I am trying to put together a bonus program for my hourly staff. I was going to base it off a secret shopper program. I am think it should be an hourly bonus paid once a month to everyone for the hours worked during that previous month and be based on scores from secret shoppers. I would also want to base off of some sort of grading scale that I can use to grade the staff and store. Do any of you do anything like this? Any other ideas for bonus programs?
I worked for Domino’s Pizza for 15 years and Papa John’s for 3 years befor opening my own stores. In the beginning DPI and most of there franchisee would give a manager a minimum wage salary, with benefits, and 20% of Profits. So if you had a store that was avg. $12,000/wk and you ran your numbers appropriately. You would earn about $35o to $450/wk in salary, and another $750/wk in bonus. But over the years I seen that diminish, as the minimum wage in the states rose, the owners and the corporations took more and more money away from the managers. Stripping income from your managers is a stupid thing cause it kills morale, and can kill your store(s). When I left Domino’s they the bonuses was down to 10% and they had all these parameter you had to hit in order to get it. And about 1 out of 3 times you didn’t get your bonus.
When I switched to PJ’s in 2001, The Salary was significantly higher I earned $750/wk plus 8 percent of Profit.
Now that I am an owner. I have several secret shoppers, who grade the quality of the order, from phone person knowledge, and courteousness to product correctness, and presentation, and delivery driver performance, and courteousness, and lastly overall performance(speed of delivery).
Question on the survey are.
CSR
- What was the phone persons name?
I always have phone persons answer "Thank You for choosing Tommy’s this is " - Did the CSR offer you any specials?
I have a seasonal special that My CSR are are supposed to offer to all my customers. - Was the CSR knowledgeable and courteous?
- Did the CSR “Thank You!”?
DRIVER - Did the Deliver Driver drive safely into your neighborhood?
- Could you hear the DD radio? I ask drivers to keep the radio down to a reasonable level. So as not to disturb the neighbors.
- Could you smell smoke. I don’t allow smoking in my Delivery Drivers cars?
- Was the pizza delivered in a pizza bag?
believe it or not, I have had drivers, who came from other chains who delivered without hot bags. - Did you receive your entire order, with sides , and condiments?
- Was the DD wearing his uniform?
I have had dd in the past remove there uniform after they left the store, because they were embarrassed to be seen in the uniform. - Did the DD’s uniform look clean and sharp, or did it look as if he just picked it up off the floor?
- Did the driver have a lit car-top sign on? This is a big one.
- Did the driver “thank you!” for the order?
- Did the driver driver away safely?
PRODUCT
15. How long did the delivery take?
16. Were the pizza and products still hot?
17. Open the pizza box, what is you first impression of the pizza. Was the pizza made correctly?
18. Are the toppings evenly distributed?
19. Based on your previous experience it the product the same, better, or worse?
20. How would you rate the whole experience? A B C D F
I have five surveys done per month on each store. I place $100 into a pool for each survey that has an A grade, $75 for B grade, $50 for a C grade, and nothing for a D or F. I take this pool of funds and divide it amongst my employees based on there hours worked. If its all A’s it works out to about $100 bonus for my F/T employees, and about $50 for my P/T employees.
My managers don’t get share the bonus with the rest of the crew, I give them an additional bonus equal to half the end result which could be another $250 for him/her.
Plus I am old school, I still give my Managers $500 Salary, and 20% of profits.
Always tie in your employees wages to performance, and profitability, and you will see greater results in the end. It will also weed out the employees that are only there for a paycheck, from the true “go getters”.
I also worked for Dominos in the old days with the 20% bonuses. I started with them in 1978. Manger Salary was $350 a week when I started if I recall correctly.
I still use the 20% formula for bonuses. I take out 30K as a fee to myself first before it is calculated though. My genreral managers in the past have made a salary of 35K. Bonuses ranged from 6-10K per year which the general manager shared with assistant managers. Normally the general manager kept abotu 60% and shared 40%.
