The life of an Operator: Interview with Bubble CiTea’s Head of Operations

The second thing that we’re innovating at Bubble CiTea, is that we’re creating an internal point store for our employees. At the end of each shift, they get a recognition from the management team when they approve the timesheets. And they can turn it into points that they can swap for little gifts, like experience vouchers or a voucher to go and spend at a shop, a plushie – things like this. 

I’ve never heard of anything like that before

Yeah it’s really cool. So I work closely with our area managers and it’s an idea that actually came from one of them. And honestly, the biggest measure of success for me is creating environments where I don’t come up with ideas. My team comes up with ideas. Because in a room of 12 people I don’t have all the best ideas. So they came up with it. I’m here to execute it and deliver it for them, and for the teams. I’m super excited for it. 

On that note, a lot of operators are talking about how hard it is to make the team feel appreciated; it’s a challenge to retain people.

Yes, and we hire Gen Z staff. And the attention span, the commitment to the job, it’s not what it used to be. And when I say it used to be, I’m basing this on myself. When I used to work in a restaurant, when I used to front of house. It’s so different because the employees that we hire these days, they don’t need that job, you need them.

And you really need to look after them because the cost of recruiting a new team member is exponential. It’s much easier – and much better for the employee as well – to focus on how do I keep them? How do I keep them engaged? How do I get the best value from the employee I already have in the business instead of getting someone new through the door?

So you just mentioned being front-of-house, what was your journey like from there to operations? 

I started flipping burgers in Nando’s, my very first job. I never wanted to manage people, never wanted to manage business. This was my part time job to actually go to university. But then one of my managers spotted talent in me and asked me, would you like to do this? We think you could manage teams. 

And I said yeah, I didn’t think twice about it. At the time I thought I’ll get more money, I’ll take this. One thing led to another. I soon realised I was good at it and people respected me as a leader. And yeah, a few years later I ended up here.

It’s hard to get people who join front-of-house to see hospitality as a career, something that you’ll be in for a long time. How do you think we can change that?

I think we need to look at transferable skills. I really try to think about transferable skills when hiring a team that I work with closely. 

And hospitality changes you as a person. I used to be the person that wouldn’t be openly talking to customers, talking to people. I relate this to everyday life; now I will confidently walk into a room full of people and start the conversation.

But I wasn’t that guy before, and being on the til, facing customers, serving them food, whatever the scenario you are in, it really changes you as a person. It makes you realise it’s okay to talk to people. People will talk to you. Don’t be scared. 

How much time do you spend in analytics looking at data? 

We use Analytics from Vita Mojo, and I spend a lot of time in analytics right now. We don’t have a data analyst, so I am the data analyst. 

I think if you’re not looking at the data, and you’re making decisions without backing them up with any data, you’re just shooting in the dark. So I think looking at the data and making decisions driven by data is the most important thing that you need to do in a business. Otherwise, how do you know that you’re making the right decision?

What do you value most out of your partnership with Vita Mojo? 

Transparency. We have many requests at BubbleCiTea, to change this, to improve that. And most of the time these requests are met. 

When we have something crazy that we come up with like ‘hey, we want to change the whole system’. We don’t just get a ‘no’ or a ‘yes, we’ll work on it in the future’. If it’s not going to happen, we get a genuine answer that lists the reasons why. So we’re never in a place where we think something’s going to happen, but it really isn’t. 

And that’s that’s very unique, You don’t get that in every every partner. 

Also, some of the little things that Vita Mojo does in how they manage us as a client, we now take to our other providers and we ask them, ‘Hey, we want this because Vita Mojo does it well’. And that’s the truth. 

We get an email round up after the calls that we have with the Vita Mojo Client Success team, and we appreciate it because when I come off that call, I have 50 other phone calls, my phone is buzzing. I don’t have time to take good notes or to follow up on that meeting. But when I have that round up email, I know what’s going on. I know what the next plan is, and I know what’s expected of me, because the actions that I need to take are also highlighted.

So it makes it easy for me to plan what I need to focus on. 

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