Acceptable amount of mistakes?

[boatnut]

As we get busier we seem to be making more mistakes. I am aware that mistakes will happen, however,
what amount is “acceptable”? As in per 100 orders are two mistakes kinda the norm? 10?
My one location is running close to zero. Other (busier) is running around 3 per hundred. Am I too demanding feeling that’s way too high?
We have just instituted a “mistake report” that is filled out over and above tracking in POS. Lists order #, cook, cutter/boxer, driver and what went wrong. If there is one area that stands out it’s wrong/missed toppings.

 

[GotRocks]

If I was challenged with this specific problem, I’d first need to isolate which people or combination of people are most responsible for the mistakes, and once I get that nailed down, try to isolate it even more to see if it is just one individual, or a whole process/crew that is falling apart.

I believe that zero mistakes are acceptable.
Have you isolated the root cause of these mistakes;

Is it the person who is taking the order?
Is it how the ticket is written and or printed? If multiple order takers, are they writing items differently from person to person and that may confuse people on the make line?
Is it because your person reading the ticket has vision issues?
Is it because the person building the pie is just not that bright?

I’ve actually had people on my line who could not read, I figured it out by making them read off tickets aloud, i’d here them mumble something, I ask them to repeat it, and they couldn’t pronounce written words.
I also had a cashier who was involved with the bulk of mistakes, she was taking orders, I would listen to what the customer had ordered, and found that she was not entering that same info into the POS, she was placing orders wrong.
. I forced all order takers to repeat the order back to the customer, top to bottom, so it could be corrected before a ticket was printed, that helped for a few days then the same mistakes would show up again, I had no choice but to let her go, especially when I was seeing complaints on review sites,

Good luck, troubleshooting this may be difficult, and some people may need to be let go due to incompetence.

 

[smeagol8]

Without disagreeing with anything GotRocks said: If you never make mistakes, you aren’t busy enough. If your staff is operating on that thin edge of “We can do this”, then there will inevitably be whispers of “Oops”.

 

[Ivan]

Zero mistakes should be the only acceptable to me, in numbers, in money, maybe two of hundred is like “well, we did 98 good”, but that can be like 2 angry clients which can talk about your business from 20 to 50 other persons!.

We also do mistakes, like forgot one pizza on raising area, then giving late, what we do? Give a discount or some free item to still have a happy client! (You convert a mistake into a new opportunity). All is about fix systems, and process, but if one person is the problem and doesn’t make better, then change it of labor or change of person, lol.

 

[BspaPizza]

Mistakes will happen no matter what, You should focus on the cause of mistakes and if it’s isolated to one employee or a specific area. We have a small crew who have been with us for a long time so mistakes are almost zero. If you train properly and make a constant effort to stay on top of everything mistakes will come less and less as time goes on.

The most important thing to consider is mistakes will happen, It’s how you deal with them that makes the most difference.

 

[GotRocks]

Without disagreeing with anything GotRocks said: If you never make mistakes, you aren’t busy enough. If your staff is operating on that thin edge of “We can do this”, then there will inevitably be whispers of “Oops”.

I agree that mistakes will happen, they are almost unavoidable when you’re running on the ragged edge, but at the same time I don’t believe any mistakes are “acceptable”, and the goal of the entire crew should be to have zero mistakes.

By making mistakes, you are showing your clients that there is a certain level of incompetence in your establishment, and they do not see a mistake on their order as acceptable. They don’t care about the 98-99 other pizzas you just baked that hour that were perfect, they only care about their order, they one that got narfed!
Especially since they made a conscience effort to patronize your establishment as opposed to going someplace else.
They don’t care how busy you are, how many hours/days straight you’ve been working without a break, or how badly you’ve needed to take a pee for the last 2 hours, they just want their order to be correct, timely, and as delicious as the product that they heard about from friends or from their previous experiences.

It is said that a pleased customer may tell one or maybe two other people about their pleasing experience at your restaurant, but they will tell everyone they run into about an unsettling experience, and then they hit the review sites with a vengeance, and that gives them a mouthpiece to everyone who reads it to complain about their experience when their order had a mistake .

Like I stated earlier, try to nail down where exactly the mistake is being made, and intervene at that point, be it the person taking/writing orders, how it is written/printed, font size & style if printed, reading the ticket aloud, whatever it takes.
How many pizzas do you do a night, then take that 3% mistake rate. what is the selling price of each pizza? Multiply that by days open, and tell me what your annual monetary loss is for those mistakes
Could you buy a new truck? A new Harley ? A new boat? Or invest that money back into your biz?
It adds up rapidly, now imagine the lost patronage from mistakes…
Do you see where I’m going with this ?

 

[boatnut]

Thank you all for the replies. Got Rocks, I am 100% onside with you. Cost is approaching $1,000 month. I am not willing to accept any mistakes. I have posted the “total washout” that a mistake actually costs us for all staff to see. I just wanted some other opinions as to what might be an industry norm. We will make mistakes. I am not in an industry where I can offer high wages so I can only expect so much. I just needed to know if I was being out of line expecting close to zero. Sounds like I’m not. We have the systems in place to eliminate them IF the staff follow the system. We have a $20,000+ POS with kitchen displays, bump bars, backup tickets at back end of oven etc etc… No lack of control systems…
I am about 100% sure the problem stems from a lack of initial training compounded by no ongoing training. Will be rectifying this asap.
All my staff work hard. We just have to guide them more. As an absentee owner it takes a little longer to see and subsequently address problems. Too busy riding the Harley lol…

 

[GotRocks]

I would start at the top and figure out where the miscommunication that is resulting in mistakes starts.
Basically i’d need to determine exactly where the problem is happening?
Is the person at the order entry station giving the kitchen wrong information to start with? Or is it the kitchen not reading tickets correctly?
Is it happening more with certain individuals, or is it everyone?

Can you switch individual staff between the 2 locations to get some continued training that way?
I envy you being able to get miles on the bike, I only have one location and I cannot get away even for an hour. Maybe that’ll change this summer if I can get a decent crew together.