How Jamba fuels growth through operational transparency

Mariangel Babbel (00:01):

Thanks for joining us today for our conversation with Apollo Joulios, director of Operations and Kayla Ladd, HR Manager at Wowza and World Concepts at Jamba and SEN and franchisee. We'll be talking about the critical partnership between HR and operations and all the things they've learned to help them scale from 16 to more than 40 stores. Hi everyone. Welcome to today's session. We are joined today with Kayla Ladd, who is the HR manager at Wowza and World Concepts, a Jamba and Cinon franchisee. Kayla is a results oriented leader with a strong operations background and a passion for people. And one of the interesting things about Kayla is as the company grew and scaled, Kayla actually identified some interesting opportunities for them to really double down on their HR focus, and she built out what the HR function is and eventually evolved into leading that. So I'm really excited to talk to her about what she learned around that journey. We're also joined fight with Apollo Julius, who is the director of operation at Wowza, and Apollo got his start in the industry during high school. Apollo, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were there three and a half years before the youth then attended the UNLV, is that correct?

Apollo Joulios (01:11):

Yes.

Mariangel Babbel (01:12):

Great. So you went, did that, you earned a degree in the hospitality and hotel management, and from there you spent some time in the hotel industry and you came back to become a franchisee at Wza and World Concepts, which is a pretty exciting journey for you to kind of come back to your original roots. So thank you both for joining me today. I'm really excited about this conversation. For those of you who aren't familiar with this group, they have grown so rapidly and scaled along the way. They had to figure out a lot of their learning curves that a lot of us are probably trying to still figure out right now. So I'd love to spend some time talking about that specifically around how you scaled. I mean, you started off with a handful of stores and quickly grew that, but I will let you tell us a little bit more about that scaling journey Apol. What was the pivotal moment where you guys scaled tremendously?

Apollo Joulios (02:05):

I mean, there's an ironic story behind all of this, to be honest.

(02:09):

When I was working with Jamba in high school, Jamba had actually recruited my father on us to come on board, and he got trained in the store that I worked at. So he was brought on as a district manager, and then I went off to school and did my own thing and he was able to become a franchisee. And he had grown, he had a few stores in Fresno, and then he grew to Arizona, which was when he acquired four stores, which were part of the Jam franchise group, which Kilo was a part of. And they built a few more stores in az. And then I was actually getting ready to move back to Las Vegas from San Francisco, and PAOs came in to SF and presented me an offer to come on board. He wanted to grow and thought I could use the skills that I've learned throughout the years and school to help out. And so when I came on board, we had 16 stores, eight in California and eight in Arizona. And since I've been on board, we've over doubled in size. We were able to acquire a couple other franchisees, and it was just one of those things when the opportunity presented itself upon us, jumped on it. It's definitely been quick and we've all had to learn and grow on the fly, but it's been fun and it's like what they say when opportunity presents itself, you just got to be ready

Mariangel Babbel (03:50):

And tell everybody. How many stores are you up to right now?

Apollo Joulios (03:54):

41. They're all jams with one Cinon.

Mariangel Babbel (03:59):

Wonderful. That's awesome. Well, thank you. Well, let's talk about that growth journey, about being ready when those opportunities come, because sometimes I think there's opportunities for us to think, one, we're not ready, or how do I possibly get ready? And a lot of it comes from just being mindful and to what I mentioned earlier, creating that operational transparency within an organization so you can spot those opportunities when they come. Kayla, you specifically spotted a really big opportunity within your company and grew into those to fill that role. Tell us about that journey and what you took on there.

Kayla Ladd (04:34):

Yeah, I mean, like Apollo said, everything happened so quickly. So I was actually on my way out of the industry. I was doing some HR work on the side for the franchisee that was in Arizona at the time, and I had only seen stores close. I had never been a part of a franchisee that grew. We started out, I think with eight stores and then just over time started slowly closing stores. So I was looking for different opportunity. And then I met anos and he told me if I came on board essentially as his operator in Arizona with the four stores that we would grow and we would grow quickly. And he was just so passionate about the brand. I loved his background with Jamba and Starbucks and just really solid brands. And so I came on board and we did just that. We grew so quick and I found myself just handling HR issues while also being, at that time, I was the only operations leader in Arizona. And then we started adding on DMS as we grew, and the dms were all having functions that they were doing along with their main role. And then it just got to a point where Anos kind of knew it was coming. I think we all knew it was coming and that it was needed to have a dedicated HR department to handle the needs of the business and also support the growth, the continued growth efforts of our business and make sure that our people were at the center of that growth.

