Steady Work: Best Restaurant Management Advice from Starbucks’ ‘Playbook’

In Steady Work, author and former Starbucks’ Regional Manager Karen Gaudet offers restaurant management advice and a heartfelt personal story about how “Playbook,” a continuous improvement business system, revitalized the retailer during the global financial crisis and helped employees in Newtown, Connecticut, get through the worst week of their lives.It’s relevant today because it helps restaurant leaders contend with enduring issues like crisis recovery, demand fluctuations, food waste, keeping the human touch, managing change, and retaining employees. In this excerpt, Gaudet describes learning how the new system would improve the work of managers, baristas, and support partners.I was sitting alongside my colleague, a regional director from Chicago, in a Starbucks Seattle headquarters lab waiting for an introduction to the lean operating system they were calling Playbook. 

Step one to learning this system was more lean training. We started by making a picture of work…