Hiring and Training Employees For Your Frozen Dessert Shop

This 3 Minute Tip video is about hiring and training employees for your frozen dessert shop. If you own a frozen dessert, ice cream shop or restaurant then you know how important it is to find a quality employee. At Sentry Equipment, we've consulted with hundreds of shop and restaurant owners and one of the major headaches we hear about most often is hiring employees.

Since the majority of our customers run a seasonal business the typical labor pull they get to hire from involves adolescents that range from the 16-18 year old's that are looking for summer work or employment before they go back to school or graduate school. That usually means every shop owner constantly has a stream of new employees that need to be trained or returning employees that need to be re-trained. Unfortunately, these kids have a huge impact on the success and/or failure of a frozen dessert operation. They are a reflection of your shop and as you as an owner.

So how do you keep up with employee training and maintain a consistent quality level of service and work from your employees? Well, it all starts at the beginning. It starts with the culture of your operation. Too many times, when we've been asked to help on this part of a customer's business function, we've observed a culture that is toxic, negative or not structured properly. Too often when you have a business that is not structured around a particular culture the atmosphere becomes toxic. This toxic atmosphere means you're not going to be able to keep good talent and will be left with just scraping the bottom of the labor pool. 

So the first rule of hiring and training employees is to look inside at your own shop and internal operations. Ask yourself; is this the kind of place people would want to work at? Is this a place people would be happy to work at? A frozen dessert operation that does not present or provide a fun and happy atmosphere to work at usually means a suffocating environment where employees are miserable, thus leading to poor customer service and poor sales. So first, work on the culture of your shop and make sure it's aligned with your future goals and success in mind. 

Our second rule is to look at who you are hiring. Many times when we talk with shop owners who struggle with this subject matter are hiring a family member or a friend of the family or the daughter or son of a family friend. No doubt, as a business owner you would like to extend this courtesy to family and friends but going down this path often leads to disaster. Remember this: never hire someone you cannot fire. If you do hire the son or daughter of a friend or a family member you will get trapped down the road. If you do hire one of these persons and you have to fire them down the road it may cause a lot of backlash on social media or create a riff in your relationship with that family member or friend. This may all lead to unwarranted negative attention to you and your store even though you weren't the cause of the problem. 

The best piece of advice we can give when it comes to hiring an employee is to hire on personality. You can teach anyone how to pour an ice cream cone or make a sundae but you can't teach someone how to have a personality. Personality means a person can be engaging with customer and other employees while maintaining and living the culture you've created in your store. Trust us, no customer wants to come into your store and be waited on by a miserable, non-engaging employee. 

Once you feel you've hired the right personality for the job, make sure you have some training procedures in place. Don't ever just hire someone and throw them into the fire without any training. This is a recipe for failure. There should always be a training period for the employee to see if this job is a fit for them and more importantly if this employee is a fit for you. 

For additional information on how to be unique and drive sales at your ice cream shop, watch our 3 minute tip video or contact us with any questions.