Mariangel Babbel (06:24):

What were some of the, sorry to cut you off real quick. What were some of the early signals that made you realize, Hey, it's time to spin this out? I have a dedicated HR

Kayla Ladd (06:34):

Function? Man, that's a great question. I think it was, I just started taking on when I noticed my role was becoming more about HR items and less about I operations because I had a very solid team under me. So I had a solid team. I think at that point I had nine locations and my managers, my store managers were just rocking it, which allowed me to take on a lot of HR responsibilities to where I just let Panos and Apollo know that, hey, this is how I'm spending a lot of my time and I'm able to do it because I have strong leaders. But if other dms may not have that same opportunity, they might not be able to wear many hats. They need to be focused on being a dm. So we, and it was a lengthy process. We started talking about it and probably a year before it came to fruition. And then there are many things that need to be in, there were many things that needed to happen before I could step out. I needed to find a replacement. I needed to train my replacement. I needed to make sure that operations were being taken care of as I transitioned into my new role.

Mariangel Babbel (07:59):

Oh, that's awesome. So talk to me a little bit about how, I mean, you said you had a solid team in place, but there were a lot of things that you saw that needed to happen to start pulling this together, which ultimately led you to this path. What were some of the things that you off the bat knew you needed to do in order to help your company scale?

Kayla Ladd (08:20):

So some of the bigger items were just communication to the company about our policies, about our procedures, streamlining our onboarding, and just creating consistency with our hiring and our training and assisting with recruiting. That was something I did pretty early on is I started recruiting at a managerial level, so for store managers and assistant managers. And then as we grew to district managers, Panos and I, it would just be the two of us initially where we were just interviewing dms. We were lucky enough to grow from within. So all but one of our current dms has worked for Jamba at some of them at a team member level. So that's very, very helpful. But yeah, I would say those were the major areas.

Mariangel Babbel (09:23):

That's great. Thank you. And I love that you've had that partnership with them where you could build those solutions together. You said it took some time, but it sounds like you did it right, which is great. So Kayla, you've moved into this new role. Sorry to keep harping on your experience. What was that like to move into that new role and some of the core functions that you've been focused on since you've joined that segment of the

Kayla Ladd (09:51):

Business? So it was tough because I was a district manager. I was an operations girl and I loved being in stores. I loved having the performance visits and one-on-ones with my team and getting to know the team. So moving into an HR role where I just don't have the ability to be in the field as much as I had previously been used to was difficult. But at the same time, I was very excited to be able to create, I had so many ideas just coming from an operations standpoint. Having been in the store, I saw so many areas of opportunity where we could improve as a company. We were doing so many great things, and I wanted the ability to share those great things with the company as a whole, as opposed to them just being at a store level or maybe even a district level. So I think the transition from being out in the field to not out in the field as much was the hardest. But like I said, creating opportunities at a more company wide level as opposed to an individual store level was a huge benefit.

Mariangel Babbel (11:12):

Absolutely. And I love the track that you took to get to where you are. I mean, I dunno if this is the words you would use, but it's a little bit of a homegrown approach where you got to see all the different aspects within the business. And you and Apollo had a really nice partnership too. You still do, I don't want to say that you still have a nice partnership together because within this industry operations and the people function go hand in hand. You can't operate without the people. So Apollo, talk to me about how this experience with experience collaborating and really standing up an HR function to really drive some of the initiatives that you've been working on to allow you all to scale.

Apollo Joulios (11:52):

Yeah, I mean, it got to that point where we grew so quick that we quickly identified, Hey, we need some branches off of operations. And we also developed a training and development manager too. So not only do we need D hr, but he did the help with the trading piece and building that platform too. That goes hand in hand with the people side of things. But what I've truly loved about having the HR branch and working with her is we're able to have that structured side. So SOPs, job descriptions, and using different platforms to ultimately streamline things because we are so big that having that many employees takes up so much time. And so to me, the efficiency and being able to all be on the same page and identify the growth and come up with new fresh ideas, because we're not going to slow down. Our goal is to keep on adding on to this. And so just the collaboration of mines identifying the needs and them coming to fruition has been great.

