Franchise Business Real Talk

1 Simple Unlock To More Money And Better Culture - Monica Rothgery

• Guy Coffey • Season 1 • Episode 9

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After serving as a lieutenant in the US Army, Monica started a new career as a Restaurant General Manager for Taco Bell. 30 years later she became COO of KFC leading 4000 restaurants in the US. The first woman COO for KFC US and the first LGBTQ executive, Monica was a role-model for frontline leaders.

In 2024, Monica published her first book Lessons from the Drive-Thru, an instructional memoir about her experience as a manager and the lessons that shaped her as a leader. 

👉 Watch my review of her book in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8m64Y4-YNA&t=241s

In this interview Monica gives a tonne of value for prospective franchisees, current franchisees and emerging franchisors.

👉 Find out more about Monica through her website:
https://www.monicarothgery.com/

Connect with Guy Coffey:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/guycoffey
Website: www.guycoffey.com
Instagram: @guycoffey
YouTube: @guy_coffey

Monica: How they can make more money and have a better culture, better retention, all with one simple unlock. So yeah, let's do this. Start with one, get one frontline leader who is the model, who does grow the top line, who knows what your expectations are, who loves on the team and has great retention, and then make that the hub of your training.

Guy: Some systems in place for why you're training that person or where the franchise system is also training that person. Like a learning management system or even just documentation of everything that's being learned. So you have that process would be huge because then you're not creating the wheel from scratch.

Monica: Your culture, your expectation, the community you want to build in your units can only come from people in your organization. The team member's experience is determined by one person and it is not the franchisee.

Guy: Hello and welcome to Franchise Business Real Talk with me, Guy Coffey. And a special guest today, Monica Rothgery, the author of Lessons from the Drive Thru, who's had just an amazing journey in the franchise world and has a lot of information to share for prospective franchisees, current franchisees, as well as emerging franchisors.

And with that, I'm just going to kick it off and welcome Monica to the show. Welcome, Monica. 

Monica: Ah, thanks, Guy. I couldn't wait for this one. I'm really excited to talk to your listeners and share like how they can make more money and have a better culture. Better retention all with one simple unlock. So yeah, let's do this.

Guy: Yeah. It sounds too good to be true, but it is possible and you have lived it and learned it, lived it and executed on it. Just a quick aside, just to let you know who Monica is. She was in the military and she was a Taco Bell manager and then. Taco Bell manager of two stores and 30 years later, she was the CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the US as well as some stints internationally growing country size franchise systems.

So, This is a rock star. This is someone who has tons of experience. And, uh, as I mentioned in my book review of her book, lessons from the drive thru. Um, I just love the way it's set up with real world, basically mistakes, kind of the lessons learned and takeaways from it. So like with that, let's talk about the frontline manager position.

And I think it's really important because most franchisees have a frontline manager position and your observation is usually they're actually overpaid for the work they're doing because they are doing work that should be done by somebody else in the unit. 

Monica: Yeah, like the premise of what I'm going to posit to you.

The listeners is that oftentimes in retail or service multi unit organizations, you have everyone doing the job of the person underneath them. So you have somebody who you call a shift manager or a shift leader who really doesn't run shifts. They are a team member and we love them because they know how to do everything.

They're super reliable. Maybe they even have keys so they can lock up at night. But we wouldn't trust them. We wouldn't want them to be by themselves in the unit alone at peak and a peak day. And so you're paying a premium pay to someone who's really just a very, very good team member. And then it goes on up your, your unit manager, your frontline leader.

Is oftentimes just so burdened with the day to day that they're just trying to survive shift to shift What do I need to do to get through this? Shift this lunch rush this dinner time this peak period on you know Saturdays when everybody comes to get their hair cut, um, and they're not growing the business They're not working on running the business because they're doing Tasks that really your shift manager your shift person should do You 

Guy: Sure.

Monica: And then it goes on up. Even at the area level, you have area leaders running around trying to manage multiple units. But they're not, you know, really working on growth and they're certainly not working on building the capability of the frontline leader. 

Guy: Sure. 

Monica: So, so my premise is like, if you could get everyone to do their role, not, not the role of the person above them, but just their role, you can unlock pent up productivity.

