The Demand

This week, you name which parts of your training run like a classroom and which parts run like a working restaurant, and you stop treating classroom hours as proof of competence. If you keep certifying cast members on modules and quizzes without floor reps under real pressure, you will keep sending undercooked cast members onto the stage and calling it trained.

The Work

  1. Audit your current training path. Separate every component into two columns: taught in a classroom or module, and taught on the stage under live conditions.
  2. For every item sitting only in the classroom column that requires real-time judgment — reading a table, recovering a service failure, sensing a Guest need before it is spoken — flag it as incomplete training, not finished training.
  3. Build a working-restaurant requirement into your training path: a minimum number of supervised live shifts, with a named leader present, before a cast member is certified solo on any station that requires judgment.
  4. This week, pick one cast member currently mid-training and confirm they have logged real reps on the actual stage, with real Guests, under real pressure — not just passed the module.
  5. If they have not, do not certify them. Schedule the floor reps before you sign off.

Before you certify your next trainee, confirm the floor produced the competence — the classroom only produced the vocabulary.