Hardee’s Training Video

Enthusiasm, sincerity, and the human touch.  Qualities one must have in the fast food industry!

As we move away from all the trainings Wendy’s provided to us – serving hot drinks, cold drinks, mastering grill skills, serving chili, Frosties, and cookies (but not baked potatoes, for some reason), and some filler video that doesn’t really provide any kind of training, but merely sings about serving the drinks – we are in the market for another job.  How about a grocery store?  Well, we’ve done that before…twice.  Remember “Customers FIRST” and “Think to Prevent Shrink?”  Yeah, we struggled there because the examples were TERRIBLE!  Freakin’ Joan atJewel should never have taught us how to “be a real pro at Jewel.”

Heck, we were so terrible, by the time we got to Ames, we were hung up on Flim Flam and the “old lady” rapper.  We couldn’t handle that job!

Just when we think we’ve learned it all, and have officially run out of places to learn it, a new fast food restaurant just opened up nearby.

So we’ve put in your application, got the job, and now, we’re going to learn a whole other set of Very Important Skills…as as Hardee’s crew member!

Welcome to Hardee’s!

It’s 1986, and you’re in the back room at Hardee’s, preparing for the task of taking hamburger and Big Cookie orders.  But it is about more than just making change and hocking Big Cookies, it is about the aforementioned enthusiasm, sincerity, and the human touch.  It is about how to greet (and how to change the greeting up), how to sell, suggest, and up sell, and when to not up sell.

The Hardee’s Way…Is Sorta Like The Wendy’s Way, But With Southern Accents

The next part of this video covers, proper cash handling/giving of change, confirming orders once they are ready to go to the customer, assembling order on the tray (putting sandwiches and entrees in the center, french fries and hash browns upright, don’t let cold and hot items touch).

Also in the second part of the video, assembling a carry out order is reviewed – how to place items in the bag, placing drinks in bags, what to include with those drinks (one straw per drink!), to stand fries and hash browns up, and wrapped items flat.  Oh, and “don’t pop the bag!”

After that, it’s grill orders!  This covers special requests and how to ring them up on the register, the holding procedure for sandwiches, and when to discard them.  Service time, along with speed and accuracy are discussed here – 45 seconds for breakfast and lunch, with 60 seconds or less during peak dinner periods.  Customer use of the store phone is glossed over, but discussed.

Yes kids, there was a time when people didn’t carry phones, and went to Hardee’s and didn’t take pictures of their food or sit on Facebook the entire time!  That time was 1986!

And yes, this section covers drink preparation and service.

Although, it doesn’t involve music as a training method (gasp!), and each part is about ten seconds as opposed to two minutes.  There’s also no “Michael Jackson” or “Paula Abdul” to teach the preparation and serving of drinks.  Jeez, Wendy’s had whole training sections on SPECIFIC drinks.  Hardee’s, you’re already falling short in this area!

Perhaps their hot drinks…you know.

Anyway, in part three, spills, drops, and procedures for cleaning up and handling the situation are covered, as well as special requests (indulging customers, handling special situations, which will be covered in more depth in the next section.

Handing Special Situations The Hardee’s Way

This section of training covers handling of special situations – taking a child’s order (remember, don’t up sell!), delays in service, complaints, backup assignments, cleaning, and seeking assistance from a manager when needed.

And this all leads up to the final part of our Hardee’s training…

Working the Drive-Thru!

“Think of yourself as a radio DJ – everything you want to communicate has to come through your voice, except your job is alot easier than a radio DJ, because you have the undivided attention of your audience.”

So begins the scenario-based training of working the drive-thru – service times, addressing the customer, how a drive-thru crew’s tasks are divided up, and ends with our trainee doing his job!

Your Standard Training Video

The Hardee’s training video collection from 1986 features some earworm-type music, including a theme song that sounds like a production logo jingle, and some very disco-esque transition music.  The whole thing seems a bit staged and not like most training videos I’ve encountered, which were actually filmed in the places they depict, like the actual store.  This feels like it was filmed on a set, but I could be wrong.

The most distracting part of the drive-thru portion of this training is that it was obviously windy, and some dialogue of the drive-thru training is difficult to hear.  Or maybe that just adds to the overall charm of these training videos?

I’d like to think so!

The whole training video is 27 minutes long, but it is the complete package of that year’s training videos.  Make time for southern accents and procedures for serving cold drinks, you’ll love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFBvGy4S6eg

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A search of YouTube revealed a few more Hardee’s training videos, so, well…maybe we have another Wendy’s experience in the works?

I think so!

Remember, we’re not just selling food, we’re selling Hardee’s service.  So get out there and give the most efficient and courteous service to customers.  That’s the Ultimate Goal, and you want to accomplish this Ultimate Goal, don’t you?

I hope you answered yes!