Welcome to another episode of The Corner Booth, the official podcast of RestaurantOwner.com. Today, the restaurant industry is changing faster than ever. Learn from successful independent restaurant operators and other industry leaders as they share best practices that will help you engage your team, delight your guests, and grow your business.
Welcome everyone to another Corner Booth. I'm Chris Tripoli with RestaurantOwner.com and I'm always happy because each one of these episodes we get to bring you to a different part of our nation. We get to focus on a different type of restaurant, different style of service and so today we're visiting Spartanburg, South Carolina with a very very well-established Restaurant, Wade's Restaurant.
If you are anywhere close to Spartanburg, South Carolina, or you've been there in the last 70 years or so, you probably know what I'm talking about. But today, we have Hamp Lindsey. Hamp Lindsey with Wade's Restaurant from Spartanburg, South Carolina, all the way to you on Corner Booth. Hamp, thank you so much for joining me today. Welcome to Corner Booth. Chris, I really appreciate the opportunity. I'm a listener of Corner Booth and a fan of the industry and a fan of the restaurant business.
And I like so much what you guys share in your podcast. So when I got the opportunity to participate, I welcomed it. Well, that's great. That's great to hear. Yeah, we really do enjoy this. And I think you brought up a good word there with share because we hear from our listeners that that seems to be what they like the most, is that this is an industry where we get to learn from one another. People are willing to share their stories of what they do, what works,
what doesn't work, and that kind of thing. And so I'm anxious to hear yours. But before we jump into the cool story about Wade's and everything that you do there, why don't we talk just a little bit first and let the listeners know who you are, how you got into the industry, what was your initial interest? Okay. Well, my name is Hamph Lindsey, and I was a second-generation son.
And I want to make sure from the very beginning, there is another person that is tremendously or was tremendously integral in any success we had, and that was my sister, Carol. Carol and I took over our parents' restaurant in 1977, and I'll tell you a little bit about that. And actually, I came first out of Clemson, and shortly after, thank goodness, Carol joined me. And we teamed up, and there is no harder worker, no one more passionate about excellence than my sister.
And I could not be sitting here talking to you if it wasn't for her and us being together in this journey. And right after COVID, Carol retired. We were fortunate enough to have a great family situation. She retired, and we'll probably talk about it a little more. And my two children bought her ownership. And so now I'm in partnership with my son, Wade, and my daughter, Ann. But I'd like to say that, you know, I got in the business very naively.
A lot of the business has been around since 1947. It was started by my mom and dad. They bought a little grocery store here in Spartanburg. And it literally was a grocery store. I have the deed of sale and, you know, they had things like oil and things like bug spray, sugar, flour. It was a little grocery store and they purchased it. My dad was an entrepreneur at heart. My mom was just a sweet, hardworking, great cook.
They bought a little grocery store. Bought it in 1947. And in 1949, they built their first little building. I'm actually sitting in it right now. I'm in my office, which was the restaurant. It is separate from the location we operate now. So I'm in what used to be the, we called it the little dining room. Oh, boy. The restaurant itself, you know, it was the typical, you know, husband-wife team that gets in and just works extremely hard. And they build a business that is very successful.
You know, in its type of restaurant, in its day, they had curb hops. They did everything. You know, it's what we're seeing now. And what I think part of our success is, is we're learning not to do everything, but they did everything. thing. I mean, they serve breakfast, they serve lunch, they serve supper. They were up seven days a week. I had a little ad here from 1949. They serve steaks, oysters, chicken, barbecue, you name it, sandwiches. They did it all.
And they actually also sold beer, which I think is a lot of people that know us. We hadn't sold beer since I took over in 1977, not because I don't drink it. I'll be honest there, but just because I didn't see that as our future, So the business kind of grew and grew. And then in 1970, my mother tragically breast cancer. And after a battle, she passed away. And so my dad in 1970 had the restaurant. My mother, you know, part of the half of the soul of the restaurant was no longer
in it. I was in high school. And so for the next three years, he ran the restaurant while I finished high school. basically. And I think he did that for, you know, a purpose. And so we, it was just me and him. And in 1973, I went to Clemson and at that time, he actually had a long time staff member. He pretty much turned operations over to him and wonderful, wonderful person. But the business savvy, I guess might not have been there. I'm not sure what it was, but it kind of lost its way.
