Adam Minicucci, Executive Chef of The Country Club of North Carolina, offers a behind-the-scenes look at how he trained up his team for reopening after a major renovation.
At The Country Club of North Carolina (Pinehurst, N.C.), the long-planned re-opening of the dining room after an eight-month renovation culminated in a socially distanced launch party on December 9th.
As you might expect, there was a flurry of planning and activity within our F&B and hospitality departments to be fully functional by that date.
The key piece to being ready to roll was a comprehensive week-long “boot camp,” which occurred after Thanksgiving.
We closed the food and beverage department for six days, which gave all of our staff a hands-on feel for how, why and when we would operate in the new space. The boot camp was important because it offered the staff an opportunity to interact with co-workers in the new environment to ‘dress rehearse’ the processes and procedures which will ensure service efficiency as well as smiles on the faces of our members.
At the same time, the boot camp helped us to identify any gaps, potential issues or problems we might encounter as we put our plan in place and helped us find tweaks for a better experience. We like the idea that everyone lived through this together and calling it a boot camp promoted the ideal that this experience wasn’t going to be easy—but when we finished, we’d be ready.
To assure that we maintained our high quality of professional and ‘home-style’ service, we broke the boot camp into two segments, each included three days of one-on-one staff training and three ‘soft opening’ nights serving numerous committee members and management staff.
After the first day of boot camp, we noticed that it evolved into a team-building exercise as many of the staff stayed past the appointed clock-out hour to eagerly share ideas with their co-workers.
With so many new services to incorporate, we felt that introducing it all at once would be overload on both the staff and members. We offered only the a la carte menu on the soft opening nights and then took the opportunity of the Grand Opening to introduce the brand new tapas and specialty cocktail menus.
A survey was distributed to management and board invitees after the ‘soft openings’ and we look forward to processing their valuable input.
In the one-on-one training we emphasized the following:
- Department managers worked directly with each staff members’ individual schedule and assignments from overall service concepts to all the small details so that we’d be best able to take advantage of each staff member’s skill sets.
- Navigating the new space for efficiency and new locations for service items
- Building an awareness of everyone’s new routines
- Menu familiarization
- Enthusiasm and energy about the project
During our three days of ‘soft openings’, we focused on:
- Timing of each day
- Room prep
- Kitchen prep
- F&B prep
- Staffing levels
- All the ‘little things’ with an eye on possible tweaks
As we shifted and adjusted our operational plan along the way to December 9, we realized that meeting the challenge together was professionally and personally fulfilling. We are proud to have put our stamp on the new spaces at CCNC and our members approve.