Guy: And I think it's also what I've seen in our beauty industry business, as well as our fitness business, is that Is sometimes people are elevated in the organization to the level of their, it sounds bad, but to the level of their incompetence, almost, they're not good at it yet. And then they want to contribute.

They're good people. They want to be part of the team and show them that they're jumping in, but it comes at the cost of. The actual job description duties to grow the business and to grow the people in the business because you can't grow in our case with with Frenchies, uh, a nail technicians, um, abilities or skills.

Um, if you're jumping in there to do that job rather than showing her where the trainings are, how she can get better, he or she, um, and grow that way. And we've seen the same thing in the fitness business. Sometimes it's a function of people wanting to do good and they're more comfortable going to that lower level, right?

Monica: I mean, the beauty of our businesses, and one of the excitement of growing multi unit businesses as a franchisee, is watching people grow and evolve in careers, giving people careers that may not otherwise have had these opportunities, but the only thing that that Or that nail technician who becomes a manager knows is what you taught her 

Guy: because 

Monica: they've been working for you since they were 17.

Right. Or 18. And so when you promote them to the manager, yeah, it's an exciting time for them, but you've got to couple that with a lot of development and coaching on how to read a PNL. How do you grow the top line? How do you manage your time so that, yeah, look, let's, let's call a spade a spade. I want to not be naive here on any front key.

Sometimes the manager has to do team member tasks in any, in any frontline kind of, it's the retail service restaurant. There are times when it's all hands on deck and everybody's making pizzas, 

Guy: but 

Monica: if, but what happens often, and you alluded to it is the soon as the rush is over and the last haircut's done, the manager doesn't know what else to do.

So they go about cleaning 

Guy: because that's what they're used to 

Monica: instead of pulling the tapes or pulling, going up on the computer and saying, how did we do, what was our service times? Right. How are we doing on our customer metrics? How can we increase our ticket average? How much product did we sell? 

Guy: Right.

Monica: And that's because they don't, often don't know, don't know how to do that. So as owners, we need to not just promote, but we also need to develop and coach and set expectations that they do that. 

Guy: And I could tell you, and I, I, it's in your book. So I, I, I, I know you've done it too, is you find someone that's going to take on that role.

You like their personality. You like how they, they show up on time. They're doing the basics perfectly. And you're like, all right, now I can, um, now I can go focus on another unit or another, you know, whatever the case may be. Like I got someone in that position. So we're good to go. Um, and I've, I've made that mistake.

I'm, I'm sure a lot of people have, and it's a short term, uh, easing of responsibility that ends up costing you because people. If there's a lot of frontline turnover, tell me what you think on this. Um, my experiences, if there's a, a lot of frontline turnover for whatever, you know, reasons it's lots of times.

I think it's been in my case, they don't feel comfortable. They don't feel like everybody wants to be good at their job. Like if we, you know, like, and if no one wants to look stupid and if they're not good at it, uh, right away, maybe there's a time where you need to, you know, Give them time to develop and things like that.

But I think that's where a lot of frontline turnover happens. And then you have, I tell me if you found this to be true as people that I know, including myself, um, have two excuses. Number one is like, well, there's, there's just not that many good people anymore. It's like all these kids, they just don't know how to work and they don't have the same standards as you know, this.

This. Perfect era of when we grew up as, which is not true. Or they say, if I had someone that could do all that, it would cost me so much money and I don't have the cashflow for that right now. Could you speak to those two? Like, like basically excuses. 

Monica: Um, my friend and mentor, he was the CEO of Yum Brands.

That's the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, Greg Creed. He famously said that the customer experience will never exceed the team members experience. So if you give the team members a good experience Then the customer's experience will also will be even better But it will never be better than the team members experience and the team members experience And this is the really important point of this the team members experience is determined by one person and it is not the franchisee It's their frontline leader that frontline leader is a jerk There's going to have high turnover that frontline leader gets stressed out and yells at people Or doesn't a good planner or scheduler or they're constantly running out of product or their equipment's broken people will quit If you have the opposite a frontline leader who knows their role and does it and so that all the team members needs are taken care of And they go above and beyond and build a true genuine Heart led relationship with their team members as individuals not as team members, but as actual people caring for them as people The team members will respond in spades because ultimately they don't work for frenchies, right?