And so the naive part is, is I'm at Clemson and in Spartanburg, you had two very high profile operators. You'll recognize your names, Jay Richardson and Charlie Bradshaw. They were the founders of Spartan Foods here. So I'm a young 21 year old over there. I went to Clemson thinking I was going to be an engineer and then it was going to be a lawyer. And then I guess that deep down entrepreneurial business bug that I had given to me kind of took over.
So I'm going to come back and open a chain of restaurants. And so I contacted my dad and he said, you know, totally surprised, you know, I think he really had felt the restaurant was, was about to end, you know, worked out a deal with the guy that was running it. And I came back in, in 1977 at probably 22 years old and had a one month internship under the fellow that was running it. And on June 7th, 1977, my dad put $5,000 in the bank and it was mine. And it was truly my brother and sister.
My sister, who was my partner, was a little older and my brother was 10 years older. And they came up when they were building the business and they made them work in it and they worked. Well, by the time the baby came along, I was just working for spending money, having a lot of fun, and I never had to work in it. So I never experienced that side of it. So I guess, you know, I've seen that happen a lot.
The fact that I didn't have those scars, I mean, I was ready to come in and open my chain of Waze restaurants. So that's kind of how it started for me. So you came up with a story. Yeah, what a story. And I know that some of the listeners are going to realize that we don't hear this story that often, but we have before, you know, where somebody buys a small store and the store adds on a dining room. And before I know it, the store stops being a store, more of a dining room. Kids grow up in it.
And for one reason or another, maybe their initial plan, your plan was engineering, maybe an attorney. Nope. Comes back to let's be an entrepreneur and I'm going to be in the restaurant business. So thankfully that happened because it sounds like you were there in 1977 with a whole $5,000 in working capital, took it over and bingo. So for better or for worse, the good, bad and ugly of the business was all yours. Yeah.
And, you know, I am a student of the business and I think that actually when I came back in, I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to run a business. I wanted to run a professional business. People are in this industry for a lot of reasons and a lot of great reasons. There are some people, their calling and their passion is to get in it and to be that face and be the one that's there in the morning and at night and greet every customer. And truly, they are the restaurant.
And what was very interesting is that wasn't my passion. You know, my passion was to create a business that could be run through other people.
And I think it was that that allowed us to to have a fighting chance because you know when I came in I didn't just try to continue to run it as it was I came in from day one putting a business approach, behind the business and you know Jim Collins you know good to great he talks about the flywheel you know you my mom and dad you know they started pushing you know you you got a huge flywheel and you're trying to get it going and somebody's got to start putting a
lot of hard work to it and if you just keep pushing in the same direction it starts spinning and it started spinning and it slowed down and fortunately before it stopped we got back in there and started pushing again and and you know when I look back where we are now it's really hard you you can't plan it I didn't open up, 10 or 20 restaurants separately, but I could almost say, I know there's a point in time I look at the volume of our restaurant and say, we've probably got 10
restaurants inside our one restaurant. That's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. That's a point worth underlining. Expansion isn't always in the addition of more units. Expansion of a business a lot of times can be within the growth, within that one single concept. There are some that I've known throughout the nation and have had the pleasure to work with that would say the same thing. You know, they chose to have that one brand and put all their emphasis in the one brand.
And then if you look back and you see how you were able to grow, as you obviously have, and build on the revenue and add value to the brand, It can be the same satisfaction as opening additional units. But what I'd love to have you share with the listeners is if you can remember back then, knowing that your passion was to make this a business, to not be a hands-on restaurant owner like those that you've seen that make things work just because they're there.
You wanted things to work, but work through other people. So could you highlight some of the initial things that you did? I mean, back then when you first took over, What were the first few steps that you needed to do in order to sort of create that culture of this restaurant is going to be a business? You know, what's interesting is, you know, I graduated from Clemson and I did pretty well over there. And I love the I tell people I had the rude awakening.
