in my forties and you're in your thirties right, and I talked to operators now who've been in the business for a long time. Right, and Gen Z is coming in. It's the future generation of, and current of, restaurant employees. Right, and they're being blended in and a lot of operators ask me, like how do I connect with Gen Zers? Like what do I talk to them about? And that was a struggle for me too, because I well, I'm an introvert, so I can be awkward at first and small talk is really hard and exhausting for me.

Alex Taylor: 14:31

But I didn't know what to.

Christin Marvin: 14:32

I didn't know what to talk about. You know what I mean, so I would just I would just lean towards ice cream. But how did you build, connect, personal connections with your team?

Alex Taylor: 14:42

Um, I, I can kind of be a little Barbara Walter-y, like I can be. 20 questions, I think. Sometimes it doesn't always make people feel the most like comfortable to open up, but I think it's a good place to start is just to ask questions and pick up on things that you can connect with. So for me, I think listening to people asking specific questions and then finding out how I can bring that up again in another conversation, or figuring out if somebody has a more lighthearted personality, if I see them engaging with other people and joking I also want to have that kind of relationship with someone. So a lot of it is like paying attention to what's happening, both verbally and non-verbally. Some people really want to connect through direct questioning and genuine conversation and some people want to connect more non-verbally.

Christin Marvin: 15:49

Hello to all of you amazing leaders in the restaurant world. Before we dive back into today's episode, I want to take a moment and let you know about one of the incredible ways that you can further your team's leadership development. If you've been listening to the show, you've already experienced the passion I have for enhancing leadership skills. You've already experienced the passion I have for enhancing leadership skills. Did you know that I also offer exclusive leadership workshops tailored for restaurant management teams? These sessions focus on strengthening leadership abilities, fostering effective communication, crafting a unique leadership style and developing robust business strategies and visions for the future. If you or anyone you know in the restaurant industry is looking to treat their team to a customized multi-day leadership training that will improve every aspect of their business, please reach out to me at kristinlmarvin at gmailcom. Thanks a million for being awesome listeners at gmailcom. Thanks a million for being awesome listeners.

Christin Marvin: 17:01

So I also want to talk about that. You're hiring strategy, because in Sweet Cow, because the business is so seasonal, we almost had to double our staff in some locations to get ready for summertime, and you were so on top of that staffing plan. What was your strategy for that? And I want to pick your brain a little bit about this, because I just read an article in Forbes a couple of days ago that Generation Z is becoming masters at ghosting employers because it feels like they have control over their careers and they are either not showing up for interviews or they're accepting positions and they're not showing up. So will you talk a little bit about your experience with hiring, with interviewing, with ghosting? How did you handle that?

Alex Taylor: 17:50

Yeah, I mean, I think people ghost For me. I understand there's generational differences. Things change. I remember people ghosting me for many years. I think it's a part of just being young. I think some people think they can commit to you and they can't. Some people you know come in and their guns a blazing that they want a specific job and then you never hear from them again, and those people I put in the review mirror very fast and I'm on to the next.

Alex Taylor: 18:29

It's about finding talent that shows up number one, and you can see some of those things just in a work history, just like we do for any interview we have, where you really review someone's past, no-transcript, figuring out what makes somebody drawn to a position and why they're interested in being there in the first place. So cultivating a great team starts with who you already have and creating that buy-in with those individuals and especially the leaders in the room. So if you have a manager, a shift lead, a supervisor, those individuals are going to make a lot of decisions, bring a lot of the culture and they're the ones that are going to be interacting with your team every day more than anyone else. And so I think if you build a really strong leadership, team, supervisor group, whatever that looks like for you. Then you start to develop the culture that people want to work with. Start developing the culture where a young person comes in on a saturday night to your ice cream shop per se and they see how much fun everyone is having and they want to be a part of that. Everyone wants to be a part of something that looks like it's fun, that looks like people are, you know, friends and it's also genuine, authentic. You're still going to have people that ghost. You're still going to have people that are not as qualified as you thought they were, and that's okay, because you'll find twice as many people that are interested if you have a great culture.

Alex Taylor: 20:08

Um, and with hiring, you know, seasonality is big in a lot of industries and, although I didn't work in ice cream before, I worked in bakeries and bakeries are very, very, very busy for a very short window. So ice cream was like great, we have three months to be busy In bakery land. You have two weeks where it's like this is holiday season. You ramp up and your sales are going to be tripling, quadrupling, and it's only going to be for 60 days or less, and then you need to minimize your team again. So I had a lot of experience from my past life in baking to prepare myself for ice cream. I knew about flexibility, I knew about part-timers and how many you'd want and I also think some of it's luck. I was in a part of town where people were still applying and I was getting applicant flow.

Christin Marvin: 21:08

Yeah, yeah, and I mean one of the.

