Ask for canteen management measures

The MBA class ZZ given by the canteen owner to Professor Peking University.

"Controlling kickbacks depends on people managing people; Control from the source; It is necessary to turn big power into small power control; It should be controlled by rules and laws; Let people control themselves. "

Running a canteen should be the simplest small business. Suppose you are a small boss of a canteen, how to effectively prevent canteen procurement corruption? This is a comprehensive test for managers, because the standard of any commodity is not as complicated as that of grain, oil, vegetables, oil, salt, vinegar, chicken, duck and fish; The quality of any commodity is not as difficult to measure as the food that needs to change its taste every day; The price of any product is not as sensitive as what employees eat at each meal. Try it if you don't believe me. Can you manage a canteen?

Management of canteen

Some people may say that if I am the owner of the canteen, canteen procurement is the focus of my management. If necessary, the following measures can be taken:

"I, my wife or my cronies will buy it in person."

But won't that make you self-employed? Can your canteen company grow bigger? What would you do if there was a second and third canteen? Besides, don't think that your cronies won't lie to you. Man is the most advanced and fickle animal in the world. Without supervision and restraint, your wife will hide money. A Shenzhen clothing factory owner told me with a wry smile: "Since my mother-in-law took charge of the canteen, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law have never bought any food at home." It is impossible to manage enterprises only by family relations.

"Then I will send two people to buy, one to buy and one to supervise."

However, anyone who has managed an enterprise knows that in the cash market, there is no invoice, the quality and price are changing every day, and the buyer's ability to resist temptation is poor. It is unreliable to rely on marking people, because two people can quickly reach an offensive and defensive alliance. I have seen some companies even use three people to buy food, two people are responsible for buying and one person is weighing. What was the result? Apart from quarreling all day, it still can't solve the problem. More importantly: don't forget, you are not doing profiteering business. One person does it, three people do it, how can your food expenses come down?

"Then I will take the shift system. Every time I buy it, two people are different. "

At first glance, you just don't understand the canteen business. Don't underestimate those things that everyone knows, such as oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, vegetables, potatoes, chicken, duck and fish. Their purchasing is very professional. Ask your wife and mother. A person who doesn't understand the market situation of the vegetable market often lets vendors cheat the scales and prices. If you buy high-quality and cheap things to prevent corruption, is your canteen business still competitive?

"Then the people who purchase are fixed, and the people who supervise are rotated."

But how can a person who doesn't know how to effectively supervise a person who buys every day be possible? He can easily perform the perfect double reed with the supplier and make the supervisor deaf. Moreover, criminal psychology proves that the stricter supervision, the stronger people's criminal psychology, and prison is the best proof. Buyers are stared at by different people every day, which is actually a double personality insult to buyers, because its assumptions are: first, you will not only be corrupt; Second, you will also drag others into the water and corrupt together. If you assume this, you are sorry for yourself if you are not corrupt! What about giving full play to subjective initiative and competing with vendors to buy cheap green vegetables, eggplant and pork vermicelli?

"Then I will invite public bidding to select the general supplier."

This is layman's talk again. It is true that some big hotels or restaurants adopt the exclusive procurement system of general suppliers for the procurement of drinks, tobacco and alcohol, grain and oil. This is because these goods are standard products, while vegetables, potatoes, chicken, duck and fish are non-standard, and the quality and price may change every day. How do you make the tender? Who can predict that pork will rise by 10% in August, and the harvest of cucumber in Shandong in September will only cost 1 cent per catty? Therefore, even if you have a general supplier, someone still needs to know the market, because these non-staple vegetables are the bulk of your canteen cost.

Seeing this, I guess many people began to wonder: how complicated is the management of such a simple canteen business? ! Yes, because you are an amateur. If a person has really managed the canteen and managed it successfully, this problem is a piece of cake for her (him). This is the truth that management is always concrete-laymen can't control experts.

Increase revenue and save expenses

By chance, I met a boss who really manages the canteen, and his words made me feel very enlightening.