Lately I have switched to paying my manager $12.50 an hour with overime instead of a salary and I have upped the bonus plan by about 50% so that the bonus pool for the year will be more like 15-18K. I pay one part of a bonus every pay period. $1-$3 per hour for each manager depending on my perception of how they contributed to food cost, labor cost, cleaning and cash control. Profit bonuses are paid in profitable months and offset by unprofitable months which means that in big months there is another $2000 or so in bonuses to be shared.
I have managed 4 pizza stores. I am still a GM and our entire bonus depends on a secret shopper. We have 1 secret shopper for 8 stores and this low life has no integrity. I am so mad its hard to type this. every period we have two or more stores graded on the same pizza. sometimes the pizzas are used and then used again a month later. This scum bag is sending pictures of the same pizza at different times and with different scores. I am finding out who this person is. I have lost thousands in bonus over this and I plan to take this person to court. There are 8 of us who are involved. Please if you use a secret shopper system do it yourself or direcly supervise it.
I am a professional secret shopper and that type of behavior is appauling!
The best bet when getting a secret shopper worth their salt is to make sure that they are MSPA certified at least at the silver level (yes, we have to pay money for a legitimate certification).
The MSPA is the Mystery Shopper Providers Association. You can google them and find a link to their website (I haven’t visited in a while, but I believe it’s http://www.mysteryshop.org).
I do not contract out with other mystery shopping businesses anymore. I have my own company. I was doing this prior to working at PJ, but my contract got terminated when they decided to take everything I made for them (a Native Casino) and run with a program internally paying others a lot less than they were paying me on contract.
I am not doing anything with it right now because of PJ…and the fact that a lot of food service businesses have already contracted with national companies that I would have to sign up with as a contractor…like I said, I have my own business…tax ID, etc…so not going to work for someone else when I can do it myself and get it done right.
But anyway, if anyone needs further information about mystery shopping/secret shopping, I’m always there to lend support.
ETA: To the poster above, I hope you find out who your lame shopper is…but there is a very high likelihood that your shopper contracts through a company…so the best route would be to find out if that is the case or not, and then if they are with a company, lodge a complaint and get the contractor out of their company.
As for being able to take them to court over loss of money you expected…that would be very difficult to do, unless you had proof in black and white that what the shopper said happened was not what happened.
I had a very effective technique for sniffing out secret shoppers, and to my knowledge they never did catch on to it. It relies on the fact that most “shoppers” require the name of the employee that they dealt with for filling out their paperwork, and was made easier by my having an unusual first name. Whenever I answered the phone, which was often as my shop had no insiders, I would be sure to slightly slur my name when greeting the customer. 95% of the time, this didn’t cause any change in the customer, they just plowed on with the ordering procedure, they didn’t need to know my name. The guy that pauses and says “what was your name again?”, that’s your shopper, or at least a likely one. I would then place a subtle mark in the driver notes, usually just a * symbol, to alert the driver or remind myself to be sure to wear a hat and follow all the usual regulations for that order and get it out quick. Yes, I’m sure this method led to many false positives, but seeing as how my store often got hammered by shopper reports when they came into the store, but always sailed through the delivery shoppers, I think it was successful.
I guess my take on this is a bit different from the other posters…seems others are rewarding hefty for employees doing their job which they are already getting paid to do.
I think a small bonus for the crew involved in a secret shopper order is good, or a small bonus for a spot inspection dealing with cleanliness and sanitation, uniform etc but to base an entire bonus program on one person’s opinion just seems ridiculous to me…it also seems ridiculous to have the majority of the pay based on a mystery shopper bonus.
We give bonuses for a 6 week sales increase and meeting labor goals every two weeks. I have often thought of giving a manager a bonus for a spot inspection but it would be a bonus not something they depend on as part of their salary. Seems to me the big 3 use the bonus program as a all or nothing reasonable salary and basing it on a mystery shopper seems unfair to me.
Just my opinion.