Texas Roadhouse Growing Through Recognition
By Business, Keynote, and Motivational Speaker Adrian Gostick
April 13, 2009
Wells Fargo’s CEO was the first to begin to speak out against being forced to cancel recognition and incentive programs, but Texas Roadhouse’s CEO takes that argument one step further…. he REFUSED to cancel their incentive trip and masterfully articulates his decision, the metrics and ROI of the program, and the importance (and bottom-line benefits) of employee recognition-now more than ever-in this interview with CNBC.
Here’s the transcript:
Reporter: Corporate conferences are under siege. Hundreds of companies have canceled their out of town meetings but Texas Roadhouse is bucking the trend. With five days of lavish fun in San Francisco, they are saying it is crucial to business.
Reporter: These are my kind of people. Here we are with G.J. Hart . . . How dare you have a good time?
G.J. Hart, President & CEO of Texas Roadhouse: Well, ya, we are going to have a good time but we are also going to be serious about what we are all about. We are all about our people and our culture, and our people are our biggest asset that we’ve got. And this investment in our people will yield us great returns. We have a philosophy in our company that if we take care of our people, they will take care of our guests. That is exactly why this event is important in times like this.
Reporter: So spending the money you think is a good idea. You’re not only not sorry about it but you think it is great.
Hart: Listen, when you think about it, it is just like investing in anything. You’ve got to give a little to get a lot. In our mind we’ve got almost 40,000 folks out there that are doing it day in and day out and we want to recognize our front line folks from our managing partners which are single unit operators to we have our meat cutters that cut meat in every one of our restaurants to our bar tenders, the best of the best there and we absolutely think it is a great return on our investment. We’re a predominantly a company owned story . . . about 275 of our restaurants are company owned. In the early days we did more franchising but now it is predominantly a company owned story.
Reporter: So when someone from Congress comes to you and tells you what are you doing . . . no one should be spending this money, which they have been doing to other companies, what do you say? What are the metrics that you give them . . . look we are spending this money and here’s how it helps us.
Hart: Listen, it is one thing that we recognize, we are in the service and hospitality business. A little known fact is that 2 out of every 5 jobs in America are associated with the hospitality business. We, in this industry are the second largest employer to the government. So, we believe that giving back and doing these types of things makes all the sense in the world. By the way, it’s not just about what we are doing in San Francisco to celebrate and recognize and reward our own people, we also spend a full day everywhere we go in our conferences doing humanitarian work. We spend over a million dollars in materials and labor today around the city of San Francisco.
Reporter: What is your total spend on this?
Hart: We spend between two and two and a half million dollars but as I said just a minute ago, we spend a million dollars in labor and materials on humanitarian, but I’ll tell you something else, I’m not sure it is enough. Times like this, these are the folks that make things happen. These are not the executives. These are the people that running our restaurants day in and day out around America. At the end of the day, people still want to go out to eat and we believe that if we can execute on those fundamentals of what we do, our mission statement is legendary food and legendary service, we believe that we will continue to grow and we are continuing to grow and that is what this is about. It’s about employment growth and that is what we are all about.
Reprinted with permission from Adrian Gostick and the Carrot Guys. Copyright, 2009
Visit Business, Keynote, and Motivational Speaker Adrian Gostick web page to learn more about his programs.
To book Business, Keynote, and Motivational Speaker Adrian Gostick contact FIVE STAR Business Speakers at 913.648.6480 or via email.
Motivational Speakers by FIVE STAR 