I asked him, "Who is in charge of purchasing in your canteen?"

He said, "Look at what to buy. The chef is responsible for vegetables, non-staple food, cleaning supplies and other miscellaneous items that need to be purchased every day, which are purchased by the canteen manager. I am personally responsible for fixed assets such as stoves, utensils, pots and pans (his definition). "

I asked again, "Is the master shopping supervised?"

"No, we only supervise whether the things we buy are short of weight, because many things are ordered by the master in the market and sent by the supplier; The things sent are recorded by the kitchen scale. " He said.

"Aren't you afraid that the master will take kickbacks?" I asked.

He said, "I'm not afraid. This canteen is owned by a property management company, and each person only has the food quota of 7 yuan money every day, excluding the staple food and other expenses, and only has the non-staple food of 4 yuan money every day. It is not easy for a chef to buy back four dishes and one soup with four yuan. Where is the seam of the rebate? In addition, I occasionally go to the vegetable market myself, and the market price is relatively clear. Moreover, whether he can get kickbacks is not the focus of my management at all. "

Hey. I was surprised and asked, "Why?"

The small boss said: "I will talk about open source first, and then save money." Because an enterprise must have a turnover if it wants to make a profit. My focus is on how to satisfy people who eat. When they are satisfied, their company can renew my contract. They are very satisfied, and it is easy for me to talk with the company about food contract fees, utilities and hospitality expenses. "

"How can we satisfy them?" I keep asking.

"These security guards are all young men from the countryside, and they are very generous. To satisfy them, we must first ensure that they can eat enough. But how can such a small amount of food make them full every day? So, be careful. For example, don't buy fresh vegetables that have just come down, don't buy good quality vegetables, and try to buy seasonal vegetables and processed vegetables; Don't buy live fish, buy dead fish; Don't buy tenderloin, buy fat ... these things can't be bought by ordinary people, they must be cooks. When a chef sees cheap vegetables and meat in a food stall, he can immediately imagine what to do, so that he can make a decision immediately when bargaining. Otherwise, if you buy food and cook alone, you will quarrel every day. People who do restaurants don't know that whenever someone complains about the quality of food, the chef will definitely look for the reasons for the poor quality of raw materials first. Therefore, I must give this power to my master, so that he can live a poor life like people in my mother's life, and let my family eat as well as possible with a little money. But the master is not my mother, so I have to encourage him. How to encourage? Diners in the canteen rate the quality of food every month. The higher the score, the higher the master bonus. "

Management by objectives: The general is on the road, not chasing rabbits.

I couldn't help straightening up on the sofa, and this unkempt little boss began to make me respect. I continued to ask, "But my experience is that all the people who eat are Chen Shimei. The rice cooked by the new chef was delicious at first, but it was tired of eating and got low marks. "

"What do you want to analyze, diners are most concerned about? The boys who eat in this canteen are not satisfied with the food, mainly because of the weight. When I first took over this canteen, they were semi-buffet. But you must know that people who eat buffets have big eyes and small stomachs; You can have as much as you want. You either catch it or steal it. The canteen staff are afraid that there are not enough people behind them, so they try to give as little as possible, and the result is always a quarrel. Anyone who makes a canteen knows that a meal is definitely less than a meal; But the dining system is hygienic, convenient and fashionable, so most company canteens adopt the dining system. But you have to see who your diners are. If they are all white-collar workers, of course, they should have separate meals. People have to eat well when they are full. So, I finally persuaded the property management company to change the separate meal system to the joint meal system. They can't refuse my proposal. A table for eight people, four dishes and one soup, and public chopsticks are scraped together to eat. Results The satisfaction was improved by 10 percentage point.

