Professional Pizza Roundtable: Managing Your Pizza Team

An independent pizza operator, a regional chain director of ops and a recruitment specialist join Canadian Pizza editor Colleen Cross to discuss key challenges such as finding and keeping good employees, training them effectively and developing them as ambassadors for your pizzeria. They share best practices with the goal of finding solutions to challenges that affect operators country-wide.

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Meet our panellists

Joining us are three special guests with three different perspectives on building a pizza team. They will share their experiences and what they’ve found to be best practices with the goal of giving you ideas to take away for your own team.

Sean Milks is director of operations, Gabriel Pizza Franchise Corporation, which specializes in pizza and Italian food dining and delivery with franchised locations throughout Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Sean has a passion for people and the customer experience. The human need for fun, socializing and being spoiled by not having to cook at home will never cease and I discovered quite quickly we could impact the dining experience by providing high-quality products and great human-human interactions. He strives daily to learn, pivot and grow through expansion of Gabriel Pizza’s brand, product innovation and keeping a pulse on current and future customers’ desires. You can contact Sean at sean@gabrielpizza.com.

Diana Cline is owner and partner with Diana’s Cucina & Lounge, a successful and innovative pizzeria in Winnipeg that showcases her award-winning pizza recipes. Diana has won and judged at multiple international and Canadian competitions and writes a column for our magazine. In addition to operating her own business, Diana is a consultant to other owner/operators in menu development, creating operational systems and marketing to help operators grow their business strategically. Contact Diana at diana@dianascucinaandlounge.com.

Karen Horton is a recruitment specialist helping businesses connect with the right talent for managerial and executive-level needs, as well as a hiring coach to franchise owners and independents looking to craft the right hiring process to attract and retain good people. Karen and her husband Ross are franchise owners of Patrice & Associates Recruiting Specialists – working coast to coast in North America and residing in Ontario’s lovely Niagara Region.

In this video, we answer the questions:

• Who are today’s restaurant job candidates and what are they looking for?
• Where and how to find reliable, long-term employees? What strategies are most successful for training these new employees?
• Are job seekers looking for employers to engage them with apps and other technologies?
• What are some of the ways you’re using technology to engage your teams?
• What strategies and rewards do you use to motivate your team to do their best work and to work as part of a team?
• What strategies have worked best for hanging on to employees long term, particularly in a time of the Canada Emergency Relief Benefit?
• What skills are you seeing employees develop and how do you inspire your staff to be ambassadors of your brand?

Visit canadianpizzamag.com to see more Professional Pizza Roundtables, including Pizza Trends, and for more pizza industry features, podcasts, products and news you can use.