New Certified Training Restaurants

This past month, HCI Hospitality celebrated the addition of a new Freddy’s Certified Training Restaurant (CTR) into the family. Frankie Grandstaff, District Manager in North Carolina explains that a CTR “is a location that has been certified by Freddy’s corporate to fully train all Managers-in-Training (MITs) as we bring them into the HCI family. Our Burlington, NC restaurant passed their certification inspection to become our 6th CTR! This is a huge accomplishment for our teams, who have been working tirelessly to ensure that their hospitality, quality, and cleanliness meet the Freddy’s standard. Restaurant Operating Partner (ROP) Donna Lawson says the biggest challenge of becoming a CTR was “chang[ing] the culture and retrain[ing] people so they could be developed more. I set myself and team members clear, tangible goals that we could achieve while having fun at the same time.”

CEO Dave Dreiling with Burlington ROP Donna Lawson

Becoming a CTR is a difficult task to undertake. ROPs and their teams must ensure their facilities are in top-notch shape, that their team is highly skilled and motivated to perform to Freddy’s standards, and that their operations are secure and consistent. They face yearly re-certifications to ensure that the quality maintains uniform year to year. Burlington faced the additional challenges of becoming a CTR during a global pandemic. Their team had to ensure high quality hospitality, quality, and cleanliness while keeping up with changing processes every single day, but that didn’t slow them down. Donna explains “Even with the challenges of 2020 that we have to have all faced, we didn’t take that time to slack off from what we have worked so hard to achieve.”

Greg Elchert (Killeen), Steph Gallant (Temple), Munish Babbar, COO, Crystal Kosnjek (Millard) and Donna Lawson (Burlington)

HCI is very proud of all of our CTRs and thanks the ROPs and teams for all of their hard work to set an example for everyone. COO Munish Babbar says of the CTR restaurants, “CTRs are building blocks of HCI's future growth and our Training ROPs have gone through a process which gives us the confidence that our future leaders will have a strong foundation with clear expectations during the training process which will enable HCI Flag to fly higher and stronger in all the markets we grow our presence.”

Crystal Kosnjek (Millard), Greg Elchert (Killeen), Steph Gallant (Temple), Donna Lawson (Burlington)

Keep up the great work team!