You know, I got out of Clemson and took the restaurant over and it was was running. Carol hadn't come back at that time. And so one night I had stayed out a little late with friends and at about six in the morning, you know, I get the call and it says, Amp can't come in. It was my breakfast cook. Here I am standing over a grill. I mean, I was literally one month away from graduating out of college and I'm standing over this grill and I'm cooking eggs.
I mean, I'm flipping eggs and I'm sitting there thinking, what in the world have I done? And I had no clue. And, but thankfully, you know, I just jumped in there. And, and the first thing I think I wanted to do, and I think it was out of pride when I took the restaurant over, literally at night, they were running our dining room with one wait, one waitress, they had no real menu. It was, they had gone, my parents did, my parents had, had more polished menus.
They even did that, but it had turned into like a little mimeograph sheet that they had. They were just running off on a mimeograph machine, which a lot of people won't even know what that is. I'm sure you do. And, you know, I remember the very, very, very first thing. And I, it amazes me to look back and think at 22 year old, I thought like this, but during that internship period, I mean, I went into that cooler back then, it was filthy.
And I can, I'll always remember being in that cooler with a fella, you know, it wasn't mine yet. It was going to be there in about a month. And we were cleaning that cooler. We, you know, I just said, this restaurant's got to get, you know, got to be clean. And so worked on that. One of the next things I did is, is I remember, you know, you would be in our dining room at night or anytime, and it was just silent, had no atmosphere.
And I remember putting music in the dining room and I, and we went out and I, we had a professionally done menu. We, you know, we didn't have a logo. And there was one thing from my parents to when I took over, you know, it had a lot, it had really lost its way, really lost its way. And there were no systems, there were no recipes that were being followed. There were, you know, one cook in the morning and one cook at night.
And, but one thing I heard was everywhere I went, we love you yeast rolls and we do a homemade yeast roll that we make by hand. And so our logo, if people look at it, they think it's a chef's hat, but it's, it's really modeled after a, a fully risen yeast roll. So we got a logo. And we accounting, you know, I'm taking an accounting class.
And so, you know, from from day one, you know, I'm trying to figure out how you take a beginning inventory, how you, you know, get your purchases, take an ending inventory. And, you know, so we began to put, you know, some accounting practices. And I bought the Restaurant Association Uniform System of Accounts. That book is probably still here somewhere where I wanted, you know, our P&L to be standard with other restaurants so I could have comparisons with computers.
I tried to write a program on a what was called a Timex Sinclair. And I'm 70 years old, turned 70 last week. So that's really but there were no computers, but I had taken computer at Clemson. And so I was trying to write a program, uh, an inventory program on something that was running off of a cassette tape hooked to a TV screen. Boy, that's old school.
Yeah. And then we standardized, you know, we standardized the recipes and then I think a cornerstone of any success we have was something called the fact sheet. It went on to become our fact sheet class or orientation, but, you know, all of a sudden I was having people not showing up for work and they weren't calling and I'm going, what is this all about? And so we can't do that. So I had a one page and these are the facts. No call, no show, no job.
Here's when you get paid. We don't loan money. I have that somewhere and I look back over it. But again, we just began to run the business professionally and put things in place so we could run it through other people, I guess is what you'd say. And, you know, just to highlight how long ago this was, but those five or six steps that you pointed out are still today the tried and true basic steps of the business. I hope all the listeners made note of that.
Think of this starting with things like cleanliness organization. You mentioned improving the guest experience, atmosphere, background music. Knowing that it's more than food and service, you had to take care of some of the atmosphere. I love the fact of taking a look at what really, really works. In your case, you were known for the East Rule. Okay, let's play to our strength. Make a big deal out of that. You incorporated it into the logo.
You talked about basic branding, menu, update the logo, systems to standardize recipes, accounting processes. So for listeners who are out there who maybe haven't yet opened and you're listening to somebody who did this eons ago, your tools are going to be totally different and much more modernized than amps. But the steps are pretty much the same. Good for you.
