Burgatory Bar

Alexis Bovalino

Culture Leadership Catalyst

Is it possible to create a culture where frontline employees care about the guest experience and the bottom line just as much as the owners do?

Two years ago, I pondered this question in my role as HR Director at Burgatory, a locally owned and operated restaurant group in Pittsburgh, PA. We had spent more than a decade dominating the burger and shake space. Until that point, my focus had been on crew engagement and supportive practices. We had strong training programs, a track record of promoting from within, a robust Employee Assistance Program, free and reduced meals for our staff, recovery-friendly supportive practices and a strong commitment to work-life balance. I was proud of our mission and our culture.

However, we faced significant challenges. The labor pool had changed drastically. The gig economy was pulling at our culinary workforce. The pandemic eviscerated many “first jobs” in the hospitality sector, dramatically changing the experience level of our younger staff. Crew members who had spent their entire lives in the industry were exhausted and discouraged by the outlook as foot traffic declined. Costs from all sides were increasing: healthcare, food, rent, utilities—you name it, we were seeing a spike.

On top of that, we had knowledge gaps to address. As a company that prided itself on developing talent from within, we faced a divide between restaurantsmart and corporate-smart operators. How could we close that gap? Communication lagged. We had concerns about scalability. We needed to adapt.

Restaurants are fast-paced environments, filled with high turnover and constant decision-making. Every minute counts. There is ongoing pressure to stay present on the floor, within the operation and in front of guests. Paperwork, analysis and meetings can feel like distractions. We needed to create a continuous learning environment without pulling our staff away from production for hours at a time.

I discussed these questions with our local workforce development group, Partner4Work. We were selected to participate in a national pilot with Shift Work Forward to explore whether open-book management could work in full-service restaurants. The idea was simple: when you give employees a voice, you empower them to make better business decisions. This leads to greater job enrichment, career mobility and engagement.

We embarked on a journey to launch the Great Game of Business at Burgatory. We wanted to teach our employees, from dishwashers to General Managers, how to read our P&Ls and make running the business part of the experience. The program included financial literacy training, games designed to improve operations and weekly meetings focused on forward forecasting and team recognition.

Over the next two years, we adapted the program and created the Burgatory Cup Bonus Program. We opened our books and invited our hourly crew members and managers to have a voice in our business. When they met profitability targets, they shared in the rewards through a bonus and PTO program. Our partners have always been generous with our people and now we have a structured way to demonstrate that shared effort leads to shared rewards.

We started to see changes in our culture. Our staff began developing ideas to drive revenue, such as selling hot chocolate and koozies on game days near the football stadium or recommending our scratch-made sauces with our house-made chips.

They took ownership of lines on our P&Ls, learning how orders are placed and invoices are managed. We played a game to encourage staff to think twice when bussing tables and avoid accidentally throwing silverware in the trash. This saved us $26,000 in silverware replacement costs. We also switched one of our cheeses to a better product sliced inhouse, saving $45,000.

They asked “why” a lot. And through those “whys,” we started investing differently, finding efficiencies and cost controls while maintaining our commitment to serving great scratch-made products at fair prices. We strengthened our EBITDA by 2% year to date across the company.

Today, 75% of our management team consists of employees who began their careers as frontline staff, including cooks, hosts and servers. This year, we have had 63 managers and 38 hourly employees participate in our weekly financial huddles. Six of those employees are on a pathway to salaried management.

By opening the books and making it engaging, we empowered our team to make informed decisions, build meaningful careers in hospitality and drive profitability and sustainable growth.