Sticking together!
Over the last 5 months I have had the privilege of speaking to so many great professionals from our industry. This unfamiliar and scary period has meant huge uncertainty and change. I have been spoke to so many resilient and positive individuals and have been warmed by some great stories of teams sticking together and people coming together to support and give back.
In the spirit of working together and contributing to a united industry community I wanted to share a few insights from some great industry leaders on the last several months and the changes to come.
David ladd - CEO - Bar Soba
“our team have done an amazing job under unprecedented circumstances! Lockdown was difficult but vitally, we kept communication up with the team while furloughed which proved successful. This was very much appreciated and allowed us to reopen with a positive team, determined to make things work. It is essential we stay positive for what the future may bring, the past few months has proved we can handle most things that come our way!”
Tim Lowther - General Manager - Europe and Russian Federation at CKE Restaurants, Inc.
“I am delighted and not a little relieved to have been able to bring my entire team back out of furlough in the last week, it really is great to be back up to full strength and supporting our franchise partners for further growth across Europe. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying, this has, without doubt, been one of the most challenging few months of my career, we have had to flex quickly and address obstacles we could never have imagined just a few short months ago, I think the next 6 months will be even more challenging as we navigate our way through the pandemic.
Carl’s Jr has shown resilience even in the toughest of times, helped no doubt by its strong QSR credentials and I am incredibly proud of my entire team and my franchisee’s across Europe and Russia (76 Restaurants in 6 countries at last count) for the tenacity and sometimes sheer bloody minded refusal to accept defeat and continue to open profitable restaurants. A highlight for me was our master franchisee in France, who personally welcomed every car back after a month of closure due to Covid-19 with a thank you and a bunch of flowers, a great example of leadership and gratitude which is ingrained in our DNA, no mean feat considering at one point they were serving more than 600 cars per day! However, there are still tough times ahead and this thing has plenty more surprises to throw our way yet.”
Nathan Miller – Business consultant and former Senior leader in Events, Food service and Sporting Arenas
“With the glaring gap in government fiscal support so far for our wider hospitality sector and its army of flexible ‘social by nature’ workers, I am immensely proud of the positivity our industry has seen from those people in the face of redundancies, market impact and business owner despair. We should see confidence the industry and these fabulous people will use the skills versatility embedded in their DNA to endure, evolve and entertain again.
Our leadership learning must be to work and gain in ability to target, lobby, and leverage government faster, effectively with measured support requirement, both now and to protect for the very likely occurrence of future challenges. “
To carry on the open conversation we will continue to host out Webinars over the coming months. If you would like to contribute and join us as a panellist, please drop me an email at Hollie@corecruitment.com