In 2016, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the Fair Labor Standards Act (the "FLSA") prohibits employers from requiring employees to participate in tip-pooling arrangements.

For Tutta Bella to maintain the high hourly staff wage and health benefits, the company moved to a mandatory Service Charge system to replace tipping.

Within months leadership noticed a devastating decline in sales and customer count. Location managers logged many customer complaints regarding the Service Charge, lower staff morale, and food discounts were higher than ever before.

At six months, the company had lost over a million dollars from projected sales and was facing serious financial consequences.

1:1 Staff Interviews

To understand working demands, I went straight to the staff

I recruited two General Managers. two Dining Room Managers, and two Servers for anonymous 1:1 interviews.

I hoped that without supervisors present they would speak openly about their experiences in the restaurant, and this might provide a clearer picture of the high food discounts, incorrect promotion code redemption, and team morale

8 Focus Groups

We held 8 focus groups to understand public opinion

After completing the review of online postings and Yelp comments, the Director of Marketing and I used that information to form topics and held 8 Focus Groups. We used a third-party moderator and a set question list within an open forum.

4 groups of current customers / 4 groups of non-customers.

When considering customer empowerment, the Director of Marketing and I looked to successful food and beverage brands in the Seattle area. One of these brands had recently launched a campaign to recover from errors in operation resulting in customer dissatisfaction. This simple, but memorable messaging articulated that you are guaranteed satisfaction when ordering from any location.

At Tutta Bella, remaking menu items to meet customer expectations was already an internal policy, and by simply publicizing this “Promise” we hoped to gain recognition for caring about customer experiences and restoring a sense of control.

Google Voice is a free service that gives you a phone number for calls, texts, and voicemails. When configured, this number can forward calls and texts to a cell phone or email account.

Tutta Bella already used Google for Business services to manage email accounts, track website analytics, and store shared documents with the cloud. Because of this, I concluded that we might be able to leverage the Voice features to build a customer communication tool that managers would be able to use with little additional training because of their existing familiarity with the Google platform.

How do customers feel rewarded?

Now believing an improved reward program was needed, the Director of Marketing and I researched existing programs.

We each signed up for several programs recommended by customers in our email club survey, and together interviewed other reward and loyalty program owners to identify successful approaches and companies that build or manage them. 

The Amici Club

“Amici” was selected by the company owner for the translation to “Friend”, and is a virtual rewards program that assigns account number to a member’s phone number at onboarding, and allows them to manage their account rewards through the online interface, ithout the need for a swipe card to earn or access thier rewards. 

Staff Incentives Plan And Gamification

We worked with the NetMasons team to associate each staff member’s existing four-digit employee ID code into a quick register feature. We provided hourly staff with tablets to help customers signup for the rewards program on the spot, and this allowed management to track how many new reward members were added each day by any staff member.

Each restaurant offered weekly prizes to the staff member that added the most reward members that week.