They don't work for taco bell. They work for he they work for monica And when you call them because you know, you need someone to come in because somebody called off You They're not coming in out of some loyalty to some brand. They're coming in out of loyalty to you because you have invested in them some way.

Right. And, and to do that though, we have to empower our frontline leaders. We have to help them recognize that they have so much potential to change lives. They're not just a manager of a nail salon or manager of a fast food restaurant. They are a leader who people look to and depend on. And, uh, they are heroes.

They're just like teachers and coaches. They can be pillars in their community, but we haven't messaged that those roles that way. 

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, not to make you blush too much, but like your story of going from like one taco bell to two taco bells, like in your presentation, just as an aside, I don't want to bore the listeners, but like I saw Monica present at a franchise event and was captivated by her story and her experience and, and her approach and how she's given back to, to this.

industry and to the people in it. Um, then I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of her book and I went through it and did a book review on it. I'm a, I'm a huge fan. You're a fan 

Monica: and I'm grateful. Thank you. 

Guy: But, um, you know, it's like what, you know, the other thing was that I didn't think about before you, you put it really well as like this, this, this, this, frontline managers are often the first boss in first boss, quick, quick service, restaurants, beauty industry, things like that.

You can affect someone's career. Like they can hate work for the rest of their lives or they, or they can have the standards. Like, this is not what I'm used to. Like when I worked for Monica at Taco Bell, like we had all the supplies, like the schedule was set out. Um, people chipped in, like there was a feeling of camaraderie and, and now I'm at this place and it just feels like.

People are punching a clock and, and doing that. It's like, it's, and the other thing is like those frontline managers, a lot of times they, they come from within the ranks, right? Sure. Still. Right. And so then, then it goes to a training. Like I know Taco Bell, I'm sure their training has developed since when you first started, but even your stories in the beginning, I was like, Holy cow.

I didn't know a Taco Bell manager had a past food service stuff. And. You know, quick checks on food safety and the numbers every night. And if they were off and all this kind of stuff, it's like, it's a big job. I had, I had no idea. Yeah. And you're working with, you know, high schoolers that. You know, it might be homecoming night and they decide to, you know, to quit.

Monica: But then like, if we empower our frontline leaders, they can combat homecoming night because what is all the, what do all the couples do on homecoming night, they go out to dinner. 

Guy: Right. 

Monica: Right. So layout. Your Taco Bell or your any, whatever your restaurant is. We don't have to use Taco Bell all the time, put out, uh, you know, fake candles and tablecloths and have a like homecoming meal with, you know, get some decent, you know, glassware and have fake champagne and have a photo, photo booth set up and invite the kids to come to your restaurant for a much cheaper, by the way, homecoming dinner than they probably get anywhere else.

And then your employees will feel excited about coming to work. 

Guy: Yeah. Because they're a 

Monica: part of it, right? 

Guy: Right. 

Monica: There's ways to get our frontline leaders thinking differently about their roles. And part of it starts with, with above restaurant or above store leadership. If the first thing you do when you call them is you ask about yesterday's numbers, guess what they're going to care about.

All they're going to care about is yesterday's numbers, because that's all you care about. And if you beat them up because they didn't hit a sales target or they overspent on our repair and maintenance. Then that's all they're going to focus on. The owners, you, you know, as leaders, we have to care about our frontline leaders.

Like we care about our own children, like empower them, believe in them, send them to classes, coach them, sit side by side with them and challenge them to think about the business like an owner. When then they start to, uh, we expect more from them. As leaders, as pillars in the community, as business people, they will rise to that.

So some of it starts with our own behavior. 

Guy: Sure. And you see companies that are doing this very, very well. There is a, um, a Freddy's burgers. I think it's called Freddy's definitely called Freddy's. I, I forgot what else it's called. Freddy's burgers or something like that. And at the one that I drive by all the time, when it's, uh, the end of the year, They have signs for all their graduating seniors, you know, you know, like that probably cost that owner a hundred bucks for 20 signs or something like that.