They really are. And you and I talked briefly before we started recording, and it really hurts sometimes to watch people get in the business and they don't really understand... How to run a business. And they feel like, you know, I've got a great recipe. I love to entertain and I've seen it happen. And you start with that adrenaline and you get in there. And I was fortunate. I'll segue into this. You know, my sister kind of was my savior.
I did that very thing. I was that naive. I came out of Clemson. I jumped in there. I'm going to open a chain of restaurants. And then all of a sudden here I am. And after you've, you know, you've worked, two or three months without a day off and you're going in and people are calling in and you're having to deal with that, you wear out. And then all of a sudden you look around and say, I don't have anybody that I can depend on.
So I don't know, it's four months after I took over, my sister was in Charleston and I just reached out to her and I said, hey, if you'll come back, We'll get into this 50-50 together. And she did. And so there I had my teammate, the person to depend on. And then we were yin and yang. I mean, she is such a hard worker. And you're talking about operationally driven and excellence driven and cleanliness driven. That girl is at the top of the list. And I was the one that had the business
side of it. I was the one that was dreaming. I was the one that saw the restaurant that we're in now one time and looked at it and said, wow, wouldn't that be great? You know, if we could open up restaurant over there. And we did have a time where we had two restaurants and we learned a lot. You know, we weren't ready, but like I said, I think we were doing a lot of the things right. And fortunately, we had a few breaks and we just survived. And one thing happened.
Built on the other, and we just kept going. Well, you hit on another really key point, I think, that I want to underline, and that is it is a people business. You've mentioned this two or three times already in our short conversation about how important it was that you teamed up with your sister.
You guys seemed to obviously form a good team and had unique strengths that were slightly different from one another, and that's a good takeaway, way, I think, because what happens in this industry sometimes is we maybe pick the wrong people, two people going to business together, but they're both the same. They're both the culinary guys or they both want to run the kitchen.
In your case, you had somebody that saw that from a business standpoint and you had somebody else who saw the business, you know, a little bit differently, maybe more from the service standpoint. So the two of you obviously made a heck of a team all the way until her retirement. Why don't we go ahead and take a moment and actually describe the restaurant as it is now. I think people got a pretty good picture of how we started.
And it was 77 years ago and it was small. You had some good times. You had some bad times. What is the Wade's restaurant today? Well, I think its uniqueness is the volume. But what we are is we're the traditional meat and three restaurant.
We serve comfort food and I think this is something else we've been we've been able to make some hard decisions and they're never easy with your guests over time when I walk in a restaurant and I see a menu that's 10 pages long and they're doing everything I just almost shake because I look at it and I've done it you know you're doing your and there was a time you know know, you just did everything. We catered, we did breakfast, we did lunch, we did supper, we did sandwiches.
I remember we would, they would call me for the telephone book. That's another, I'm telling on myself, you know, the ad in the telephone book, yellow pages. And no one calls for us that anymore. Oh no, no, no. And it was a horrible, I always hated that. But when they called, I remember thinking we do everything. I mean, we do steaks, we do chops, we do barbecue. you. What am I going to tell? I got to tell everybody that.
And along it was, I remember, I remember vividly that a Herman Cain had written an article and I'm pretty sure it was in Nation Restaurant News. I've been trying to find it, but in that article, he said, you got to pick one thing. What's your good app? And I remember him, you know, Burger King, it was have it your way. And at the time he was with Godfather Pizza and it was quality, I believe. Steve, when we, I told you that we started out and everybody said, we love your yeast rolls.
Well, over time it turned in, we love your veggies. And so we coined the slogan for us is, have you had your veggies today? And then everything began to focus on that. And at that time, we were still doing a lot. But from that point up until probably right around COVID or a little after, the last, you know, we started to pare our menu down, you know, because you could come in the restaurant and you could order sandwiches and you could get a plate lunch.
