Pizza Hut: Hut TV
Context
Pizza Hut Restaurants UK is a well-established restaurant brand, with approximately 8,000 employees spread across the business’s 285 restaurants.
Challenge
Economic pressures combined with increasing competition, saw Pizza Hut’s share of the UK market decline. A new transformation strategy was launched, focusing on improving the restaurant environment and menu, and delivering a ‘guest attentive’ customer experience.
Limited budget and resources to introduce and train the new service concept, and the challenges of on shift, hourly paid employees spread across hundreds of sites meant that a radical new approach was needed.
The Solution
Alchemist came up with the idea of using video to deliver the training message; specifically in a ‘Netflix series’ format of short, streamable programmes that generated restaurant demand for content.
Thus, the concept of ‘Hut TV’ was born – a portable, engaging learning approach, with a real point of difference; the 6 Presenters were Pizza Hut servers and managers who knew the challenges that Pizza Hut service teams face every single day.
The Presenting Team were trained by Alchemist via the ‘Pizza Hut Media Academy’, a development programme designed to hone their raw talent and allow them to express the training messages with personal style and relevance. They were taught a series of key skills including presenting to camera, acting with others, using the voice to express a message and how to write effective, punchy content.
In total 27 short programmes covering aspects of managing and delivering service were created, and made available one episode at a time over the following 12 months – allowing Pizza Hut employees to learn whilst on the bus to work.
The impact
- Winner – CIPD People Management Awards 2015 – Best Use Of Technology
- Maximised use of Pizza Hut budget, and overcome practical limitations of conventional training
- Pizza Hut experienced an increase in its sales and guests visits, evidenced by adopter restaurants delivering up to 20% sales growth against the previous year (of which 75% was guest frequency driven).
- Helped reinforce Pizza Hut’s training as grounded and in tune with team members, eradicating the typical top-to-bottom feel found in typical training videos.
