How do you create career paths for frontline employees?

Ron (00:00): Hi everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Ron Thurston and I am the host of the Retail in America podcast, and I’m really excited to be here today to host this new show, live on LinkedIn and as a podcast, called Frontline Fridays. It’s a topic that is very near and dear to my heart as a longtime retail executive: the importance of the front lines. You may have seen me through my book, Retail Pride, the guide to celebrating your accidental career, or at one of my workshops or speaking events.

Ron (00:44): More importantly, we are here to celebrate and really speak about the front line. Every couple of weeks, until further notice, we’re going to host leaders who work in all variations of both retail and hospitality, to understand the experience that people on the front lines are having today, and how all of us who lead them can impact positive change. This is presented by YOOBIC. YOOBIC and I have a great relationship, because they were one of the key sponsors of my Retail in America book tour, and their impact on the frontline experience is really one that is unmatched in the industry.

Ron (02:01): So first I’m going to welcome Sam Rubino to the show as the inaugural guest for Frontline Fridays. Welcome, Sam.

Sam (02:10): Hi Ron, and hi everyone viewing, thank you so much for having me. It’s really an honor. I’m Sam Rubino, the driving force and head of training and communications at Pollo Tropical. My journey has led me through a number of different brands across different service levels and industries, including Ritz-Carlton, Bulla Gastrobar, and Bold Kitchen. And at the core of my professional pursuit is nurturing and developing talent, ensuring growth, and integrating progressive AI to help us be more efficient with our operations and get us back into human-to-human connections. It really is a pleasure to be on the podcast and share my insights today.

How did Sam Rubino end up leading restaurant training?

Ron (02:37): What I really love about this conversation is that I spend so much of my time speaking about retail, and often apparel industries, and hospitality is one of the most important parts when we talk about front lines. When you say retail, we think about traditional retailers, but hospitality has its own vibe, its own workforce, its own really massive industry. I wanted to start with you, because when I met you, and you started to tell me about your education in the medical field, your work at the Ritz-Carlton, your work at Bulla, and today at Pollo, you have a natural sense of serving others. It shines through. I wanted to hear a little bit more about your personal journey of how you lead the front line.

Sam (03:51): Absolutely. And it pairs really nicely with what you preach as well, because my career for sure is accidental, without a doubt. I started off just like any other struggling young adult, had no idea what I wanted to do. But one thing I knew for certain is I wanted to help others. And there’s this perception in society where you have to be a doctor, or a police officer, or a lawyer to truly help people. So I set my mind on going to the medical field of some sort.

Sam (04:26): I come from a very long line of entrepreneurs. My family has tons of businesses in different industries. My parents owned a restaurant, even my grandmother owned a restaurant, so serving and providing meals for others was instilled into my DNA as a child. At the time I was working at Outback as a server and bartender, and I really started developing this genuine love for providing someone a good meal, because there really is nothing better than eating. I will never forget the day I heard this quote, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: the grass is not greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you choose to water it.

Sam (05:33): And it hit me, sitting here trying to put myself into this box, trying to develop this love in the medical field which I didn’t have, because I just wanted to help others. And I thought, what if I just nurtured my love for service in the hospitality industry? So from then forward, I put all my focus and passion into developing myself, so that in return I would be able to help others pursue what they wanted to do in life. When the opportunity with Bulla came, this was my shot to show, okay, I’ve been working so hard for years self-developing. The founder and the COO of Bulla saw the potential and gave me the shot. They said, we believe in you, we’re going to allow you to do this. And with their support, I was able to take this little seed that I planted inside me a couple of years prior, and it grew to this blossoming accidental career I have today.

Why are quick-service restaurant teams so passionate about the work?

Ron (06:37): Tell us a little bit more about your day to day. When we met, you shared that you’ve already visited over half of the Pollo Tropical locations here in Florida, which is a massive undertaking. How did you approach the goals, setting it up as you joined the company?

