With Michelin star restaurants, 5* hotels and street food business quickly joining the take away scene, the industry has never looked so different.

Beyond joining JustEat, UberEats and Deliveroo, what does it mean to take your brand to a hand held device where hungry clients await you?  

How do you take an “eat-out” experience to home successfully and offer that same level of customer experience you have carefully trained your team to give?

Even when we might think that the challenge is a “digital” or a “technical” one, the truth is this change is really a “people challenge” at a “people level”. 

So, we must ask ourselves, if we are to weather the storm and move the business forward with a stronger digital offering, what teams are required to get us through this? 

It is not about how many people operate in the business but, are they the “right” people who will lead our digital transformation? 

From the marketing of your new or enhanced services, to the cooking and getting the food to the customer, you must consider the right team and the structure that you will need to grow.

This could mean some difficult decisions and potentially redundancies, or is there indeed, an opportunity to re-train/re-skill your current team members?

For example, to compensate for a loss of traditional foot fall are there experienced digital marketers who can help to drive online sales?

Can we re-train client-facing employees to move to a back-office role and deal with incoming online orders? What impact could this have in employee engagement and motivation levels by switching up the roles? 

Will you be getting rid of your bricks and mortar outlets and potentially need to hire more chefs and less front of house staff?

Have recent redundancies already had an impact on employee morale? How do you, as a leader, lead with confidence and clarity in times of uncertainty? 

How do you ensure that you are more prepared and set up for success to reshape the team or hire quickly as the business grows?

What budgets do you have to consciously move people, cut or redeploy? 

How is the business performing against the competition in this digital landscape?  

If location reach is an issue, could you potentially look at a model where you share kitchen facilities and potentially teams? If yes, take a look at an interesting tech start up, Feastr, that have adopted this model well.

Once the above considerations have been taken into account, you are going to be more prepared to lead your team through this digital transformation opportunity.

With a deep level of expertise managing change and helping to re-shape organisations to be more agile and forward thinking Your People Associates are here to help. For an initial conversation in confidence, please book a call here and one of our Associates will be delighted to help.

Your People Associates is a full service HR and Talent Consultancy working alongside SMEs, Start Ups and high growth companies who truly put their People at the heart and centre of their business.

We offer a range of services to ensure your People agenda is always part of your business planning and that you deliver on all touch points within the employee life cycle… In essence we help you Attract, Hire, Retain and Engage the right people for your business.