If you’re not seeing Dan Adam’s familiar face at Joey’s Only in Penticton, don’t jump to the conclusion that he’s sold his restaurant.
What you might be seeing is one of Adam’s trainees in the last stages of their education. Earlier this year, Adam was given the job of training all the new franchise owners for the Joey’s chain at his Penticton restaurant.
It’s nothing new for Adam, who moved to Penticton in 2005 with his wife and bought the Joey’s here. But prior to that, he spent 11 years at the Joey’s head office in Calgary as trainer and regional manager.
“I oversaw and ran the training program from our corporate restaurant in Calgary,” said Adam. “A lot of the materials and stuff they use for training, I developed for them years ago.”
But right now, Calgary and a lot of Alberta is booming and the corporate restaurant is having difficult times hiring and retaining people, including a manager.
Consequently, said Adam, they have a restaurant full of rookies, making it a less than ideal place to train new franchise owners.
“I have a restaurant full of long-term employees, very capable people that I have developed over the last eight years. So it was kind of a natural for them to ask me,” said Adam. So far, he’s had three trainees come out from Alberta.
“One from Sylvan Lake, one from Calgary and a fellow just came who bought the Joey’s in High River. And of course all three of them have never been out here before and they think it’s absolutely fabulous,” said Adam. “I think all of them are planning on coming back here for vacation.”
Joey’s has restaurant locations as far east as Ottawa, so Adam expects to be seeing a range of candidates showing up for the five-week course.
“They learn everything from how to cook all the food, how to serve tables, how to conduct proper service to all the book work, all the paperwork, the financial end of things, so it’s a complete business training,” said Adam. “I teach them to run a Joey’s from basically the ground up. They spend two weeks in the kitchen and then spend three weeks out front. Ideally, the last week, they’re the acting manager.”
And that, said Adam, is where some confusion has arisen, when customers see a new person running things. The next time they’re in, they’re relieved to find out he hasn’t sold the operation.
“We’ve raised our kids here and we still have a daughter in school. We don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon,” said Adam.