And, you know, Lisa and Johnny, well, you know, they care. They're like, I'm acknowledged here. Or you hear about it all the time with the Chick fil A, you know, training program as well. Um, and how they retain people and things like that. And I think just coming at it from my own perspective, you know, when we had.

five anytimes going at one point in time, spread out all, you know, hundreds of miles apart from each other. And I imagine it's also an objection or a hesitation for many small business owners. Like I would love to do that, but I am. working to get through the day, right? You know, like, 

Monica: yeah, 

Guy: yes. How do they create the space to do that?

And then for perspective, franchisees that are listening, like you want to do this upfront. And then for emerging franchisors who might be listening, it's like, you want to have, you can't dictate what the job description is or anything like that, but you want to have some kind of idea about this so that your franchisees aren't having to constantly replace their key person all the time.

So let's talk about that. 

Monica: The, the idea of, remember I said everyone in the unit's doing the job of the person underneath them. Well, what I found in organizations as I worked with franchisees, both here and overseas, is it applies that, that same issue occurs above the unit. So I saw like COOs working on equipment maintenance.

Um, and the fr and the fr and the franchisee was really excited to point this out to me. I'm so glad we have this, this guy. He is so awesome. I'm like, what makes him awesome? Well, he's tore apart this piece of equipment, went to the, um, specialty store, found the exact gauge of wire that we needed to, so he could fix this equipment.

And the next day it was up and running. I'm like, congratulations. You have a very highly paid maintenance tech. 

Guy: So 

Monica: while we look at the, you know, In unit leadership roles and what they should be doing. We have to look at ourselves, what should you as an owner be doing? Where should you be spending your time?

And oftentimes so many times I see leaders as they, you know, when you first start out, maybe it's just you and your manager, right? And then, you know, you have 10 units and maybe you get an area manager. But so many times we keep the behaviors and routines from the past. For example, every period I have a business review with every manager.

And we talk about what happened in the last month, all backward looking. 

Guy: And 

Monica: I know as an owner, at some point, is that 10 hours worth your time? Somebody needs to do that, but at that point, it's probably the area manager's responsibility and the higher you go, the more time you should be spent forward facing on how do I grow my business?

How do I grow my people? How do I blunt the competition? How do I increase same store sales? And less time on what's already happened because you should have influenced that last year. So to the owner or the franchisee that says, I don't have enough time. I would say, how are you spending your time today?

Number one, are you investing enough in the business personally? And if you're not, that's okay. Some people just want to, um, don't want to operate their franchise organizing. That's fine, but you need someone to do that. Then part two is it. Start with one, get one frontline leader who is the model, who does grow the top line, who knows what your expectations are, who loves on the team and has great retention.

Uh, and then make that the hub of your training. And when you go to expand to open a new unit, please, please, please don't take the one that you've, the good one and put it in the new unit. Cause now you have two bad units. Right. I shouldn't say bad, but you have two units adjusting to new leaders. Don't do that.

Keep your, your model, your role model in your model flagship unit, and then hire six months in advance, the manager for your next unit. I know this is a P& L hit, 

Guy: a big one. The first thing that came to mind. 

Monica: Of course. You're an owner. Six months. Okay. Three months, two months. But don't hire them six weeks before and then train them.

Or if it's someone you're promoting, get them in there with your model and your flagship unit and your, with your model manager. So they learn all these good routines and practices to start to implement. And then when they do go to the new unit, empower your training manager to go visit them. How are you doing?

What are you spending your time on? How do you get out of the weeds? Cause every new manager has to go through that learning curve. Those are the two things I would say. What are you spending your time on as an owner? And then get that one training manager to be your kind of flagship. to build out of and invest.

You got to invest in, in some overlap time. 

Guy: Yeah, for sure. It, it pays off and you know, there's in the 

Monica: long run. Oh yeah. 

Guy: Yeah. If I'm thinking about, you know, when people are building brick and mortar franchise units, um, We have friends that just started to crave cookies. We have someone that's starting a Frenchies, you know, you're in construction for a while and, you know, there's a timeline set out for when to hire the first manager.

Cause they're also going to help you market, pump it up and do pre sales of things and, um, hopefully, and, you know, the. The, the fear there is like, I'm going to spend all this time with this person. And what if, you know, we opened, they quit because it happens, you know, um, that's a risk of any business in any situation, anything can happen.

Um, I think. You know, some, some systems in place for why you're training that person or whether a franchise system is also training that person, like a learning management system, or even just documentation of everything that's being learned. So you have that process would be huge because then you're not creating the wheel from scratch, you know, every 

Monica: time.

