rant? When you go to Red Lobster,
what should it feel like at the
hostess desk? What should it feel
like when you’re seated? And we’ve
done market insights on what that
looks like for women in their 40s,
African Americans in their 20s,
Hispanic families that come with
maybe nine or 10 people. We’ve
made changes in restaurants in
high-indexing Latin communities where tables of eight and 10
are needed. We’ve changed menu
items. As a Hispanic, if I sit down
in a Red Lobster, is there anything
on that menu that’s appealing to
me? And if there’s not, what needs
to be on that menu?
It’s how we speak, it’s how we
talk, it’s how we make you feel welcome. Olive Garden guests expect
a certain experience, but every one
of us at this table has an idea of
what that experience should be. So
if you don’t understand what that
expected experience is, if you don’t
do that research—what is it like if
your server comes to the table and
sits in the booth with you? How is
that welcomed by different groups?
That happens in some restaurants
where the server actually just gets
in the booth and [says], “Hi, how
are you?” and some of our groups
absolutely hate it. Some think
it’s great. We need to know that
so that when we give training to
servers, they should know what
the expectation is. Marketing is the
same thing. We took Olive
Garden’s advertising
and realized that “When
you’re here, you’re family” in Spanish absolutely
did not resonate: “Aquí
estás como familia.” You
could never be part of my family,
but when you’re in my house, then
you’ll be treated as one of us: “Aquí
estás en casa.”
LESSON 7
LESSON 6
LESSON 5
LESSON 4
LESSON 3
LESSON 2
ANAND: Our clients want to do business with others who have similar values to theirs. Sodexho is not a household name. We provide
services very seamlessly through our client organizations, but the interesting thing is that diversity has helped us brand Sodexho in a way
that nothing else has. So for us, the diversity piece has really helped
us get our branding out there as a diversity leader and differentiate
ourselves from our competitors.
Many of our clients actually come to us and ask us for our
solutions and our expertise around diversity, which is something
that we didn’t seek out, but because of what we have been doing,
the clients have been coming to us and saying, “Can you help us?”
This sort of tipping point came four years into our journey—our
managers started saying, “Well, this is great. We’re doing a good job,
we’re spending the resources, we have the expertise. Can we now
provide this service to our clients?” They’ve started really building
it into the RFP process and proposal process in terms of providing
services to clients. Recently, we bid on a $15-million contract. The
manager who bid on that contract was smart enough to put in a piece