"Not only that, if you want to spend less money to eat, there is only one trick-eat more and eat less. When making dishes, the chef and I try our best to ensure that every meal at noon and evening must have a strong dish to eat. For example: braised pork with plum vegetables, braised fish, fried large intestine with sauerkraut, mapo tofu, etc. Cooking these dishes requires more oil, salt, soy sauce, monosodium glutamate and seasonings, so the raw materials don't need to be very fresh. You know, the price of dead fish is half that of live fish.

"You see, this is the focus of my grasp. This company has outsourced three canteens, and we are most satisfied. Now their general manager often eats in the canteen. In recent months, prices have soared, and he also took the initiative to ask me if I need to add money. "

I stared at him intently, thinking: managers all know management by objectives, but when several goals are fought, they often forget the big goal-many enterprises have lost the enthusiasm of their employees in order to prevent kickbacks. This little boss is obviously a master who can rush up without chasing rabbits.

Managing customer expectations

The small boss was a little proud of my sincere suggestion and continued: "People who do catering are actually not afraid of complaints, because customers complain about some visible problems, which are easy to change, and the difficulty is the taste of diners." Miss Huang, you are right. Everyone is tired of eating these dishes often. This is also the reason why restaurants keep changing chefs and pushing new dishes. However, it will be miserable for us to make a canteen, because most employees have no choice but to eat here. So they often get bored with food through other things, such as food quality problems and poor service attitude. In fact, everyone has a home, and your mother can cook those dishes. Why not bother? Running around outside and eating at home, your mother's cooking is delicious. Therefore, my canteen is different from others. Others hope that employees will come to the canteen to eat every day, because if they eat one more day, they will earn one more day. I contract any company canteen, and I ask the company to agree to close the canteen one day a week, because my employees also have to rest. In fact, the real reason is that I want those employees who eat in the canteen all day to cook by themselves, or go out to find a restaurant for a change, compare the prices and let them know that my cooking is worthwhile. I 100% am sure that they can't eat better with 7 yuan money anywhere, including themselves. "

I really met an expert. I don't know which management guru said: "The first rule of marketing is to manage customer expectations, not just to satisfy customers." It seems that this small boss with only a middle school education is a master without a teacher.

Comply with human nature and natural laws

I continued to ask: "Many canteen purchases worry the boss and are often controlled by many aspects. Their concerns are also justified. No matter how low everyone's food expenses are, hundreds of people add up to a lot of money in a year. Why do you trust your master so much? Is he a relative of yours? "

The little boss smiled: "I run four canteens in Shenzhen. Where are so many relatives who can cook? " In fact, the kickbacks of vegetable market procurement are all done by people who open their own canteens. Why? The person in charge of the canteen doesn't know how to do it. The person in charge of the canteen is often the manager of the administrative department. They have many other things to deal with, so it is impossible to spend so much time in the canteen. These big companies think that the problem of kickbacks can be solved through some complicated procedures, systems and person-to-person supervision, which is nonsense. The same cabbage, some of which were just picked from the ground today; Some were picked the day before yesterday, and the water is very fresh. How do you supervise them? A pair of pigs sell 30 yuan money in the morning and ask for 10 yuan after 5 pm. If the buyer wants to help you save money, he will tell the stall owner that he will send me the rest of the water; If he follows the rules or is in a bad mood, it will cost you 30 yuan. In addition, the supplier will send him a cigarette and a basket of fresh fruit on holidays. Can you manage these things? More importantly, do you need to take care of it So if you can't manage it, you can't manage it hard; You must manage it in different ways. What I can manage is the food allowance of 4 yuan money per person. You give me four dishes and one soup to satisfy the diners. If you can still get kickbacks on this premise, that's your skill; If you really have this ability, you don't need to be a chef, you can be a canteen owner. Why? Because you can control the master. "

Most people only know that "governing a big country is like cooking small fresh food", but they don't know that this is only half a sentence. In fact, what Lao Tzu means is that if managers can conform to human nature and natural laws, governing a big country is as easy as frying a dish. This little boss obviously knows the whole sentence of Lao Tzu.