Yeah. 

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. 

Monica: And hopefully the brand, the brand helps with some of that too. 

Guy: Sure. 

Monica: Now, hopefully the brand makes available enough LMS kind of training so that you don't have to go out and create that. Um, but even if they do, even if they have awesome, you know, a lot of that's very, uh, tactical. Your culture, your expectations, your, uh, the community you want to build in your units can only come from people in your organization.

Guy: Yeah. 

Monica: You know, how you want them to treat people. And by the way, a really great way to make sure that that manager, uh, is excited about and stays with you for the first year is to build in incentives. That's what we do with executives, right? Sure. You know, you hit this threshold and then, you know, you get an extra 5 million shares or whatever.

Guy: Okay. Sounds good. Right. All right. Sounds great. Right. The 

Monica: same thing. The same thing will work for frontline leaders. If they have some equity in the game, um, calculate how much it would cost to replace that person and rehire someone else, you know, and train that person. And then the way your business suffers while you're in transition and chaos.

If you offered the, you know, person you've hired a fraction of that to stay, It would probably be a good investment. 

Guy: Right. Whether it's equity or it could also be just a big bonus. Right. As well, if people are worried about their cap table, you know, that early on with somebody just to see if they're really proven.

Yeah. Um, but it could be that too. So compensation is, is, is a tool to use. Time off. 

Monica: You know, um, a special piece of equipment for their unit. Like if you hit this threshold, we're gonna, um, we're gonna buy you a, a steamer, a steam unit for, you know, it costs 300, 400 bucks so that you can steam clean the sidewalks out front.

Guy: Right. 

Monica: And you don't have to scrub them with, uh, 

Guy: Yeah. 

Monica: Old school. 

Guy: I mean, 

Monica: stuff like that will, you know, help your business and incentivize your frontline leaders, um, to keep reaching for the next goal. 

Guy: Yeah. It's always been, um, a nice. Kind of surprised to me, like what will get people excited about doing things, you know, like, Hey, um, Hey, if we do this, uh, you have, you know, company apparel and they get extra company apparel, right.

You've done that with Taco Bell. 

Monica: This is a true story. I told you this at the talk. Um, the day before that talk, I had to get a haircut because, um, I, that talk was short notice. So I went, I was in, we were in Denver and I went to a walk in hair, hair place and got my haircut. And, uh, while I was in the chair, I like to talk because that's how I learned more about frontline leadership.

And the stylist was like, What are you doing here? I said, well, I'm giving a talk in front of a bunch of franchisees. She's like, Oh, there are some good ones and there are some bad ones. I'm like, this is going to be good. What's a good one? And, uh, she's like, they just care, you know? And, uh, I said, well, what do they do?

How did that, what does that look like? And she said, well, the bad ones would say, like, you can be replaced. Anyone can be replaced. And I said, okay, but what does a good one do? Cause that's. you know, easy, not hopefully to be a bad one. She said, well, like they had a, they send us to classes to get better skills in hair cutting.

And then after we finished a class, we get a certificate with our name on it. What does that cost you? Seven bucks. 

Guy: Yeah. 

Monica: And that was her bar. Gee, that was the bar of good versus bad. Right. Once a year, you know, they have a nice party for us. And just say thank you. 

Guy: Doesn't take much. Doesn't take much.

That's my point. 

Monica: It does not take much. The bar is so low, unfortunately, um, that it just, it doesn't take much. And when we talk about retention and people really excited and celebrating being a part of your organization, it's, uh, it's not always money. 

Guy: Right. 

Monica: You know, it's how they treat it, how they feel.

Guy: Yeah. 

Monica: Um, and we control that. Yeah. Control that. And let me ask you a question. 

Guy: Oh, oh no. Okay. Why 

Monica: do franchisees And, and particularly like in my experience, oftentimes I see franchisees focusing a lot more on developing their business through adding units versus growing the same store sales within the units that they have.

Guy: Do 

Monica: you see that? 

Guy: Oh yeah, for sure. For, for franchise systems that have measurements in place for ranking and stacking, things like that. Um, you know, even if someone isn't at the top of the They, a lot of times for better or worse, actually, it's usually for worse, I should say is if, if a unit isn't producing well, they'll put it to the location or they'll put it to the team or they'll be like, yeah, that one just, that one's just not flying.