Sam (07:11): Absolutely. Just like anywhere else, you need to get an understanding of who your front line is. I was a long-time consumer, so I already had a general idea, but then getting in there and working side by side, I really got a true understanding of how much love and passion. I’ve made many friends in the industry, and I’ve never seen a group of individuals have so much love and passion for a brand. With that type of culture, the possibilities are endless and the opportunities for them are limitless. There’s a lot we can do to help them grow within Pollo, or if they want to go outside, they take that with them.

Ron (07:41): When you say they’re really passionate and they love working for the organization, why is that? Because you may have this perception that working in quick-service restaurants is a stop to something else, similar to retail. But based on what you’re describing, that’s not actually the case.

Sam (08:13): From the beginning, they all take a sense of pride for what they do. They take it very seriously, and I think they share that same heart that I have of providing someone with a good meal that’s not only fresh and flavorful but also safe, that they can trust. They’re bringing their families here to feed them. So it’s been instilled into the culture from the beginning.

What do career paths actually look like in a restaurant?

Ron (08:42): Tell us about the career paths you’ve seen of people in restaurants, at Bulla or today. People who have fallen in love working part-time, maybe one of a couple of jobs, and have ended up growing toward leadership roles. Do you have examples of people you’ve met along the way?

Sam (09:19): Absolutely, tons of examples. Especially at my time with Bulla, we were a young brand, very exciting, and the majority of the team members were high school into early college years. Being able to provide them an experience, not just working and coming in to pay bills or pay for education, but an environment where they feel cared for and nurtured. A lot of them switched their career paths, and a lot of them even switched their majors in college. They were going for medical or something different, and they went for business management or hospitality. Because nowadays there are degrees out there for hospitality. Back then there really wasn’t much.

Sam (10:17): So they adjusted their career path, and they set out to say, I want to run my own restaurant, and then from my own restaurant I want to go to a different department. Seeing their potential, because everyone’s different, everyone’s an individual, taking that passion they have for the brand, seeing what they have the potential to do, and then putting the tools and resources in front of them so they can succeed.

How do you use technology to support a frontline team?

Ron (10:51): At Bulla you were a customer of YOOBIC. When you think about tools and resources, and I want to be respectful that this is not to promote YOOBIC, but there are incredible tools and resources in our industry available to help support that front line. So much of the turnover reports that all of us read in retail and hospitality call out a lack of tools and resources to do our job well. Tell us how you used it in your past role.

Sam (11:23): I do have a very biased opinion, I love YOOBIC. There are a lot of good solutions out there, and I’ll give them credit, but I demoed my face off for years on the different solutions. What YOOBIC brings to the table addresses what all of us struggle with, and the struggle is: I need five different technologies to do one thing, and that’s to manage my talent. YOOBIC was able to craft this true all-in-one solution that actually works. There are tons of all-in-one solutions out there, but they don’t work well, or certain components are good and they don’t develop the other pieces, so you stop using those, creating that gap and that void again.

Sam (11:57): We implemented YOOBIC at Bulla right in the middle of Covid, and everyone thought we were crazy. How are you implementing a huge piece of technology when everyone’s bunkering down, not spending money, limiting resources? We took it as an opportunity: during this time we need to communicate and engage with our front lines more now than ever, because there are less of them, and they’re struggling having to work in the kitchen with masks. How can we still be a light in their day without being able to physically go there? It took about four months to implement the entire solution.

Do frontline employees actually want to engage with their brand?

Sam (13:00): And the other part of it was adoption. Now we’re implementing something during Covid, how are we going to get adoption? The assumption is always that these frontline team members don’t want to do anything with the brand, they don’t want to engage, they don’t want to be involved. We saw the exact opposite. I think we fail to realize that it’s built within our society to be social and to have community. If we don’t build that social community within our brands, then we’re missing the mark. We’re not going to be attractive to the up-and-coming workforce, because we don’t give them that sense of society and culture and community.

Sam (13:30): We got more engagement than we could keep up with. We were posting content and they’d be done, saying we want more, we want more. We did a really fun series with Chef Rob, who was our chef at the time. It was really funny, and the team just could not get enough. They were waiting for Chef Rob to come on the app again the following week. So the assumption that teams don’t want to be engaged is total nonsense. They do want it.

