Operations

This page provides an overview of Anna's House that will include Description of the Property, Organization, Management Structure and Work Environment, Marketing Management, Human Resource Management, Operations and Administration and Strategic Planning.

Description of the Property

Anna's House is located on East Beltline Avenue, Grand Rapids, Michigan, near Woodland Mall. There are a few breakfast restaurants that we view as local competitors within the Grand Rapids area including Morning Belle, Wolfgang's and Real Food Café.
There are 168 seats at Anna's House which includes all booths, tables, bar seating and conference room seats. Our square footage is approximately 4,786 square feet.
Anna's House will gladly host parties and meetings in our conference room and also provides catering services.

Organization, Management Structure and Work Environment

The Anna's House property on the East Beltline is leased by the owner of Anna's House, Josh Beckett.
Anna's House has multiple locations throughout Michigan (Plainfield, Beltline, Grandville, Holland, Kalamazoo, Westland, Ann Arbor, Grand Haven and Okemos) but does not have any affiliations with other restaurant brands.
The organizational structure for our units management is as follows: General Manager: Bill Hogan > Assistant General Manager: Sharlet Wicht > Kitchen Supervisor: Cipriano Mijangos > FOH Supervisor: Abby Remien > Line Cooks, Servers, Dish Washers, Expediters, Prep and Hosts.
Our formal line of communication is usually between line cooks, expediters and servers. When servers need something from the back of the house, they have expediters relay information the the back, and vice versa. If there is an issue with food, beverage, equipment or overall experience, we alert the management team (Bill or Sharlet). This way of communication has been common in my previous work experiences. I have experienced a similar set up at Bellerive Country Club, St. Louis, MO where the executive chef would be the expediter.
The work environment is quite pleasant because I enjoy working with my co-workers and supervisors. I also feel free to express my opinions and ask questions.
Most of my other co-workers seem satisfied with their jobs. For some people, Anna's House is simply a job and they plan to move on when the time is right. For others, they enjoy the hours, the people they work with and are satisfied with their wages.
Bill and Sharlet are very open to hearing our suggestions on kitchen set up, new equipment and planning out the day and servers and cooks alike are comfortable with sharing our suggestions to them.
While there are many of us with strong opinions and personalities that lead to disagreements, there are no major personal issues among the staff.

Marketing Management

Our guest profile is mainly business people, couples of various age groups and families.
Our target market is anyone within the Woodland mall traffic. We also appeal to anyone that is within 10 minutes from our property, as it allows people around the area to stop by on their lunch break. During the weekends, we appeal to a broader spectrum of people such as families from east Grand Rapids, Caledonia and Kentwood.
Our guests generally love our food and the interior ambiance. Our guests most notably dislike the shortage of parking spaces (86 spaces), as well as the fact that we do not sell alcohol at our specific location.
To accommodate for the shortage of parking, we ask our staff that are scheduled later in the day to park at Firestone Tire company to leave more space for our guests.
Our direct competitors are Morning Belle, Wolfgang's and Real Food Café. In comparison to Anna's House, Anna's has won best breakfast in Michigan for the past 7 years.
Our properties strength lies in the high amount of traffic surrounding Woodland mall and 28th street. Another strength we have is that our menu has a wider variety with vegan options, lunch items and larger portions than our competition. Our main weakness compared to our competitors is our shortage of parking spaces.
Our primary marketing strategies is word of mouth and social media.
For advertising and promotion, Anna's House uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and we also send out coupons through our newsletter and direct mail. On occasion, we will donate to charities through Country Clubs and CSG Radio.
Our corporate Chef Jon Schwartz bases our menu prices on food cost and tries to have most of our menu items within $9-$16.
Our guest have been vocal about how much they like the direct mail coupons. Not only do our guests receive a small discount but it's also a great way to invite their friends to try Anna's House for the first time. It is difficult to gauge what marketing tactics were least successful mainly because social media is difficult to track.

Human Resource Management

Anna's House employs 45 people, 20 of whom are full time employees and the remaining 25 are part time employees.
There are 2 management personnel and 2 supervisor personnel
New employees are usually recruited through websites such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Workable and the official Anna's House site. Candidates will electronically send their resumes to the corporate sector of Anna's House and the human resources department selects where candidates should and can work based on their locations. Human resources sends the store a list of applicants where the General Manager can review and select candidates to interview in person. Both I9 forms and the employee handbook are physically signed. We have select people who are allowed to train our new employees for 2 weeks and will be evaluated by Front-of-House or Back-of-House supervisors and other trainers. While there is no formal evaluation form, supervisors and trainers use positive reinforcement, constructive criticism and team work to help new employees. If they are asked, both managers and supervisors are willing to develop their staff with more or new tasks, resources such as books and podcasts for leadership and personal development and cross training between Front-of-House and Back-of-House.
At Anna's House, we have 13 Hispanic/Hispanic American employees, 6 African American employees, 2 Asian American employees, with the remaining employees being Caucasian.
Based on the high and low end of the hourly wages of our line cooks at Anna's House ($13-$20+) an average wage for a line cook is $16.50. Dish washers average $13.50, Servers make $3.65 hourly plus tips, Takeout servers make $9.87 hourly plus tips and Hosts make $7 hourly plus tips.
Employee paid benefits that are offered at Anna's House include: Health, Dental, Vision, and additional Life Insurance. Benefits that are paid by employers include Company Life and AD&D insurance and various Employee Assistance programs.
Currently, our management turnover rate is 50% and our hourly employee turnover rate is roughly 25%.
The most successful techniques that we use at Anna's House for motivation, reducing turnover and maintaining guest satisfaction is giving feedback, establishing a good relationship and attempt to relate with both employees and guests. The least successful techniques have been micromanaging, not giving feedback and rarely speaking to employees and guests.
Employees are comfortable with sharing ideas, communicating and participating with managers to manage the facility. Bill and Sharlet are always open to new ideas and are comfortable with letting all employees come up with helpful solutions.
Guest service is improved in many ways ranging from servers taking time to getting to know their guests and establishing a relationship with them, cooks catering to dietary needs and quickly resolving any food, beverage or service issues that may occur.