So we're just cranking out plate lunches. And all of a sudden somebody would order a ham club that is a triple decker sandwich. You got to cut with a knife and all the gears just started grinding together. And I can remember taking that off the menu because it was affecting us delivering our other product that they were there for. And the last one that was really, and it's funny how you are, you know, we'll sit, we'll serve 600 orders of turkey and dressing in a day.
And we would serve 18 chef salads. But man, trying to make the decision to take that chef salad off the menu because it was really good and we knew customers liked it. But finally we did it. And so we literally, now we, the only thing you come in and you get a menu and the only thing you're going to see is our meat. We got all our meats, you know, our meat selection, which is fried chicken and turkey and dressing and meatloaf and it rotates daily.
And then vegetables, everything's a vegetable. It weighs jello is a vegetable. Rice is the vegetable. Mataroni is a vegetable. But, you know, you order your meat and your two vegetables and it comes with distro. But I think the thing that makes us unique is... Our volume, you know, and I've looked at this on Thanksgiving day, we were open from 11 until, well, actually it was 1030 until three.
And we, and this is plates. This is not everything else we sold, but we serve 811 online order plates, 1045 call in and waiting plates and 1025 in our dining room. So we were right at 2,900 plates in four hours. Now you can't do that if you're trying to make a sandwich or, or, or serve a salad. You know, this, this, the only way we can do this is we've gotten it down and we focus on, you know, there's a lot behind it too.
You know, even the items we have on our menu, we understand we don't put something on our menu that, that has to, you know, be, you know, everything we has to have a little bit of holding time so we can cook it and it's there ready to serve. I think our uniqueness is our volume, meat and three. And then, you know, we've also developed a line of frozen food that came out of necessity.
Back in the day when I took the restaurant over, we just completed Thanksgiving and we sold 16,000 quarts of frozen dressing and 8,000 quarts of frozen gravy. And it all started when we were here, Yeah. I can remember that people would bring us their turkey that they bought at the grocery store. And for three dollars, we would cook their turkey and then they would bring their pan and we would put our macaroni and cheese or our dressing or stuffing. Some people call it. We call it dressing.
And we would cook it in their pan and they come pick up their pan and carry it home. Well, now, you know, there are some smoke houses in some smaller communities that I think today still do that. You can bring your turkey. They'll smoke it. You go back and pick it up. But you can't find many. That's a lost art. Yeah, it is. And what happened is, is over time, you know, we got to the point it got so big. And all of a sudden, everybody was showing up, you know, that morning wanting
to get their food and get home before to serve it at 12. And we had overcommitted. And so, again, we innovated. I think that's one thing about us is we had been willing to make changes and look for the best way to do something. Continuous improvement, you know, is one of our, you know, core values and our key business drivers. And so we're always looking for a better way.
Can you describe the facility? I mean, with this much volume, I imagine you've built a heck of a car side pickup or walk in to go pick up. And then when you talk about the amount of dining room seats, how many do you seat in the dining room now? It's really interesting because it's kind of evolved itself. But when if I said, you know, I remember we had this little restaurant over here and we're going to open a second one.
And I saw this. This is an old cafeteria building, and the building itself is right at 13,000 square feet. I went to them and I said, listen, you know, I'm in 4,000 now. I can't do that. So they actually leased us 8,000 square feet. And I think it goes back to the roots of our business is we've always sent it out the door. So, you know, you didn't have to tell us you need to have a dedicated place. If you really want to do a takeout business to come in, in so many places, it's an afterthought.
Still today, I go in restaurants and I walk in and I've ordered and I say, where do I go? You know, where to go pick it up? Because there's nothing. It's all an afterthought. We've always had a separate area, you know, based on back in the day with the curb hops.
