The Keys to Scoring The Best Restaurant Gig In The Biz

The Keys to Scoring The Best Restaurant Gig In The Biz The Keys to Scoring The Best Restaurant Gig In The Biz The Cheesecake Factory built its brand on celebratory fun: a place for guests to enjoy an anniversary or birthday over one of 300 menu items, starting with that famous brown oat bread. Internally at Cheesecake it’s all about celebrations for staffers too, says Dina Barmasse, Cheesecake’s SVP of Human Resources. It’s a culture that Barmasse and team work hard to cultivate. She explains why even new menu items are an excuse for a party, why the company trains its staffers even for a post-Cheesecake career, and what makes a person “so Cheesecake.” Glassdoor: The Cheesecake Factory has an obvious public-facing aspect with the restaurants. How do you and your team build a culture that permeates through all functions, from a cashier at a restaurant to a staffer in corporate operations? Dina Barmasse: The cultural aspect of The Cheesecake Factory is absolutely paramount for attraction, retention, etc., so HR is very deliberate in working with operations about how we build that. First, our talent selection team works really hard to find and retain the right talent. We call them “So Cheesecake” people. It’s become shorthand: When interviewees would leave the room, if they nailed the interview you would say “Oh, they’re just so Cheesecake.” We started exploring, what do we mean when we say they’re so Cheesecake? Really, what it boils down to is that they ooze warmth and hospitality that comes from within. They radiate positivity. Theyhave extremely high personal standards of excellence, and they love to celebrate and have fun. Of course, there’s different factors and competencies that you’ll look for in different roles, but that is a cultural touchstone for us: how we find the So Cheesecake people. Once we find and hire them, we have appreciation recognition programs that thank our people for their hard work and extra effort that they put in. Working at The Cheesecake Factory is not the easiest job. We are one of the busiest restaurant concepts around. You have to want to work hard here. But we also want to make sure they know how appreciated they are, so we go above and beyond in our appreciation and recognition programs. We have lots of celebrations. If you think of The Cheesecake Factory you probably think of having fun. It’s no different for the people internally. We use every opportunity we can to build camaraderie and celebrate. For example, when we roll out new menu items twice a year it could be fairly perfunctory. But we turn it into a cultural touchstone where we’re able to bring everybody together. We spend a few hours playing games and quizzes, and there are opportunities for the winning team to give money to charities. Our training programs are the best in the industry. When you have 300 menu items, it’s a lot for people to be able to remember. We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can both on the food, service and hospitality side to set them up for success. Glassdoor: Cheesecake employees often rave in their Glassdoor reviews about the training they’ve received â€" that it doesn’t just make them exceptional at their current job, but it really tees them up for overall career success. Dina Barmasse:   You just made me very happy when you said that, because that is one of the things that we think about intentionally. We know training is critically important for some people. Let’s say in our kitchen there’s someone for whom this is their career, and they want to learn as much as they can and be able to achieve their career goals with us. But even if they’re not going to stay with us forever, we want people to feel that if you come to work at The Cheesecake Factory, no one is going to teach you more. If you come to The Cheesecake Factory, you’re not making three items. You’re making every item under the sun - we’re going to invest in you and no matter if you stay with us or if you go somewhere else, you’re going to get the best training around. That hopefully attracts people to come to work for us and it hopefully also retains them. But we’re also very happy when it helps people externally to be able to move on to other dreams and aspirations. Certainly, with our kitchen and long menu here, there are a lot of other places people can go and where there may be less challenge. At The Cheesecake Factory, there is definitely that challenge - but that’s also one of the elements of pride that I think is why a lot of people come to us. Setting them up for success is critically important. Glassdoor: The Glassdoor reviews also talk about Cheesecake as a place where employees can give critical feedback. Dina Barmasse:   One of the challenges in having more than 200 restaurants is making sure that we have a direct line to hear the best ideas and suggestions from people who know it best, which is our staff. We set up a crowdsourcing site called Cake Talk. Every staff member has the opportunity to submit their ideas and suggestions directly to us and our senior leaders, unfiltered. We read every single Cake Talk submission. We take the feedback very seriously, and many times they lead to awesome hallway conversations. Cake Talk lets people vote on the suggestions, so the most popular rise to the top. That gives us a sense of the energy behind that suggestion. We’ve made some wonderful menu changes. We’ve changed the servers’ attire. There’s suggestion after suggestion that has made a real impact.  Glassdoor:   You mentioned that Cheesecake is a fun but demanding job. How do you retain talent that could go elsewhere for a job with, say, a smaller menu? Dina Barmasse:   Restaurants are facing a lot of challenges right now, and it can be a tough environment to retain staff. So we’re really focused on retention. It starts from when they first come in the door. We have revamped our orientation and what we call our “First 60 Days Program.” We know the biggest turnover in a restaurant takes place in the first 60 days. So what can we do from the time that they first come in? How can we deeply understand what is important to them? We have a process in place for our managers to be able to do just that, and to be able to share that information with the other management. Maybe it’s that this person really wants to work, but can’t work nights. He loves the Dodgers and he has three kids. If I understand that, I can meet his needs. Because our restaurants have a very large staff, we basically will do anything to meet people’s expectations around shifts. If they want to work only two days a week, or five days, we’ll try to make that happen. We have enough flexibility because of the number of people, but also because we really try hard to staff our restaurants to meet that. It’s a big selling point for the front-of-house in particular, who may be going to school or doing different things. They want that flexibility so we do it in a way that it’s welcomed.  In other words, it’s not a burden. It’s something that we want them to have. That is a different approach to just saying, “Yes, you can have that time off” - but begrudgingly giving it. It only takes that one sigh or hesitation or frown to send a subtle message. We don’t want that. We want the message to be we’re going to do everything we can. We know how hard our staff works, and we want to be able to do this for them.  Glassdoor:   What keeps you personally at Cheesecake? Dina Barmasse:   My answer is probably most people will tell you: When you say you work at The Cheesecake Factory, we all get a pretty universal response. The person’s face lights up. They’ll rave about the wheat bread, tell you about how they go every year on their anniversary. There’s some energy that is there that you can feel - the cultural difference. From an HR standpoint, that is golden. We want to do everything we can so each person is truly personally inspired to live that culture.