Miss the food - Office Administrator Dosa Employee Review

Dear “Former Employee” - I appreciate your review as it’s extremely valuable to hear employees. Since your stint was a relatively short four months, some of your observations were correct (and some were not), however, your analysis of why it happened was off-the-mark. Please allow me to explain, which I wish we had done prior to your leaving. Just a few clarifications and corrections before I do... -We currently have six bartenders on staff who have been with us anywhere from 3 to 8 years. In an industry where the average turnover is over a 100% and with the lowest historical rates of unemployment, this is a relatively decent record - We did have some new bartenders who quit right after joining while we were going through some turmoil (more details later) - We have served family meal since we opened over 13 years ago. Recently, however, since we serve 4 or 5 dishes for training during lineup, many of our staff were skipping the family meal, or they were bringing in their own food, and the food prepared by the kitchen, for staff, was being wasted. The kitchen, on their own accord and in an effort to reduce waste, decided to serve family meal only when employees requested it - Since you left, our new Executive Chef Arun Gupta, has re-started the family meal with the front- and back-of-the-house staff eating together - Please note that our half-price meal policy for employees is for expensive ingredients such as Lamb Chops, Arctic Char, Oysters, Dungeness Crab, etc, though we do bring them all out for training at lineup We did have a turbulent time recently when our Director of Operations at the time introduced a new service model, which moved from a Server-Busser model to a Captain-Server model. It had great intentions of improving service and making labor more efficient in the most expensive market in the U.S. It was important for us to support this new initiative from our Director of Operations and give him a chance to implement it, especially since *he* ran the day-to-day restaurants operations However, this new Service model was introduced without clear definition or, proper guidance and training. In addition, it was a model that only worked in much slower-paced and higher-priced fine-dining restaurants, but was not a fit for DOSA. The staff was unprepared, customer service suffered and it created significant stress among not only the Captains and Servers but also entire support staff, and the Floor Managers who were told to implement it. When we clearly saw it was not working based on service complaints and very vocal employee feedback, we should have immediately reverted back to the model that we knew had worked for us for the past 13 years. We should have carefully listened to our front-line staff and responded to their concerns in a timely manner. Within a few days of implementing this new service model it was clear it was causing significant problems. Very shortly thereafter… - The GM, the Bar Manager and the Catering manager, all of whom were hired by the Director of Operations, resigned - Soon after, all the Servers who were promoted to Captains and who were also hired by the Director of Operation, began quitting - Around the same time some new staff, including bartenders, quit as they were understandably unnerved by the turmoil After such a massive fallout, I realized I had to step in and end the new service model (Captain-Server) that was clearly not working, and revert back to the previous model (Server-Busser). When I did this, the Director of Operations who had implemented this change unsuccessfully and, as a result, had lost his entire management team and a majority of his front-of-the-house staff, saw the writing on the wall and resigned. We encourage and support our management team to take initiative and implement changes. However, since I am ultimately responsible for the success of the company and the culture, I will take FULL responsibility for everything that went wrong. For the same reason, from time-to-time I do need to step in and make the appropriate changes to ensure we get back on track. Some of the changes take time to implement, especially the hiring and training of staff in a market with short supply! Since this slight upheaval… - We encourage employees to speak up and voice their concerns, and have taken great steps to have managers respond in a timely manner - I believe we have the strongest team we’ve had in years, evidenced by greatly improved customer reviews - We have new managers, including one who came back to work for DOSA! We are not afraid to take risks, innovate and make mistakes. We know now more clearly than ever that we need listen to our staff very carefully, rapidly fix issues and not repeat the same mistakes! :-) DOSA is back on track and we’re looking for smart, considerate and motivated employees to join our growing and amazing team! Warmly! Anjan