I enjoy going to a coffee shop which is supplied with some of the nicest carrot cake in Johannesburg. The problem is, every time I arrive and ask before I take a seat as to whether or not they have carrot cake, I get a different answer. Sometimes they are down to their last piece and every second time they don’t have any at all. It never ceases to amaze me that a business, and this has been going on for two or three years, cannot realise that one of their products is doing well and stock a little bit more because there are many customers, like me, who want something and if it is not on the menu, will simply leave.

It is not just about service, but it is also about business and I think the point that I would make in this blog is that probably the biggest problem with a lot of restaurants, and even more so with franchise chain restaurants, are that the actual owners of the business are seldom there. There is often an uncle, an aunt or grandfather who is overseeing the business but the person who has actually invested their money in it is not there. I have a favourite coffee shop in the Fourways area, and it is part of a franchise group, and when the owners are there, which is almost all of the year, it runs fantastically and there is never a problem with the food. When they went away in December, I got a slight bout of food poisoning and it just shows you that you have to be on top of your business, watching it all the time and making sure that all of the staff members do what they are supposed to do because otherwise you will run into problems.

There will always be staff who can be relied upon to do anything, and they come from a variety of different backgrounds, both in society and academically and simply have a hardworking ethic combined with honesty that sees them get ahead. You will also unfortunately always have those, who play when they get the chance, and who drift along with the ebb of life or the day, and don’t notice that the milk has gone sour or take care to do the same thing that they have been taught before and have done 100 times before, methodically and correctly the 101st time. You either need a very committed and capable manager or you need the person who has invested their money into the business to be at the business – preferably both, because it is seldom that anybody else cares as much as the person who is going to lose all of their money if the business flops. They are fully committed and the carrot shop restaurant owner is not.