The magic of technology

2001 brought a few changes to Krimo’s on the Marina. Our son, Adam, who had been learning his trade at McDonalds in Peterlee, decided to come to work at the restaurant to give Karen, his mother a well-earned rest after sixteen years of doing extremely well, something that she had been parachuted in out of the blue one day back in May 1985. 

Having always been an admirer of McDonalds’ staff training, I was pleased when Adam agreed that my restaurant procedures were in a small way, similar to those of the fast food giant. Should I have begun dreaming of McKrimos? 

While Adam and the existing team looked after Krimo’s, I concentrated on ensuring that Portofino was running like clockwork with Elaine and Noel at the helm. Between all three of us, we came up with lots of new procedures to simplify the training of young employees. Those were ‘A Level’ students who simply wanted to earn a few quid. In my reckoning, they gained much more than a bit of money. Within weeks of starting work, one could see them begin to open up and flourish in their new roles of servers or apprentice chefs. I really believe that they really benefitted from their interaction with adults, customers or senior staff as one could see them brimming with confidence. Shadowed by an existing employee as a mentor, they learnt to deal with, initially simple tasks, then graduating to more complex ones, such as answering telephone calls and taking bookings, operating the tills and cashing up at the end of shifts. 

In 1998, I had purchased a very good piece of accountancy software and gradually got to grips with it. Although over the years, newer versions were produced and lately it has become an online application, to the day I retired in February this year, I carried on using the original one, as it was very easy to pass on to, first of all, Elaine the manager, and then other managers who did most of the data entry of sales and invoices on a daily basis. And so, at the press of a button, I was able to see how the restaurants were performing. In the early days, staff wages were paid weekly. I worked out the hours and faxed them (anyone remember faxes?) to our accountants who produced pay slips. This weekly exercise meant that we weren’t able to take much time off. Then came the time to take a leap of faith and go two-weekly. I asked our staff if this was possible. A few grumbled that they were so used to getting paid more frequently that they could find it hard to make ends meet. After a bit of research, coaxing and a democratic vote, we finally decided to pay staff every two weeks. It felt like I had been liberated. We could at last have a week’s holiday without having to rush back to prepare the wages. Some months later, I took the payroll in-house as I hired a bookkeeper to do it fortnightly. A couple of years on, we bit the bullet again and went four-weekly. Elaine and I began producing the payroll ourselves every fourth Monday without the help of a bookkeeper. The magic of technology!