Mariangel Babbel (13:18):

And I mean, remind us all here. I mean, you have a company of 40 plus stores. How many people is that you're managing

Kayla Ladd (13:27):

Right now? So we're definitely not in our peak season, but in our peak season we were at almost 700.

Mariangel Babbel (13:35):

Wow.

Kayla Ladd (13:35):

So now, right now we're closer to about 600, but we're getting ready to ramp back up. So yeah, there's a big fluctuation in our staff. We can be a very seasonal brand, which is why we're so happy to have cinon as a part of our brand now to kind of help bring some stability to a previously seasonal business. But at our peak, we're at almost 700.

Mariangel Babbel (14:02):

And I think that's an interesting point that you made there about the seasonality within your business specifically, because I think oftentimes when people think about scaling, they think about it being a very steady, very consistent pace, when in reality it's far from that, especially when there's seasonality involved or even some of the natural turnover that happens in the industry. So what are some of the key things, Apollo, that you're doing to help bring more transparency to your teams from an operational standpoint to help you all continue to scale?

Apollo Joulios (14:36):

So we're very transparent with our teams, from the team member to the gm, to our dms. We're transparent with our timelines, with our expectations with financials. So we have monthly HR and p and l calls with our dms. We go through the p and Ls, we go through succession planning, and then they take that to their teams and they have monthly sit downs with their GMs and GMs and go through the p and ls, the succession. So it trickles down. And we want them to run their districts and stores as if they own 'em. And the only way to do that is to be transparent, show them where every dollar goes, show them where the people go, the turnover rate. There's just so much that goes into it. And if you don't share that and you don't educate the teams and they won't really understand, I feel like that's a part of management is when you first start out, you start out as maybe an hourly and you're told about cogs and you have to hit a certain labor. It doesn't really comprehend. And then when you move up, it starts to kind of click more because you learn more about, okay, well this is why. And then as you continue to move up, you start to really understand, okay, wow, I didn't understand that if we waste this much fruit, it costs this much. And so if you don't teach that early stage, we won't be a successful business.

Kayla Ladd (16:28):

And I want to add on that. We also have biweekly company calls with all of our locations where we all get on a call together and we discuss operations, we discuss HR updates, we discuss training and development updates. And we do have a very lovely offsite sales manager named Lynette that is just amazing at handling all of our offsite opportunities and creating opportunities for our business outside of the four walls of each of our locations. And then additionally, my little department has just committed to sending out a monthly health and wellness newsletter. So that will include just right now specifically updates about covid and just the updated policies, regulations, or company policies, and then also just some basic health and wellness items for our teams, which also includes mental health awareness. And we share resources for all of those things. So a lot of communication. Jamba as a company is also pretty good at sending out weekly communication. So one of our dms is responsible for making sure that that communication goes out and is posted for our teams. So we use many different techniques to make sure that our teams are involved and stay in the know with what's going on.

Mariangel Babbel (18:00):

That's wonderful. I love the weekly cadence you have there and then the quarterly planning that you do as well. And what I love about that, it is that it gets everyone all aligned around what's currently happening across the entire company. In those conversations, do you also create opportunity, and I'd be interested to see how you structure this for your dms and GMs to get involved in surface things to the top two, whether it's things that are unique to their stores or things that probably need to be solved across the board.

Kayla Ladd (18:29):

We have a whole template for it. How awesome. With multiple tabs and yeah, we use Dropbox a lot to share information. So we have a team Dropbox where all of our resources are available at a store level. And then we have a DM Dropbox that is specifically for Apollo mentioned, p and l conversations, HR and succession planning conversations. So we try to have a documentation for all of our conversations. I do have an assistant who we also have Monday leadership calls, which was another thing that we didn't mention with all of our dms. And she takes notes during those calls and sends those out just so if a member wasn't able to attend or simply just for follow-up purposes, we try to document as much as possible.

