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