And so when we took it over it was it's table service with waitresses and then we had a an area where you come in most inconvenient takeout area you could ever imagine you have to park a mile away you have to walk through our lobby you have to go back to this little hole in the wall back there where we were serving you know more people than you're supposed to in a space like that. So we did that. Well, then, you know, they couldn't lease that 4,000 that we said we didn't
want. And it's, it's the same building. It was just, it actually, it was a cafeteria that originally back in the day, get this, man, there's so much labor and everything's so cheap. We'll just go put a second serving line over here and build a different addition, you know? So, so we went in and we took that over and we opened up what was called express dining because we knew We couldn't run our servers over there. So at lunch, we created a buffet line where you went down and we served the
meat. You served your own vegetables. And we were serving 300 people at lunch. And then on Thursday and Friday, we opened it up serving another 300. It was widely, I mean, it was just very popular. But then COVID hit. Yeah. And so when COVID hit, we realized we kind of wanted to, even as successful as it was, we then had, we had a dining room waitress service, we had a takeout, and then we had a buffet. We had three different types of operations we were managing.
By the way, we have 130 to 140 staff members. That gives you a scope of the size of it. And so when COVID hit, we closed express and then in what was a big main dining room, we moved all of our takeout over there. So, so now we have a, a very large takeout area and it has freezer cases in it. And, and basically, you know, and when COVID came, you know, we, we didn't have online ordering our, our point of sale wasn't offering and we re regroup real quickly.
And so, you know, we don't have a way to have curbside pickup. So everything is walk-in, but you can either order it online or you can call it in. Sounds good. Our business is 50-50 right now. And is any of that delivery, do you use third-party delivery at all? Well, we just started right after COVID. COVID was horrible, but COVID allowed us to do some things that I know were good for our business.
And so I hate to even ever insinuate that there was anything good about COVID, but it gave us a chance to take a breath and say, all right, now is the time if we're going to, we're going to make some changes. And, and so we, at that point in time, we closed Express. I've lost my train of thought and I apologize for that. So, but, but we actually, it was interesting.
I talk about the East Roll. we were we were giving two with every plate so it had gotten to the point when you're serving is we were baking you know over 3 000 hand cut handmade yeast rolls a day and we were giving two to every guest and it was it's kind of like chips at a mexican restaurant we'd bring that basket of bread out there yeah so during covid we said okay we're gonna go we can only give one per plate and that was a tough thing to
do when you've been around 77 years but it was the right thing to do because. We the price point that we were delivering our meal at where the labor market was. I had a young fellow one time I was out and I was very vindicated that the decision we'd made, because so many times you'd come back to the table and this all this handmade bread that you had that you had made and worked over was going in the trash.
And he told me, he said, you know, he said, I have such fond memories with my grandparents. We'd come there and we'd always ask for more rolls at the end of the meal. And then we would take them to the Millican pond up here and feed them to the ducks. So, well, you know, that's a that's a good point. Right.
I mean, although I love their memory, when I heard other people talk about being in business for a long time and having to adjust something, say, like that, something that was maybe in a basket or complimentary, and then we adjust it. I've heard that story with, say, chips, bread. I've heard it with garlic sticks, relish trays, pralines, where we got known for it, but it got so busy, where we cut back.
What most of them have done, and tell me if you did this too, is just in case somebody does ask for a second one, do you just honor it and bring out more later instead of bringing them all up to the table like you used to and seeing the waste? We actually do not. I am going to tell you, we do not. And what we knew is if we did that, we had to make a really, really hard decision.
It was the right decision because we were faced with possibly not having to go to a bought piece of bread because we could not find one person, not find the people that could do the job because we make this by hand. There's a bowl as big as my desk here. And I have a lady that's been with us forever. And, and she, we were making this and we, we make it in big 35 gallon barrels with, and it rises. And then we take it on a table and we cut it out. I mean, and we bake it.
I mean, so we were about to have to lose that because we just couldn't, we could not find the labor to do it. And so what And what's happened is, you'd be surprised how many times I go out there now, and there's still bread on the table. Sure. Now, the people that want that endless basket, and they're disappointed, and we hate that, and we apologize, but we knew that if we gave on that... And we felt like we have a value proposition anyway.
So this is just something that we stuck to so that we can offer a good quality homemade piece of bread. Yeah. On another, we're going to sell it to you at a very fair price. Yeah. I think it's 50 cents, but we start just bringing it out, you know, so. Let's talk a little bit about your structure. Now that people have a feeling for the vastness, the 50-50 of dine-in. What? percent is either takeout or it is online ordering.
