Day 202 - 11 Jan 96 - Page 29


     
     1        illustrates the point that under Ray Coton, he was
     2        operating in a different division when it came to crew
     3        turnover, although for 200 you can see there is some
     4        increase.  Mr. Coton managed to have his turnover running
     5        at, you know, 70/80 per cent higher than those
     6        restaurants.  So, although we are, in general, trying to
     7        reduce the turnover in this specific region, there is a
     8        very pronounced problem there at Colchester that, you know,
     9        Ray was not addressing.  When I reread these reviews and
    10        looked at the things that we were targeting to try and
    11        redress that problem, it was apparent that Ray was not
    12        doing very simple things to reduce his crew turnover; and
    13        then when we hear what he admitted to be doing in that
    14        restaurant, i.e. not paying his crew and reducing their
    15        hours, it sort of becomes more clear that that restaurant
    16        is likely to have high crew turnover if you have a
    17        dishonest Manager that is not paying them their wages
    18        correctly.
    19
    20        As regards the quality, I think, when I go through it,
    21        I refer to something like quality blindness in Colchester
    22        and, you know, purchasing white sticks for the Managers, so
    23        they may well be able to identify that.  The full field is
    24        a one day visit to a restaurant on which you assess
    25        quality.  Quality can be assessed in many other ways.
    26        Customer complaints can come in.
    27
    28        On my personal visits to the restaurant, it is not very
    29        difficult, if you buy a cup of coffee and it turns out to
    30        be weak, to suggest to the Manager that that quality is not
    31        correct.  If you buy french fries that are cold or
    32        undercooked, it is very apparent to you.
    33
    34        There are other things as well as full fields that you can
    35        assess restaurants on, and I think the review is quite
    36        balanced about the performance at Colchester and the
    37        restaurants there.  So I disagree totally with you.
    38
    39   Q.   If a restaurant is going OK, a store is going OK, does it
    40        not get a full field?
    41        A.  All restaurants get full fields at that time.  You get
    42        a full field about every year to 18 months.
    43
    44   Q.   A year to 18 months?
    45        A.  Yes.
    46
    47   Q.   Does it happen more often if a restaurant is not being run
    48        properly?
    49        A.  If a restaurant had a particularly poor full field,
    50        then part of the action plan to put it right would be to 
    51        reassess it again, say, in three months to see if the 
    52        Manager had managed to address those problems. 
    53
    54   Q.   If I may just point out, without going into any detail, on
    55        page 2 of that series of documents, it does show that
    56        Ipswich was operating 22 crew below what the target was,
    57        Colchester was operating 12 points, 12 crew members down on
    58        what the target was.
    59        A.  I think that is explained if you read the few sentences
    60        afterwards, that the volume that we foresaw in Ipswich

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