Church’s headquarters in Atlanta, otherwise called its Restaurant Support Center, is doing just what its name suggests: supporting all 1,258 Church’s restaurants across the country with its new crew incentive program. It’s all part of Church’s new art of selling.
The typical quick-service restaurant experience usually includes a crew member asking guests a series of questions and suggesting other menu items to add to their order. The result can be frustrating to guests, a burden on the restaurant crew, and can contribute to slower service. Church’s new art of selling—asking only one question—makes it easy for the crew and provides a better guest experience. During the current promotion, crew members will ask Church’s guests if they would like to purchase a medium drink for $1 to complement their meal. The top restaurant teams selling the most drinks and exceeding the restaurant’s numbers during the same period in 2013 will win cash from a prize pool of close to $60,000.
Close to one hundred employees have adopted a minimum of 10 restaurant teams to cheer on and offer words of encouragement to help the teams keep their eyes on the prize and exceed last year’s sales. Weekly or daily calls with the restaurant general manager or shift leader during off peak restaurant hours will be made to offer advice, cheer them on, and see how the team is progressing.
The members of Church’s Restaurant Support Center have their own incentive program.
“Our support team showed so much enthusiasm in their desire to help our restaurant teams. As an added bonus, we decided to make it more fun and compelling by offering cash prizes of $1,000 each to two restaurant support team members if one of their adopted restaurants wins the top two prizes,” says Joe Christina, Church’s executive vice president of operations. “This is truly a team effort involving everyone at every level throughout Church’s Chicken.”
Church’s restaurant crew incentive program is supported by Coca-Cola. The top two restaurant teams each win $5,000; $2,500 each will be given to five teams; $1,000 each to ten teams, $500 each to twenty-five restaurants, and $250 each to fifty restaurants. The program runs through February 23. Winners will be announced the week of March 10, 2014.