Operations and Administration

Managers at Anna's House have many functions throughout each day that include arming and disarming our security system, opening and preparing our tip share programs, counting cash drawers before opening and after close. Other managerial duties also include team building, training and retraining people, answering reviews via phone call, email and yelp. During service, management always checks on all of our equipment and their temperatures, along with maintaining our food safety and quality standards and maintaining customer satisfaction and handling complaints. Every Monday, our schedules will be posted on Hot Schedules, which requires managerial and corporate approval. Managers are also tasked with being a leader and boosting morale for the day. Meetings between general managers and corporate members of Anna's House occur once a week and allows each location to openly communicate, reiterate company goals and bring up any issues and listen to advice.
How Anna's House provides and manages the following services
- Maintenance: Any maintenance that the building needs will be taken care of with licensed and insured contractors.
- Housekeeping: While general housekeeping and sanitation is usually taken care of by our staff, we have independent contractors that will clean our hoods in the kitchen. Part of being a manager at Anna's House is delegating cleaning duties for both front and back of the house.
- Accounting: Each individual location is responsible for recording their profit and losses in Google Sheets, Aloha POS System and Restaurant 365. Everything that is recorded and approved by a General Manager will be shared with our corporate accountant.
- Security: There are multiple cameras throughout the inside of the building that feeds into our managers office. We also have a security system provided by...
Along with the building at the East Beltline location, Anna's House also leases our dish machines. All other equipment that is used for cooking, storing, cooling, dining, preparing and computer/internet hardware is bought.
Anna's House does not have a green management program. While the Anna's House chain is looking to expand our current recycling and compost plans, the current supply chain and demand is currently not affordable and does not produce everything we need.
- a.) Aloha is our automatic POS system, EDC is a credit card transaction processor that communicates with Aloha, Orderman tablets are used to process food orders and also communicate with our POS systems and ticket screens. Pulse is also an application management can use to access all operational data (forecasting, sales, labor etc.). HotSchedules and Restaurant365 is also used for scheduling and predicting our labor, forecasting, sales and when to cut people.
- b.) Aloha communicates with Restaurant365 and Pulse automatically, which can show managers what our labor, scheduling, sales, and forecasting.
- c.) The advantages of computerization is that it helps businesses make more money by increasing efficiency and recording data much easier than if someone had to manually record the data. A drawback to computerization is that it requires more training for both managers and servers who use the POS. Training, of course, can cost more money.
- d.) While we manually input opening and closing variances into our tip share excel sheet, the manual data is automatically sent and shared with our finance director, where our labor, payroll and sales are accounted for. The labor card created by HotSchedules and our operational director Brad Teachout gives us an approximate net sale and shows how much we will most likely make within each business hour. It also shows which employees are scheduled to come in. This data that was calculated allows managers to get an idea of when they can cut people, close down a kitchen line and when to start closing for the day. The Pulse app automatically shows us what each location did in sales, as well as what our labor rate is and our forecast. Pulse data is crucial for creating our labor cards and is checked by a manager constantly throughout the day. Each of these examples show computerized data that helps each Anna's House store perform efficiently and see what we are making in revenue.

Stratigic Planning

Anna's House's short term goals are to make it through the current recession and political climate, as well as adapting to higher prices and creating a more unified and cohesive team. We are also looking into what (if any) location has the perfect sized building that will help our efficiency and convenience with customers. While we face the challenges of our short term goals, owner Josh Beckett has the long term goal of opening Anna's House locations as far as the state of Florida.
Other than opening more store locations, Anna's House will adapt to the benefits and challenges of automation, allowing it to save on labor and create easier jobs in the next 2,5,10 years to come. The firm will also change in how big or small our restaurant building are and finding building sizes that are perfect for our locations.
Woodland mall and malls in general are financially not doing well, which could diminish the amount of traffic we normally get. Automated functions for both front of the house, back of the house and managerial duties could also impact our property in the sense that we might need less people and different equipment.
While traffic would be very different if Woodland mall shut down, Bill predicts that we would not be badly affected because of our strong relationships and consistency with our guests.