Let everyone have a little power

I asked again, "doesn't the taste of grain and oil sauce also affect the quality of food?" Why don't you buy it from the master? "

The little boss gave me a sly look and said, "This is my special management method. If other companies purchase in a unified way, I will be dispersed. I think the less money a person spends, the less likely it is to be corrupt. Do you believe that those big corrupt criminals are all powerful people? Why? It's tempting to sell too much money and drop a little slag. I don't know why some companies have to concentrate on everything. Not only that, in fact, people who buy many things are not as knowledgeable as those who use them.

"So I separate the right to buy. First, classify the things you need to buy according to their nature. No matter how much the standard product is, those who can bid will not purchase independently, such as grain and oil bidding, salt monosodium glutamate soy sauce vinegar, although the quantity is small, but also bidding. What's this called? Try not to tempt crime. Now you can bargain for ten bottles of beer. Try to plug the loophole. Those that cannot be purchased by tender, such as non-staple vegetables, no matter how much, are directly handed over to the master who knows best. Why? Besides the reasons mentioned above, I now run four canteens. The highest food standard is 20 yuan per person per day, and the lowest is 7 yuan. They all use different raw materials, so we can only take care of one thing and lose another. Brooms, rags, staff uniforms, these sundries are purchased by every canteen manager. In this way, everyone is responsible for a part, not only can buy the most suitable things, but also everyone buys fewer varieties and small quantities, so eating a little difference is easy to expose. For example, if you buy a mop of 10 yuan in another canteen, can you not feel guilty?

"People this kind of thing, how others are not as good as their own tube. I did it for another reason. Everyone knows that shopping is a good job. If someone gives me a cigarette and a piece of bread, I will be invited to dinner and may even get a kickback. But good things should be shared as much as possible. I can't smoke all the time, you are out all the time, otherwise it will cause jealousy and gossip. If the power is decentralized, everyone can be exposed and supervise each other. Of course, I don't want to be scattered for the sake of dispersion. I still want to concentrate. For example, I entrusted a canteen manager with the right to bid for the sauce flavor of grain and oil, and he made purchases instead of the other five canteens. Of course, the tender is to sit in turn in the village, and the manager of another canteen will be responsible for the next year.

"Other people's bosses say that employees want to work less and get more money. I don't think so. I think employees want to do less bad work, such as washing vegetables and mopping the floor. If you let the vegetable washer supervise the weighing, you will be happy to do it without money. Why? Not only can you enjoy the cool outside the kitchen, catch your breath and smoke a cigarette, but you can also get respect from others by mastering the standards. He will not only re-scale, but also record; The short scale needs to be verified by the master. It's a person. Who doesn't want some power? So my principle is to give everyone a little power.

"People have the right to be irresponsible and have the right not to behave in such a way. It is a trivial matter for a vegetable washer to smoke a few cigarettes from others, and it is easy to cause major problems in the purchase of tens of thousands of kilograms of rice and flour. So, although I gave the canteen manager the right to bid, the bidding must be carried out according to my method. No one, including the bid evaluator, can know our bidding results in advance. Because we are in the food business, we can't just fight for low prices, or we will fight everywhere and mix some poisonous rice. Therefore, my bidding method will always be: first, at least four unrelated suppliers bid; Second, there must be new suppliers; Third, the winning bidder is the bidder closest to the average price of the four companies. Anyone who violates this rule is tantamount to breaking the law, and you must explain it clearly. "

The more the boss talks, the more excited he is. The more I think he is. I asked him, "What did you do before? Did you come up with these tricks yourself? "

He said, "I'm 45 years old. I was a soldier when I was young, and later I came to the government to drive. " Later, I came to Shenzhen to work, but I couldn't get it out. Start your own business and have little money. I opened a small restaurant in the factory and it turned out to be a canteen. In the process, I realized that it is useless to control kickbacks by relying on people to manage people; Control from the source; It is necessary to turn big power into small power control; It should be controlled by rules and laws; Let people control themselves. "