Penn Station Makes Training Magazine’s Training Top 125 List for 2018

Lance Vaught, Penn Station’s Vice President of Operations, said Penn Station's inclusion on the Training Top 125 list reflects a multi-year effort by the brand to become an industry leader in operations training.

“As a franchisor, Penn Station has always been hyper-focused on training,” Vaught said. “About three years ago, the editor of Training Magazine contacted us about participating in their training evaluation. That call served as a challenge for us to further analyze what we were doing and how it would be evaluated by a third-party expert, so we openly accepted the challenge.”

To evaluate their training and development systems, Training Magazine requires an extensive report from each candidate. Penn Station did not make the list in the first year they were considered, but according to Vaught, just completing the exhaustive submission process gave the franchise’s training and operations team a number of ideas for improving their policies, procedures, and tools still further.

“The submission process was comprehensive, and it was revealing to get a look at the metrics by which all companies are being evaluated,” Vaught said. “It allowed us to think about our own systems from an entirely new perspective, not just those traditionally practiced in the restaurant space.”

When the 2016 Top 125 list was announced late in 2015, Vaught saw for the first time the competition that Penn Station had been up against, giant companies with resources that far dwarfed those of the 315 unit Midwest sandwich franchise. For Vaught, the fact that Penn Station had even stood a chance against those brands was inspiring.

“We didn’t crack the top 125 that year, but we took a look at the brands that did, and we realized they were some of the biggest global companies, brands with armies of personnel and apparent bottomless pockets,” Vaught said. “The idea that we could stand shoulder to shoulder with such well-known and admired brands in terms of training, which is an essential component of any business, was exciting.”

Using the feedback that Training Magazine provided, Vaught’s team began working to improve every aspect of their training policies, procedures, and tools.

“We exhaustively studied every single note Training Magazine gave us, and we worked with consultants to institute improvements across the board, right down to the font and spacing we use in our training manuals,” said Vaught.

A year later, Penn Station applied for consideration for Training Magazine ’s 2017 Training Top 125 list. This time, they made the cut, ranking at number 90.

“To be considered for the list was a big deal,” Vaught said. “To get a spot on the list was our goal, but to actually beat out 35 other brands on the list, it was really an amazing validation of all the work we’ve been doing. We were by far the smallest privately held company ranked anywhere on that list, and we’ve always felt a little like David fighting Goliath, so it was an important victory for us.”

While Penn Station’s ranking in the Training Top 125 list served as an exciting validation for the brand, Vaught says the true benefits of Penn Station’s training upgrades are evident within the franchise system.

“We have an exceptionally strong operational system, and our philosophy has always been that the closer our franchisees follow that system, the stronger our brand will be,” Vaught said. “So operational compliance and execution is the name of the game, and the best way to ensure operational compliance is through training. Effective training is the most important component of our business.

We see our franchisees applying the operations manual and finding the support they need, we see retention and test scores improving across the system, and we hear our franchisees telling us that the ease and effectiveness of our training tools have increased, so we know it’s working, but of course it’s reassuring to have that third-party validation as well.”

Penn Station’s inclusion and higher ranking in the 2018 Training Top 125 shows that the improvements that got the brand onto last year’s list have been institutionalized and remain effective, but Vaught says his team is still working to make improvements.

“Being ranked by Training Magazine was really just a jumping off point for us,” Vaught said. “It was inspiring to find out we could be a leader across industries, and we’re not going to sit back and rest on our laurels now. There are a number of areas in our training programs that we’re targeting for improvement. For instance, we’d like to build out a comprehensive online training tool that would include every single element of our training systems. That’s an expensive undertaking, but it’s an investment that we strongly believe will lead to an impressive return on investment. .”

Vaught says Penn Station will continue to vie for a spot on the Training Top 125 list for years to come, not just for the validation but also to make sure the brand is measured against all others.

“At Penn Station, we believe it’s important to constantly challenge every department to do better, no matter how strong we believe they already are,” said Vaught. “Comparing our training systems to other brands’ is a great way of challenging ourselves, and we’ll continue to meet that challenge.”