Christin Marvin: 21:10

You know, one of the things that I didn't realize about ice cream when I started working in it is that it's 100% turnover industry anyway, right, and so, just because of the seasonality and some of that, it's not all bad turnover right. Some of those people, those employees, go back to school so they take a break and then they come back, which is included in the turnover Right. But you guys, you guys did have great applicant flow and one of the things that was smart about what we did was our job postings were always open right, always, which which was overwhelming at times, but also really kept a nice flow of applicants coming in, right. I remember people being like, can we please shut this off now? Yeah, but it helped us build relationships and create customers right of people that we weren't able to apply or to bring on to the team I mean, and that I saw that shift with you and your team down the road where you didn't have to lean on those applications Towards the end of your career. What? What started to shift there? What happened?

Alex Taylor: 22:08

Again, it's like people enjoy their job. Why do they enjoy it? I think people enjoy their jobs because they make good money, they have a great schedule and they love the people they work with. Um, those are the three things that I think we got really good at with sweet cow Um, and we also set high standards. So everyone in the room was expected to meet those, meet those goals, and then people would just be like my friend wants to work here, or I have like four friends that want to work here and I'd be like great, just tell me who you got, because if I knew someone was amazing, their friends were just as amazing.

Alex Taylor: 22:45

You know, I had this group of high school boys I don't say boys, they were men, they were, you know, growing up in front of my eyes, but they were. You know, I had one person on my team who was 16 and so mature and had great follow through and everyone just appreciated him. And then I hired one of his friends and he was the same. And I hired another one of his friends he was the same too, and I eventually had like four four of them, their crew, all worked at the shop and it's incredible how, if you find one wonderful person. They most likely have friends that are wonderful, and so that really became a part of what we did as well.

Christin Marvin: 23:35

Yeah, and I, you know, I remember doing, you know schedule calls with you every single week and we'd be like, okay, where are you at staffing wise, what do you need to hire for? Where you know what's applicant flow look like. And you're like, oh, I got a referral, I got a referral, I got a referral. I mean you just you created, you had such a great culture where you created a bench of employees future employees that were coming in, and I can only imagine how much time and energy that saved you to be able to focus on investing in your team.

Alex Taylor: 24:04

Yeah, and going back to like the leadership part of things you know finding people who also make the room bright and fun and understand how to have high standards, while also bringing you know that that upbeat vibe, that ice cream shop needs putting those people in charge. That's very, very important, like picking out talent and promoting that talent, because, at the end of the day, I'm not going to be able to connect with every single person, I'm not going to be able to work every shift, so embodying that and the people I hired and developed was how I think the culture was consistently happening throughout each day.

Christin Marvin: 24:45

Yeah, and one of the things that was, you know, built into the Sweet Cow culture which I love is is mixing up the manager schedules. Right, where is your shop was open? The Highland shop was open till from 10 AM to midnight, right, and you guys would be rocking until you know, get out of there at 1, 2 AM in the morning and so doing that kind of volume and having a line out the door for hours and hours. You did a really great job of mixing in your schedule so that you could work with your entire team. You'd work morning shifts, you'd work some mid shifts, you'd work some closing shifts, but one of the things that really stood out about your leadership was you were so on top of making sure that you were holding one-on-ones and doing performance reviews with your team. Will you talk a little bit about how you planned for those, how you executed those, how much time those took you as well?

Alex Taylor: 25:32

Yeah, I think I spent a lot of time on that because it's important to me to have that, and so if something's important to me, it's going to be important to someone else, and what I found from working at Whole Foods one of the things that we were required to do every year was have a it was called a job dialogue, but every single person would get one throughout the year, and not only that, but you would get one for yourself as well.

Alex Taylor: 25:59

So there was a time where I would have to read comments from every person on my team about how I was doing, and I noticed that, after giving feedback to each person throughout the year, I started to see that people were more bought in to being on the team, or people would start improving the areas that I wanted to see growth in, or maybe someone would also find their way off of the team because they were realizing that it wasn't the best fit for them, and there's also nothing wrong with that.

Alex Taylor: 26:37

So when I started at Sweet Cow, we had a review system and I really wanted to develop more one-on-ones, especially with the people who were leaving the rooms, because being seen for five or ten minutes and having a conversation about how you're doing, what's going well, what are your opportunities. Those five or ten minutes where someone has one-on-one time makes such a big impact long-term, with people feeling like they don't want to call out or people feeling connected to authentic culture, where they actually think that this is a family and it's also a job. That comes from authenticity, and I think that's where you get that.

Christin Marvin: 27:22

Yeah, you kind of briefly mentioned it, but would you highlight during that five or 10 minute conversation what were some of the things that you would bring up and were you consistent with each employee?

Alex Taylor: 27:47

have a one-on-one with someone, so it'd be the entire group together one week and then one person on their own every other week.

Alex Taylor: 27:51

And what I did was I came prepared with just direct feedback for everyone.