You know, it's just, you know, so in my own experience, we had five anytimes all around Colorado, um, two on the Western slope that are like six hours away from me, one down South, like. Two, two hours south, um, one up north, three and a half hours, and some of them started out faster than others. Luckily, and I'm happily, they, they all started out pretty well.

Um, and some did perform better than others. And I think it's also a function of, you know, the, the, the top performers get even more attention and more, you know, more, um, more, more resources, more energy and things like that. Um, but if, if you look at it, like right now we have a, uh, an anytime fitness Um, that performs really, really well.

It's one of the, one of the top in the country. And because I was focused on our, our, our other businesses for a while, and I've got an unbelievable team there, they just kind of ran it, you know, and we're. Doing really well and it's still growing. And now that I have a little bit more time on my hands from the one selling the one business, I'm like, okay, we're going to the next level.

And, and I feel in some ways, number one is I feel grateful for the team that I have slightly behind that is like, I feel a little guilty. I feel like I've been a bottleneck at the top. Of, of, of the growth of this and my team could even be benefiting even more. Um, and that's a function of someone like me, that's instead of growing the business or kind of replacing myself in some areas, um, you know, I'm trying to do it instead, you know, and so I think, I think that's, I think there's this inherent belief that there's a cap on certain locations.

Um, and I, I'm sure there is, but I'm also sure that it's higher than where people are saying it is. Don't you think? Yeah, 

Monica: we, we write off locations. I mean, you spend a lot of time and money picking the location, doing a lot of research. And then we shoot, we probably even did it in Thailand and KFC, uh, In the U.

S. we would write off locations, um, faster than we took the time to do the research. And I just, I always wondered that, like, and, and don't get me wrong, I love opening up new stores where it's sexy, it's fun, everything's shiny and new and dynamic, especially when you go into a community that doesn't have your brand in it.

But I think about how I, I probably should have spent more time, uh, working with managers to teach them how to grow. Grow check or increase transactions, 

Guy: right? 

Monica: So I don't know, I just wondered what you thought about that 

Guy: by, by growing their skills and growing their team skills. You know, that's, that's the key.

And it comes, I mean, this whole thing comes back to like people really caring about other people and taking the time to invest in them and rather than plugging them in and being like, Good luck. Hope it works out. And if it doesn't, I'll be back. So watch out, you know, so well, Monica, thank you so much for sharing all this.

I'm going to put a link to your book, which is fantastic. Um, in here so that if people have frontline managers, they can share it with them, or if you're also trying to learn how to lead people better yourself, you can learn there. Um, I just think it's a fantastic read. And I also love it because it's something that we're.

If someone is already owning a business, they're already investing in that position, and they can get more out of that position by helping that person grow. I just think it's a win win for, for everybody involved. And I think it's real. Your message is really important. So thanks for sharing that. 

Monica: Oh, thank you so much.

And, uh, you know, if anybody out there wants to, um, get books for their entire organization, which by the way, is a powerful way to take your whole organization to another level. There's a QR code in the book that You could download discussion guide, have everybody read one chapter at an area meeting, discuss it.

What did I learn? The chapters are really short. They're really easy to read. They're fun. They're funny. And so that way you can help your whole, if you do that, check me out, Monica Roth, gary. com. And I can, you know, I give a pretty decent discount for bundles mostly because, um, I want to get the book in the hands of the frontline leaders and really all leaders.

I think, uh, anyone, you know, I get a lot of messages from folks that I don't work in this industry, but I sure learned a lot, or it reminded me of things, or I just had a good laugh. 

Guy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's that they're all in there and you know, your whole book is around quick service restaurants. But every chapter I applied to my fitness business and my beauty industry business.

It, uh, the industry doesn't matter. It's people and business. And at the end of the day, there's lots of similarities that, that you can learn from. So thanks again so much. And, um, hope to have you on another time. Maybe we can hear some international stories when people are ready for that kind of stuff.

Monica: You won't even believe the international stories, but so much. You have been so supportive of me and getting the message out. And I'm just so grateful. 

Guy: It's my pleasure. Thanks, Monica.