Fonda Mexican increases customer satisfaction and reduces people turnover costs through efficiency of staff training.
Fonda was founded in Richmond, Victoria in 2011 by two mates – Tim McDonald and Dave Youl. Tim was a lawyer and Dave was a fireman when they both set off to Mexico to develop the concept and get inspiration from the fonda’s all over Mexico.
In Mexico, a ‘fonda’ is a home that a family has opened to the local community as a restaurant, serving delicious and simple food that is made with love. The vision was to develop a menu of Mexican street food dishes designed to share, utilizing the quality, freshness, and variety of Australian produce.
https://www.fondamexican.com.au/
Challenge
After a series of negative experiences working in some undesirable workplaces, Fonda’s founders were committed to building a hospitality team with a positive and engaging culture.
Key Challenges:
- Ensuring that Fonda’s people were listened to, respected, and supported in their growth and development.
- Development of a training program that guaranteed Fonda’s people were best equipped to provide the consistent quality of service that their customers had come to expect.
- Deliver a program that would assist in providing Fonda’s people with long term career opportunities.
Solution
In conjunction with Fonda, Complete Hospitality Training (CHT) facilitated a tailored training program best suited to Fonda’s identified training needs. Fonda were very insistent that a generic program of training and assessment was not what they required.
CHT provided training and assessment that was learner centred and which supported lifelong learning. Resources, including assessments, were contextualised for Fonda’s restaurants and training plans included units specifically selected for Fonda whilst still meeting the packaging rules of SIT30616 – Certificate III in Hospitality.
CHT recognises the value of industry engagement as the driving force in shaping training and assessment strategies. The training and assessment services that are delivered are founded on industry need and expectations. In the case of Fonda, this also extended to delivering training in a manner which positively engaged and was tailored to the learner cohort of Gen Z and young millennials.
Outcomes
Some of the outcomes that Fonda has benefited from include:
- Quality and consistency of service replicated across all Fonda restaurants.
- Increased revenue through efficiency of staff training.
- Associated benefits from an increase in customer satisfaction; and
- Reduction in people turnover costs due to improvements in people engagement and job fulfilment.