Alex Taylor: 27:57

So what things are going well and what opportunities do we have, not just for them, for me, but also what do they see, what are the opportunities that I have as a leader, what are the opportunities that the shop has?

Alex Taylor: 28:11

What do they need to be successful in their role? So it would be 30 minutes and typically we would start out with what was going right, what was going well, what the opportunities were for that individual where they could find the information or the training to improve, and then it would be an open forum to discuss anything they had on their mind. So people looked forward to those, and if I canceled one, I immediately would reschedule it for another time, because that's the other thing is, if you don't follow up on these things, if you don't consistently have them it's only once that you do it and then it falls off then people don't use it as a platform to really say what they need or to really develop on the plans that you've set. From the previous conversation. The follow through isn't on, isn't going to happen on the right end if it's not happening on your end yeah, and you did this not only with your leadership team, but with every employee in the shop.

Christin Marvin: 29:14

yes, did you find that your younger employees that were you know this was their first job right and that they weren't necessarily looking to make ice cream a career? How did they, how did they accept that feedback?

Alex Taylor: 29:30

Most people were very open to it. You know how you say something is just as important as what you say. So I think it's really great to tell people that they are developing skills that they can put on their resume for the rest of their life. I mean, this might be your first job, but I think if you can learn how to interact with people, not only on the team but also with customers, if you can teach the skills that they would need for organization or for consistency, cleanliness, A lot of the things that we do in an ice cream shop every day apply to every job you'll have for the rest of your life. So I think, coming from that mentality and really putting it into a perspective that's bigger than ice cream and making it more about them and their career growth, starting right now even in high school, that resonated with a lot of people.

Christin Marvin: 30:31

And how are you applying those same ideas and philosophies with your management team? Now that you're area director, you're overseeing seven locations right, You've got six shift leads and two managers, ideally in every location. How are you teaching them how to develop their team and motivate and inspire their employees?

Alex Taylor: 30:57

Well, I think one thing that's happened from being an area manager is I'm more organized than ever before, which is great. We actually have templates for every manager now to use for one-on-ones, not only for myself and the manager, but we also have templates that they can use for themselves and their assistant manager. We also do the same thing with our shift leads. We have not everyone connects in the same way. Not every manager connects through the same questions or the same conversation, um.

Alex Taylor: 31:34

So we really wanted to set up some kind of template for people to use so that way they would have a guideline as to how they would want those one-on-ones to flow. So we catered it to each shop, each manager, by tweaking things that really were priorities for them. But it's the same template and it's a requirement that you schedule those. When you're not having a shift lead meeting one week, you're having a one-on-one, and we are revamping the review process as well and making it easier. So we don't want it to be wordy. We don't want you to have to sit writing something for over an hour to give to someone. We want it to be easy where you can really highlight the things that are going well and talk about the development piece. So we've also come up with a couple of different ways of doing that that save time for our managers, so they can spend more one on one time with the team and with their shift leads.

Christin Marvin: 32:36

That's the, that's the beauty. The beauty and the goal right. The more systems that you can put into place, the more opportunities that your, your managers, have to spend with their team right, and the more opportunities the team have to spend with the guests for sure. I want to ask you one last question what do you find Gen Z really wants out of a job? When they're coming to interview, what are they asking for?

Alex Taylor: 33:02

I think people are again going back to what I said before, like multiple times. But I think people are again going back to what I said before, like multiple times. But I think people are looking for like authenticity. I think they're looking for either a manager or a company or a team that will genuinely care about them. So if you are having a mental health day, you can have it, and that's on the manager to make sure that we have enough people so that when that comes up, no one is shamed for a new unit day or no one is shamed for being sick.

Alex Taylor: 33:34

I think that came from COVID as well, not just Gen Z. But then it's the part of really genuinely connecting just on a human level and ensuring that you are asking the right questions about what things we want to grow in their career and what things we feel are strengths that we want to just see maybe that person teaching others. So I think it's authentic connection and I think it's really consistently showing up and bringing you know, bringing that sense of care that not just Gen Z, but I think we all want.

Christin Marvin: 34:20

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Well, Alex, you're amazing. Thank you so much for being here. How?

Alex Taylor: 34:27

are you? We're sitting on milk crates.

Christin Marvin: 34:35

I know we are right. I love it. I'm backed up in my closet and you're in a stairwell.

Alex Taylor: 34:36

This is just how we roll, just where we deserve to be.

Christin Marvin: 34:38

I love it Again, just really appreciate you being here and sharing your nuggets of wisdom, and so excited that we've been able to stay connected and I can't wait to see you in person very, very soon. Yeah, thank you. All right. Okay, everybody, be sure to share this podcast with any leaders you know in the restaurant industry and be sure to check out my step by step guide on how to retain your employees at christinmarvin. com, and follow me on LinkedIn @christin-marvin. We'll talk to you next week, everybody, thanks.