The 130 to 140 staff members, why don't you walk us through a little bit of the structure? How do you have it set up with department management or key staff, trainers, GMs? How is the management team developed? And I would imagine you do have a few interesting long-termers that are there that you count on.
Well, we really dude. And, you know, we staff, you know, when I talked about running like a business, you know, we, we focus on our staff and, and anybody that's not doing that right now probably won't last, you know, cause it's just a different, it's a different era than it was when I started out, you know, so, you know, we have a 401k, we have health insurance, we have employee parties, you know, we send birthday cards, you know, we, we do all of the things that you should do, And, you know,
cause our state, you know, there, there is no wage restaurant without our team and we have. We have managers, we have team leaders, and we have people that are called checkers. And so there is a structure to where, you know, all the way down, you know, there is a chain of command and we are huge on training. You know, training is the lifeblood of any business.
And, you know, if you're not, if I think I've always said that we're just a simple restaurant, but our consistency is what has helped us to thrive. They know when they come in, they're going to get the same food and the same service and the same cleanliness. And that comes through systems and it comes through a lot of training. Well, you said it. You said a mouthful there. Again, everyone needs to highlight that note. Training never really ends is
what I hear you saying. So you have a great employee engagement program. The idea of having team leaders and trainers, checkers that are shift leads, the fact that everyone seems to be engaged. And what I'm getting from your training is that it's ongoing. Because when somebody says committed to continuous improvement, that means training to you must be just a part of the daily activity.
It's an ongoing investment, it's not, doesn't look like it's an operating cost as much, which we hear sometimes. And I don't really like. Yeah. You know, it's what it was the old saying, you know, there's a lot of people that don't want to train, you know, but it's like, you know, would you rather train them and risk losing them or not train them and risk keeping them, you know?
And so we've chosen that we're going to train and, and really it's, it's very, you know, it's, something that defines us. A server for us is going to go through eight full days of training with someone and then they cannot work on a Sunday, which is our busiest day. They may get through seven days and we may put them on in a smaller station, but until they train on a Sunday with someone, they can't do that.
And all of our trainees across the restaurant, they wear I'm training button and that's for their sake, you know, so a guest doesn't look at them and wonder, you know, they give them a break and, and, uh, it lets us know their training. So, uh, we have, we learned this from pals. I mean, we'd just been a student of a business and there's a little restaurant chain out of Kingsport, Tennessee that we just adored. And we went up there and went to their seminars and they taught us about flashcards.
Yes. For every position, We have a set of cards, which they used to be on index cards, and now they've transitioned to an iPad. And so, so often you'll come into our restaurant and you'll see one staff member. With the flashcards in their hand, and they're just going through them and asking the trainee questions. And it's just learning by rote repetition. And so we have something we call POCs. And every week we create a list of items, and it's usually one for each station or area.
And then we will go through and we will go to the person working that station and ask them that question. And a lot of times these questions are, maybe we had a problem with how to pack a plate or a recipe. And so we'll make that the question. And then we just repeat it all week long. And we just ask everybody to send that position and they have a score and we'll give out a prize, you know, if we reach a certain score.
So we put a huge, huge thing on, on training. And the other thing we do is orientation. You know, we, I learned, I went to a Disney seminar a gazillion years ago, and it was so impactful for me. And it said, you know, before you put somebody in your operation, you got to tell them what to expect. Yeah. Why is you setting yourself up for failure? You know, and we have some pretty, pretty tough work rules. They're fair. They're not a statement of what's right or wrong in society.
In other words, our dress code, we have certain restrictions for jewelry and different things. And, but, you know, we have a policy that you cannot have your cell phone on you on the clock. We have a, we have a cell phone locker and, you know, and there's a lot of people that think that's wrong. And, you know, we just, we want to say before they come in the door, this is how we operate.
We understate, you know, you may, you may not like that. Now we'll tell you, we will get you an emergency call. We're not going to allow a young person to be carrying their cell phone around with that temptation while it's customers out there. And so we have a, you know, it's almost a two hour orientation before you ever, you know, come to work where we tell you all about working at wage. And I think that is just such an important thing for a company.
