People Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing.

With the supply chain set up and a beautiful restaurant built, we’ll shift onto getting an empowered, top performing team hired and developed to run the first Chipotle in France.

Over the years, I had heard how difficult it was to do business in France. From the frequent strikes, demonstrations, and 35-hour work week to the difficulty of removing low performers, I was met with plenty of wide eyes and shrugged shoulders when I shared what we wanted to accomplish. Still, I was enthusiastically optimistic that we could build a strong team. After all, there are over 2 million people in Paris. How hard could it be to find 30 people that I could get to buy into the vision?

With the guidance of Bertrand Gaillard , I was able find some HR consultants to interview with setting up job fairs, job postings, and begin my education in SNARR (Syndicat National de l’Alimentation et de la Restauration Rapide). This three-inch-thick book spells out all the rules, regulations, responsibilities, and expectations of running a restaurant company in France. There is no “At Will” employment in France and one must be very selective on who is allowed on the team because, once hired, you’re almost married to the employee, and I needed an expert to help me navigate the bureaucra-sea…

The first HR consultant I interviewed said no after I explained what we were trying to create; an empowered team of all top performers. She was not willing to explain SNARR to me or help me bridge the two disparate work cultures. The second person I interviewed had experience in US and French companies and was excited about the challenge. So was I! Until one week into our business relationship, she was approached by a multinational company to be their in-house Director of Human Resources. Great news for her, back to the drawing board for me. The third person I interviewed was rigid and far too strict to be a confidante and resource for me and the future team and reminded me of Ms. Drexel, my Catholic school teacher in the 4thgrade. Oof, no way!

While still searching for the perfect HR consultant, I reached out to the Executive team at Chipotle with a business case to hire an in-house HR person to be on the French leadership team. Their short answer was “no” citing how hard it would be to remove a low performing team member much less an HR professional that was missing the mark. Valid point and I continued interviewing consultants.?

After over two months of interviewing, I found someone that would be great for the team. She was curious, engaging, had practical experience working with other restaurant groups in France, and enjoyed a glass of wine at lunch. Perfect.

With the HR consultant ready, the next step was to find the leadership team for the restaurant. I would need them to assist with recruiting, hiring, and training of the team and provide valuable insight on the cultural and business intricacies of operating in France. Through the network of McDonald’s contacts, I was introduced to Maxime Lestringant . Max’s father was a McDo franchisee in the south of France so, similar to my upbringing being around Big Macs and Quarter Pounders (err, Royals with Cheese), he too knew the business and brought with him multicultural and multinational experience after working in NYC and being perfectly bilingual in French and English. He’s also a great dancer. Hired!

During one of our first hiring fairs in Paris, we met Johannes M. amongst the 50 plus candidates; a huge turnout which was immensely comforting. Johannes stood out immediately amongst the other candidates being interviewed. He was reserved, thoughtful, smart, and super curious about our mission. His background within the industry was excellent and after my pitch on creating a team of empowered top performers and using a Power Point presentation to show pictures and videos of what it was like to work at Chipotle, he signed on.

For their training, Max and Johannes needed to go to London since the first Paris location was under construction. Jacob M Sumner and the London team met them with open arms and showed them all the intricacies of cooking food from scratch to building the perfect burrito to managing the shift and restaurant. What was to be four weeks of training turned into four months of training and fine tuning after the CEO said the make line in Paris was the wrong direction. See previous post on the details of that one.

With Max and Johannes fully entrenched into the operations in London, Max recommended his cousin Basile join the team. Young, ambitious, enthusiastic, smart, and an amazing sense of humor he was welcomed aboard. Basile spent time training in London as well and with my frequent trips on the Eurostar train to visit, the four of us began to bond well. I couldn’t have dreamt of a stronger group of people to help lead the launch of Chipotle into France. Rockstars – all of them.

Preopening, and back in Paris, the four of us set out to hire a team and do a French version of Chipotle with the combined knowledge of operations and people cultures in the US, Canada, the UK, and France. We were armed with ambition, experience, and we were ready to take on the world. Let’s go!

In the next installment, we’ll go over building the team and the highs and lows of leading people in the first non-English speaking country in Chipotle’s expansion.