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system
Guest
I’m completely out of my element here and I’m hoping you might be able to guide us if not provide advice directly.
My husband and I bought a small pizzaria about 90 days ago. I have a full-time job and he is active duty military slated to retire in April. We work at the store 7 days a week but can’t be there from 11am opening until 5. We have gone through several mangers and “shift supervisors” and have had about every problem possible - from work not being done, bad product leaving the store, bad customer service, theft and more.
We were recovering and have changed some of our expectatation and have a new challenge. We received an application from a manager of a competitor’s store and after interviewing, decided to hire her and her partner, who also worked at the competitor. They wanted to give notice at the present store and after doing so, they were told to leave immediately. The came by and let us know they could start with us the next day. While they were there - after completing paperwork, uniforms etc. the owner of the competitor showed up at our store and pulled them out, proceeding to talk to them at our doorstep for about 45 minutes. One girl periodically came back inside to let us know what was going on. The other owner was bad-mouthing us, our store, the reputation and so on. End result, they all hopped in the car and left. I guess we lost them.
This after finding out from these potential employees that he’s paying people under the table for as little as $3.50, taking orders off the books, stealing other people’s marketing materials and menus and generally being very unpleasant. Because of our attempt at hiring (which we did not go after his employees - they came to us), we now are in a tough position. So now, we unintentionally have an enemy in the competition instead of your standard friendly competition. We’re not experienced at underhanded techniques or nasty competion. How can we handle this?
Our store has a horrible reputation from the former owners that we have been working on…the last thing we need is to be targeted by someone like this. We are so frustrated we’re thinking about taking the loss and quitting. We are in an excellent market and historical sales show the store is capable of $15K-$20K weekly and we’re currently at about $4K. Any advice?
My husband and I bought a small pizzaria about 90 days ago. I have a full-time job and he is active duty military slated to retire in April. We work at the store 7 days a week but can’t be there from 11am opening until 5. We have gone through several mangers and “shift supervisors” and have had about every problem possible - from work not being done, bad product leaving the store, bad customer service, theft and more.
We were recovering and have changed some of our expectatation and have a new challenge. We received an application from a manager of a competitor’s store and after interviewing, decided to hire her and her partner, who also worked at the competitor. They wanted to give notice at the present store and after doing so, they were told to leave immediately. The came by and let us know they could start with us the next day. While they were there - after completing paperwork, uniforms etc. the owner of the competitor showed up at our store and pulled them out, proceeding to talk to them at our doorstep for about 45 minutes. One girl periodically came back inside to let us know what was going on. The other owner was bad-mouthing us, our store, the reputation and so on. End result, they all hopped in the car and left. I guess we lost them.
This after finding out from these potential employees that he’s paying people under the table for as little as $3.50, taking orders off the books, stealing other people’s marketing materials and menus and generally being very unpleasant. Because of our attempt at hiring (which we did not go after his employees - they came to us), we now are in a tough position. So now, we unintentionally have an enemy in the competition instead of your standard friendly competition. We’re not experienced at underhanded techniques or nasty competion. How can we handle this?
Our store has a horrible reputation from the former owners that we have been working on…the last thing we need is to be targeted by someone like this. We are so frustrated we’re thinking about taking the loss and quitting. We are in an excellent market and historical sales show the store is capable of $15K-$20K weekly and we’re currently at about $4K. Any advice?