Ron (14:33): Did you see statistics like retention go up, or the ability to recruit and hire talent, because you have tools and resources? Did you see a noticeable change?

Sam (14:40): Absolutely. We did have natural turnover, because we employed a lot of team members who were in high school and going into college, and they got into universities outside of Florida. But we were able to stop the voluntary turnover, the team members who just stopped showing up because they were disengaged. It gave them a reason to show up for work, because they had that sense of belonging and community. And we were more attractive to the workforce, because it gave team members something to talk about. I learned this at work today. Although I served food, I was able to learn something about a sweet potato, because Chef used to do these really cool teachings on what a sweet potato does for your body. We incorporated different teachings outside of the tactical, for them to get excited about. And word of mouth is always your best marketing. Our team members were organically telling their friends, I have such a good time working here, so all their friends wanted to work there too.

What myths do people believe about hospitality work?

Ron (16:06): It becomes this: of all the choices I have, both in hospitality and in retail, who is going to provide me the best opportunities for growth, development and learning? Those ideas continue to support why this industry is so important. You had started around debunking myths. What are some other myths people think about when it comes to hospitality?

Sam (16:43): We made those assumptions that our team members don’t want to be engaged or involved with a brand. But it’s also that they don’t want to be developed past their technical roles. That’s a huge one. We’re all humans. We desire nothing more than to be part of something we believe in. I really do challenge leaders of front lines to gain an understanding of who their frontline team members are and what they want, and then develop their L&D strategies based on those findings. Every industry is going to be different, every brand may be different, because we all attract a different workforce. The more time you spend with your front line, the more you’re going to learn. At the end of the day, they are the ones executing, they are the ones bringing in the revenue, and they deserve the most development out of anyone.

Why is safety training so critical in restaurants?

Ron (17:41): Based on the competitive landscape, do you feel like the hospitality side has work to do on that investment? I say often that the most important person is the one standing in front of the customer, and whether that’s selling apparel or in a restaurant, it’s not a self-served business. It requires a frontline workforce to do it well.

Sam (18:14): 100%. And although retail and restaurants are very similar, they are also dramatically different. The restaurant industry struggles a little bit to keep team members engaged, because it is hard work. Everyone recognizes restaurant business is hard work. Our competitor is retail, because I can go make the same amount of money and maybe work a little less hard, and you still face the same problems. You have a guest to serve, you have tactical duties. So if we don’t get ahead of building good experiences for these front lines, it will come to a point where we start losing people to retail, or Amazon, or whoever else, where they don’t have to work as hard.

Ron (19:25): And in some ways hospitality is even more complex, because it’s food safety. You mentioned the word safety a couple of times. That adds more skill, more training, more resources you need to create, not just a great place to work but a safe place to work for your employees and your customers. That’s something in other parts of our industry I don’t have to worry about as much. It’s another layer on top of the importance of the front line.

Sam (20:27): I really enjoy putting things into perspective. In restaurants we serve thousands of people a day, depending on the volume, so we have the potential to get thousands of people sick. A doctor or a surgeon may have two or three surgeries a day max, so they have the potential to harm only two or three people in a day. So just to put it in perspective, if we don’t give them the same amount of tools and training, we have the potential to get tons of people sick. The safety of food is so important. We have to give them the training, and not just the training but the understanding that it is the most important thing we do in a restaurant.

Ron (21:05): And then it’s stoves, and it’s knives, and all these things that create risk for an employee. So we have to think beyond what we know to be true around just creating great food. It’s so much more complex. It takes lots of people, incredible amounts of training, resources, and career planning. The rate at which new restaurants open also needs a career pipeline. Who’s running the next restaurants? Who are the next franchise owners? How can we support their business?

Sam (22:13): And something else to keep in mind is, just like retail, restaurants never stop. It’s not an office building that closes Christmas week or Thanksgiving week. Some restaurants do close, but it is a year-round thing. It’s not something where I get to lock up my office and not answer for a week because it’s Thanksgiving. We still have to bring that same level of service and safety every single day throughout the year, even when we have our own personal things to do, picking up kids, making Thanksgiving dinner. Understanding the importance of what our front lines do, not only for our brand but for the community, at all hours of the day and night.

