My Time At SmashBurger
My work experience has been all over the place over the last few years. I’ve worked in many areas that are vastly different from each other. From sales, manual labor, archive management, and customer service, I’ve done a lot of different jobs and had a lot of different responsibilities. However there is one position in particular that I hold above the rest. A position that I am very proud of because of what I was able to accomplish within such a simple job role. This experience would be my year and a half working as a staff trainer as SmashBurger.
I started this job as a sixteen year old kid with almost no work experience under his belt. In all honesty I wasn’t overly excited to start working at all. Had it not been for my parents “gentle nudge” to get a job, I probably would have spent my summer as I had in previous years. Going out with my friends, chasing after girls, and playing video games in my basement until 4 am. Although I suppose sixteen was the age where I would, by society's standards, need to begin my transition into adulthood by joining the workforce. I showed up to my first day at work filled with dread and resenting my parents for forcing me to be productive with my time. However I quickly found a change of heart when I met my fellow employees and began training. I had been hired on as a simple cashier, and the feeling of meeting each hungry customer with a smile and fumbling to work the register brought me a sense of excitement and joy. I quickly found myself excited to go into work each day, and before long I had mastered the register and was killing it on the customer service front.
After a few months of getting to know the restaurant better and mastering my simple cashier position, I was called in to have a meeting with my boss. I was pretty nervous initially, wondering if I had screwed up or gotten myself in trouble somehow. However I was met with a pretty pleasant surprise when my boss pulled up some chat logs on his computer. I was shown hundreds of customer surveys mentioning me by name. They spoke of my friendly personality and helpful nature, many of them really appreciating my “put the customer first” mentality. It was then that my boss told me he had spoked to the corporate office, and that based on these surveys and my performance, I was being promoted to our lead front of house trainer.
I spent the next 9 months training all new hires, as well as anyone looking to be promoted to a managerial position, in our district. I was responsible for teaching them all of their daily responsibilities, how to properly engage and interact with our customers, and all of the “golden standards of success” that SmashBurger employees were expected to strive towards. During this period of time I was able to accomplish some things that I’m pretty proud of.
Due to the surveys I was getting on a daily basis, our store’s customer approval rating was raised from 80% at the time of my hiring. To 90%, which was held throughout my employment.
Due to upselling techniques I developed and taught my trainees, our average check sales went up from $9.46 at the time of my hiring. To $10.10 throughout my employment.
Trained 9 managers for surrounding stores which were able to uphold high customer approval ratings.
Created an organizational system for inventory that was utilized in 3 other stores in our district.
Built good relationships with regular customers that positively impacted their view of the SmashBurger chain.
Over and above all. My time at SmashBurger taught me what it means to be patient with people, how to work hard to set an example, and how to give things 100% effort even if they seem small. It was a sad day for me when I had to move on from the company in early 2019. I had built relationships with co-workers and customers that I still miss till this day. I’ll always be grateful for the experience I gained working there, and the lessons it taught me. I look forward to putting all of it to good use within my future career.
“In reference,
I have had the pleasure of working very closely with Braden Schmidt as both General Manager and mentor. Braden was a huge asset to the success we have had at our location. While employed Braden was a great brand ambassador for our company. Not only did Braden improve relationships with our guests, he also increased our average check by a substantial amount and helped us train the future of SmashBurger.”
Jeffery Gould, Training General Manager @ SmashBurger #1651