Key Training Lessons for Restaurants and Hospitality

Recently, I made my way down to New Orleans for CHART’s 90th Hospitality  Conference. CHART is a non-profit professional association of hospitality and restaurant training professionals. Incredibly enough, the 450+ members of CHART represent and train a workforce of almost 3 million people!

I learned a ton and am excited to share some key takeaways. Being the first year that I attended CHART, I was warmly welcomed by attendees  and immediately felt at home. The majority of attendees return every year, and the strong sense of community that they have was very evident. “After being in the wonderfully warm and welcoming environment of the CHART conference, it pretty much summed up the whole CHART experience”, described  Lisa Marovec, FMP, a fellow attendee. Her experience was very similar to that of my own.

After several industry leading trainers took the stage to speak about their careers, so did I. Mimeo accepted an award and was highlighted for our recent sponsorship of CHART.

“The addition of Mimeo as a silver sponsor provides CHART members access to more effective and timely training materials,” said Patrick Yearout, CHART Board President. “Working together to provide the latest information so employees can make a positive impact is a mission we both believe in.”

“Mimeo is thrilled to be a new silver partner with CHART, supporting the training and development professionals of the restaurant and hospitality industries,” commented Doug Bohaboy, Vice President of Marketing for Mimeo. “Our team is excited to collaborate and learn from members, helping us to continually evolve our solutions to improve the way development professionals deliver their valuable training content.”

Key Lessons For Restaurant & Hospitality Trainers

During this event, I gained further insight on the various front of house and back of house trainings being conducted by household brands, along with the direction in which training is shifting to in the coming years. Two key takeaways I gained from CHART:

1. Everyone is conscious of digital learning impacting training. Trainers need both print and digital platforms, however, because of the nature of their audiences. Hospitality employees greatly range in age, demographics, and learning styles. Many people were curious to know when the right time is to implement e-learning, and more importantly, how? It’s no secret that this is where the industry is headed. As we see ipads and mobile apps pushing out content,  the influence technology is having greatly shifts the learning environment.

2. Consistent messaging – Trainers take so much pride in their work. They were so welcoming, always upbeat, and it’s clearly a direct result of their profession as a trainer being in front of people all day long. I didn’t realize until the show how important consistent messaging was for them. To successfully instill company values and training programs that are practiced daily by colleagues down to the store level is crucial to a company’s success in generating revenue. There are so many places along the way where training content is shifted, changed, lost, or even manipulated. A way the overcome this challenge  is to ensure they are leading by example and using the right resources to deliver messaging as it travels from corporate to store level, and that nothing gets lost along the way.

In addition to attending key speaker events, the breakout sessions highlighted topics ranging from career development to how NPS scores influence training content. It was great to meet and speak with the types of restaurant and hotel trainers I work with on a daily basis.

Mimeo Involvement:

“Mimeo’s active involvement at CHART helps our members improve the way they deliver their valuable training content,” said Jason Lyon, CHART President Elect. “Having Dana there, learning and sharing as a first-time attendee, not only helps Mimeo evolve their solutions, but gave attendees a chance to collaborate with and learn from Dana.”

Overall, it was a great experience and benefited my customers at Mimeo. I will definitely be returning next year!

Mimeo Bio:

Dana is the Retail Business Unit Director at Mimeo. She works to implement successful training roll outs to global locations and distribute customer facing marketing content for the food and hospitality sectors. For more information, please contact: Dana Roazzi,  retail business unit director, at [email protected]

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