Ask Maryanne – Best Places to Work
Maryanne Robertson was interviewed by Gillian Blake after Kings Family Restaurant received top workplace honors. The following is an excerpt of that interview.
Gillian: Maryanne, congratulations to Kings Family Restaurants for receiving the top workplace award.
Maryanne: Thank you. It means a great deal to leadership because it's the employees who vote on this. We view it as feedback from our employees—a check on our performance as leaders.
Gillian: Kings has been around Chicago for quite some time. Tell me about its beginnings.
Maryanne: The State Street restaurant is the flagship for Kings Family Restaurants. It was the first location our CEO’s family opened back in the 40’s, sharing family recipes brought over from Italy. In fact, many continue to be our most popular dishes today. Our CEO, Ralph Napoli is considering featuring more of his family recipes as specials to set us apart from the competition.
Gillian: What’s the secret to Kings’ success?
Maryanne: Much of it has to do with the values that we stand for. We aim to operate by grace, civility, gentility, and excellence. And our employees are key to providing our customers with the exceptional experience we intend to offer each of them.
Gillian: How do you instill these values in your employees?
Maryanne: We go to extensive lengths to train our staff. That training includes everything from proper service, advising them how to take orders and how to interrupt gracefully—like not asking a customer how they are doing when they have a mouth full of food.
Our values are detailed in a book that all incoming staff have to review. Every new employee is assigned a coach and a leader to help familiarize them with our processes, our menu, and our culture.
Gillian: What kind of benefits do you offer to your employees?
Maryanne: All employees receive discounts on meals, even take-home meals, and paid time off. A large portion of our employees are part time, often college students. In fact, that's how I started with Kings. Our part-time staff get paid sick leave and paid holidays.
But we do have a number of full-time staff in both the restaurants and our offices. They qualify for medical insurance, a retirement plan, PTO and holiday pay, and many other standard industry benefits. I have a wonderful benefits director who keeps us on our toes when it comes to emerging benefits.
Gillian: What do you think sets you apart from the competition.
Maryanne: In addition to our food—it’s uniqueness and quality—I'd have to say our people and our culture. Kings is a place where there is definitely a sense of belonging and inclusion. We often seek input from our employees especially our frontline staff, and that impacts the level of service that they provide to our customers. This fosters trust, collaboration and innovation. We treat our employees the way we expect them to treat our customers.
Gillian: You mentioned the leadership earlier, and I'm sure that leadership plays a role in your culture. Can you talk a little more about that?
Maryanne: You’re absolutely correct, Gillian. In any organization, culture starts at the top. Ralph is an exceptional leader who makes it a point to visit our restaurants as often as he can—talking with and listening to people. He is a master at putting people at ease and when people are relaxed, they do their best work. He has the genuine ability to make you feel as if you are the only person in the room, even when it’s a room filled with people. His smile is warm. His eyes sparkle when he laughs, which is often. In fact, I think his sense of humor is one of his best leadership qualities. It becomes infectious among the management staff when he’s around. That’s why working for Ralph and Kings is such a joy.