Well, you mentioned a few very, very important items. And that, of course, is one, getting the right start is absolutely the right first thing to do. A good orientation, a welcoming onboarding program so that people understand exactly what you said, who you are, and what is expected of them. Fair is fair. So we need to make a good point of that. You also mentioned a couple of things. That seem to just be your embodiment.
You like to learn consistently. I've heard that two or three different times. And I want all the listeners to make a note of that. We constantly learn in this industry. So you seem to follow the best. If you can find a best practice out there, you mentioned it early on. Remember it was Jim Collins. You talked about PALS. Fantastic program, by the way. Award winning. So that's something that I think we should make note of. Let's always learn.
Follow the best. And then I love the way you said you keep things simple. If you want to be consistent, your systems better be simple. And for you out there, simple just means easy to understand and do regularly. Running a restaurant with simple principles doesn't necessarily mean it's easy. Because simple isn't easy, is it? No, no, no, no. You know, and that's what I like to say. It's so simple to do the right thing. It's hard.
Because what you have to do, I mean, literally, you just got to keep your restrooms clean. And we are, we, when, when we had, now we have transitioned and I tell you, it was purposeful. We transitioned into a, an outside company that comes in daily, that cleans our restrooms thoroughly. But back in the day, this was done by a staff member and we had a, an eight page document with a test on how to clean a restroom. And I can remember, and we choose one way as many times as we can to do something.
You know, I've often said that, you know, there are a lot of ways that you can do something and you're going to get a right result on a lot of them and you're going to get a wrong result on a lot of them. We choose one way. And what we tell you is, is, you know, this is not to be punitive and not to listen to you, but unless we find, unless we know it gets a better result and there's a big gain, we found a way so we're going to teach you to do it and for me it's
It just resonates mopping. You know, we teach people to keep the mop in front of them and push it straight out and back instead of just swish it side to side. And I have told, I've used that example on many a person I was training and say, you know, there are a lot of ways you can get this floor clean, but I use that to say, we're going to pick one way and we're going to do it consistently. So that's what I'm going to ask of you to do. Just do it consistent.
If you have a better way, tell us and we'll listen, but don't just go do it on your own because we cannot accept that. Well, that's fantastic because, I mean, I know the example there is mopping the floor, but that principle could be one way to also dress the breakfast plate, one way to lay out the hash browns. There's one way to build a taco. You're reminding me of a wonderful family I had an opportunity to work with years ago out of Oklahoma.
They had a chain, still do, cafes, but it was built around the dairy. They were dairy farmers. They made a great ice cream. And so in their ice cream fountains, they said there's going to be one way to build a scoop. I mean, people can dig one way, dig another way. They can go in circles, up and down. But how do we get the scoop to be the same? So they actually made the container square rather than the typical rounds.
So that was their way of training. Pick a corner, and you go from one corner to the other, to the other, to the other, and back, and you're done. Now you've got a scoop. Has to be the same, four corners, but if they didn't build it that way, you would have had people going from the right to the left, and circles, and in and out, and digging, and so you're right. You pick one way, and that's a good way to keep things simple. That is right. This has been a joy. I wish we could talk more and more.
I just noticed we're running out of time. But this has been a tremendous lesson in business practices, commitment to excellence, and the idea of consistently looking to improve. Those are the principles that we've been talking about here, everyone, as you've been listening to one of the greatest at it, Hamp Lindsey with Wade's Restaurant. Look him up. Go to eatatwades.com to learn more.
Unless, of course, some of you are in South Carolina, then you know what I'm talking about because you've probably been there. Ham, thank you so much. We all wish you continued success and really appreciate you sharing your business principles with us today. It has been my pleasure. Thanks for asking me to be here. And for everyone else, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to connecting again on another Corner Booth real soon.
Thank you for joining us on the Corner Booth. We'll be back next Tuesday with more inspiration, insights and industry best practices to help you engage your team. Delight your guests and grow your business.