Mariangel Babbel (19:29):

That's great. So let's go back, if you don't mind, just as we're wrapping up here. I love this conversation. Thank you. This has been great. I think a lot of companies hesitate, maybe they conquered the hurdle of understanding why it's important to communicate with the entire team and get maybe in their minds even over communicate, share a lot of information. But a lot of them might struggle with sharing certain types of information. And one of the things that Apollo talked on is like, Hey, we give them full visibility into the financials. That's not always a comfortable place for a lot of leaders to go in sharing that sort of data with leaders for different reasons. So Apollo, if you were to meet someone that was facing that challenge, feeling a little bit of sense of hesitation or had pause about sharing out that data, what sort of counsel would you give them?

Apollo Joulios (20:25):

Well, I mean, what we show the dms and GMs is down to the EBITDA line. It's a very daunting looking spreadsheet, and there's a lot of stuff on there, and it takes everyone a while to kind of grasp it. And at the end of the day, the things that you can control and the things that you can't. And what we really like to focus on is just work on what you can control, so labor and cogs and what you spend. Are you spending too much on office supplies? Are you spending too much on uniforms? And that's all spread out on the spreadsheet. And at the end of each month, it's neat to see the trickle down from when we share it with the dms and then they share it with their teams. Just the eyeopening, especially with the newer GMs and aid GMs like, oh my gosh, I just didn't know that paper costs this much. And just seeing the actual numbers to what each thing is. I know a couple GMs in the past, they would put price tags on each piece of equipment to show the team, Hey, this orange juice here is several thousand bucks, and the team doesn't know, but it definitely opens up their eyes.

Mariangel Babbel (21:58):

Yeah, I think it probably makes them better stewards of the equipment from every facet of the business. Kayla, I think you were going to say something and I cut you off.

Kayla Ladd (22:07):

Yeah, no, it's fine. No, knowledge is power. So we definitely want to empower our store leaders to own their business, and they can't do that if they don't know what's going in and what's coming out of their stores. And you're right about the hesitancy because it is a very daunting spreadsheet to look at, and you can dive in to find every last penny. So we also include a lot of training with our p and l reviews, which Caesar training and development manager does a really great job at. So training our dms to first feel very comfortable with digging into their p and ls, and then encouraging them to spend a lot of time training their GMs and AGMs, which they do that during their monthly, and it takes, I mean, some of the GMs, it takes years for them to really fully grasp the fullness of a p and l because it can be very complex.

Mariangel Babbel (23:13):

Great. Well, we're wrapping up here. So before we go though, I mean, I love all the tips that you've shared so far and some of the best practices you've had around creating that operational transparency, the opportunities that it's unlocked for you, right? Creating that transparency opened up that ability to spread out those extra branches to help operations really scale up in the ways they needed to. But this is the question for each of you. So I'd love for each of you to answer this. For the people that are listening today, what's the starting point of all the things that you can do to unlock operational efficiency, whether it's through an HR function or through an operational functions? I'd love your take on both. Where do they start today?

Apollo Joulios (23:55):

I would say you have to believe in it. You have to believe in the brand. You have to believe in who you work for, and you have to believe in your teams. I mean, nothing will get done unless there's that buy-in from everyone. And that comes with the transparency piece. If PTOs was not transparent with Kayla years back and had that roadmap and she didn't believe in him, we wouldn't be here right now. And so he's set up that roadmap and that transparency for us, which has led to us being transparent with the rest of the teams. And we're all here because we absolutely love the brand and we believe in what we do.

Kayla Ladd (24:39):

And I would absolutely agree with that. It starts with our people. It starts with their buy-in of the culture and the brand specifically, and just what we're doing every day. I mean, we've had, from an HR stand standpoint, I have seen resumes that are four pages long with just experience in the restaurant industry. And I've conducted so many interviews and people with just so much experience. And one thing that I identified early on in my role is that if the person can have as much experience, as much knowledge as we want, but if they are not bought into our ideals, our mission, our brand, what we try to do every day, it's just not going to work. They won't be happy, they're not going to be successful, and it is not going to be a long-term solution. So yeah, I completely agree with what Apollo said.

Mariangel Babbel (25:50):

Wonderful. Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you sharing what you've learned. I've learned a lot through the conversation, and hopefully we can have you back again some time.

Kayla Ladd (26:00):

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having us. We appreciate

Mariangel Babbel (26:03):

It. Yeah, thank you. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Thanks again for joining us. If you enjoy today's session, please consider sharing it with a colleague or on social. And if you'd like to keep up on the latest QSR trends and best practices, check us out at workstream us slash blog.