Stars Restaurants: Service from the Top
Restaurants
Written by Meghan Flynn   
Tuesday, 01 September 2009
Stars Restaurants: Service from the Top
Everyone at this regional fast-food chain works for the customer. That philosophy enables it to compete with its many larger competitors.
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Greg Barrett went to work for his father, Jim, at the family business when he graduated from college, saying he’d work there until he didn’t enjoy it. Today, Barrett is CEO of the 39-location Stars Restaurants, and he said the Edmond, Okla.-based company succeeds because everyone from the top down works for the same people: the customers.

“All of our employees understand that it isn’t me who pays for the gas in their cars or the books their kids read; it’s the customer,” he said. “The customer pays for my gas, my shoes, and my kids’ books too. As a family-owned company, we don’t have investors to impress, so the focus stays on serving our friends and neighbors high-quality fast food.”

Stars Restaurants: Service from the Top
Greg Barrett, CEO
Barrett’s father founded the drive-in restaurant chain in 1986 with the idea of serving fast food the way it used to be. Barrett said the company hasn’t changed most of the recipes since the beginning; each location makes all of its onion rings fresh every morning by hand, for example, and every burger is served hot off the grill instead of warm from a heat lamp.

With commodity prices and the cost of food on the rise over the last year, Stars has had to adapt like everyone else. But Barrett said his goal is to cut costs in ways the customer doesn’t notice like switching from logo to plain napkins or changing the type of straws the company uses. A customer doesn’t miss a logo napkin, but they would miss 99-cent large burgers three days a week.

“It’s not just about speed; it’s about taste and quality,” Barrett explained. “Every day, our customers have choices about where to buy food, and when they honor us by pulling onto our lot, we honor them with an excellent and affordable, as well as fast, meal.”

This service culture is paying off: Stars is emerging from five years of expansion. In 2005, the company opened its first franchise location and since then has opened four new company stores. Barrett said that typically, the company goes through cycles, opening several stores in a short period of time and then taking a few years to plan the next phase of expansion.

Stars is also slowly remodeling all of its restaurants. Last year, the company tore down and rebuilt one in a 1950s style; Barrett said the top of the restaurant looks like an old Wurlitzer juke box with a round, slightly offset neon sign. According to him, the customers are in love with the new look.

The main drawback of running a small, family-owned business is lack of capital, and Barrett said the company will space out remodels as Stars gets financing and the construction company Stars has worked with for more than 20 years has time in its schedule. Stars has completed five interior remodels and plans to complete two more complete rebuilds and 10 remodels in the next two years.

Investing in people
For the future growth strategy of the company, Barrett is unsure about opening more franchised locations. Though the current franchise in operation is doing well, he said the executive team doesn’t want the company to grow too quickly.

“Our remodeling schedule will incur a significant amount of debt, so we are starting with that and taking it slow. But growth for us is less about buying property or equipment than it is grooming new managers, which is a time-intensive process we never rush,” Barrett said.

The first step to opening a new Stars restaurant is for Barrett to meet with a few key managers and ask them to locate and start training potential future managers. For this company, finding the right manager and giving him or her the right tools is the guarantee of a successful restaurant, not the location or the cooking equipment.

Managers at Stars are part owners of their restaurants and receive a percentage of the profits, which is one reason nearly all of the current managers have been with the company for 15 to 35 years; Barrett said most started as car hops, fountain workers, or cooks.

“We saw something in them, and they saw something in this company,” he said.

Part of the job for Stars managers is getting to know all their employees, understanding everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential. According to Barrett, training is close to 100% on the job: nearly every employee learns every position and how to make everything on the menu, but he noted that that’s the easy part. Being able to hire, fire, train, and motivate employees are the skills  he and his managers look for.

“Our biggest advantage is that we are family-owned and operated. We don’t have to impress anyone, so we can do whatever is necessary to help our people succeed,” concluded Barrett.
 
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