Who attended the SW Vision 2018 circle jerk? We are being promised more training as a region which probably means more useless cornerstone classes. Because that’s working out so well when you find new hires half asleep during their on boarding trainings.
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In reply to Frustrated: It falls on Prepared Foods because their department is the home of hot, prepared, ready to eat food. People come to the store just for these items at many locations. They have the most experience taking raw ingredients and turning them into a full meal with the high level standards of WFM presentation. Their department also has all of the equipment (steamers etc) to prepare a holiday meal. Do you seriously need to ask why PFDS would be the main department running the holiday tasting menu? They should be the experts at actually cooking the food well and showcasing our high quality products all the way through into making a first class meal. The meat dept can give you advice on how to cook your turkey, produce on how to steam your green beans but prepared foods is where it all comes together.
Why on earth would tastings only fall to only PFDS? All teams are supposed to support but no, let's throw everything, even the meat team's product to PFDS. All of the plates will come out of PFDS budget too. The tastings for a total of 16 hours (for free) was another brilliant GLOBAL idea. Here is the thing, 95% of holiday items come from a third party and are perishable and so when your first tasting is on 11/4, but your sales won't come until TG week, why would we have holiday product in stores that early? The amount that global 'negotiated' in free fill wouldn't have covered the first 2 hours of the first day, if you were a busy store that has customer who will demolish free food within minutes, even with 1-2oz portion control. Working in PFDS is not at all comparable to the other product teams, I wish the E Team, Global teams and RLT would begin to appreciate that!
Where is that? In my store the holiday table (front end) was in charge of organizing both holiday tastings- because cashiers are the obvious choice for that job...
Sorry to rain on the parade, but other regions cut those positions around 2 years ago and somehow managed to still do events, demos and yes, even holiday tastings. Other positions will need to step up and get it together to make it work. There’s no reason in the world why a capable PFDS leadership team can’t organize, plan and execute a successful holiday tasting.
As a former Demo Specialist.... I cant wait for TL's and STL's to ask me about putting together events and Sales Driving... only to say "NO." WHY you ask? These people have no idea how much work goes into pulling this crap off every week only to have little participation, no appreciation, and no support. Calling something "mandatory" does not guarantee full participation. Has everyone forgotten about the Holiday Menu tastings??
And more theatre in the stores? My team can barely get product ordered and on the shelf because they have cut more labor. Now we are supposed to provide theatre regularly? Why get rid of demo and sales drivers if you want theatre, events and demos? The teams cannot do it. There is no way.