How does AI free trainers to focus on human connection?

Ron (23:15): You mentioned in your role at Pollo that you’re using some new AI resources and AI technology, and we certainly can’t have a conversation today without talking about AI. So how are you using it, what are you using it for, and how are you evolving the frontline work with it?

Sam (23:49): We haven’t introduced anything yet, but hopefully it’s the plan one day. I am extremely passionate about AI and utilizing technology for the industry to work for us, not against us. There is a lot of sentiment out there, especially in L&D and training, that these AI platforms are going to take away jobs. I challenge the leaders saying that. In reality, we can embrace it and use it to work for us. Think of it as another team member. Instead of me, the director of training, sitting behind a computer looking at data and writing scripts and doing all the things we need to do to make content, how can I utilize AI to do all that computer work for me? And then I can get out to the front lines, connect with the managers, connect with the GMs, do more one-on-one trainings and developments with them. Because at the end of the day, a robot isn’t going to be able to have that human-to-human connection. Only we can do that. We have hearts and souls, and we need to connect to each other for you to develop and get to your next level.

Ron (24:56): So if I could recap what you’re saying, it’s really about finding ways to save you and the field leadership teams time to do other things, like connect with each other, have a feedback and coaching conversation, walk around the restaurant, be with customers. How can we create an experience, even at an entry price point, that maybe people don’t expect, and that’s only a result of having more time in your day?

Sam (25:33): I love what you said, let’s actually use technology to provide time back into our calendar, so I can do the things that I love. And it makes the job more enjoyable, especially in this line of work. I chose training and development because I don’t want to be behind a computer all day. That is not what I want to do. I love people, I love talking to people, I love learning about them and how I can help them. So the more I can get off the computer and let computers do their work, I’m a happy camper. And I think that’s the challenge for L&D leaders: really look at your calendar and say, how much time am I working on reports? Because writer’s block is real, creative block is real. Sometimes a project gets delayed a couple of weeks because I have to wait for the creative block to go away. So how can we utilize outside resources like content creators, or AI, or other pieces of technology to keep it going?

Sam (27:13): And on top of it, you’re teaching at the restaurant level some new skills around how to utilize technology. So it isn’t just office versus restaurant. We have more time at our desk in the office, so I’m going to figure out how to use these tools, teach other people how to use them, and make their job that much easier too. It’s more important to get our GMs and our managers off the computer as well, so they’re able to serve their team and serve their guests. If anything, they’re more important. I’d rather absorb that work than have them do it. And honestly, our society is so technologically advanced that it’s expected. If you’re not in with the technology, then you’re not going to have job enjoyment, because the expectation is to have the technology.

What advice do you have for someone building a career in L&D?

Ron (28:15): As we wrap up, Sam, you having chosen this field of learning and development, which many people aspire to, people who come from the field, who are really good at training, who are good at creating content, who love the front line and leadership development. Is there any advice you would give to people thinking about a career in learning and development?

Sam (28:49): The biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone, not just someone who wants to go into L&D, this is for anyone in their career: if it’s truly what you’re passionate about, then put all your energy and focus into that passion, and you have to do the work. You can’t expect anyone to come and develop you. You have to self-develop, do your research, read, learn. If you don’t do any of that, then you’re never going to get to the level that you desire. That’s one thing I teach and preach very profoundly: I’ll bring you the water, but you have to drink it. So if you don’t drink it, then that’s on you.

Ron (29:16): It sounds like you’ve had an incredible career in learning and development, and you’re just getting started. You have a very large population of thousands of employees that you’re about to make an enormous impact on. So thank you for that, because you are changing people’s lives, and the ability to earn all of it comes through great learning and your support of the front line. So thank you for all that you do every day. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.

Sam (29:48): Absolutely, thank you so much, Ron. It’s been a pleasure.