tim-vandusen-business-internship

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 11 if my D’andreas Internship

Recently our phones have been going down about 3 times a week. Causing us to lose business because we are unable to receive phone calls. Gien that about 80% of our customers call us before coming to the store this has been devastating to our sales. Forcing us to cut labor costs to make up for the difference. Prior to these issues, I had not realized how important the phone system is to us. If this issue is not fixed soon my boss could end up losing money for the week. 

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 10 of my D’andreas Internship

This week we ran into an issue where a lot of items were shown as voided out. Unfortunately, our computer system does not require us to give a reason when voiding an order. This resulted in a long list of items shown as voided without any explanation. Luckily, I was working the night these items were voided and was able to give an explanation as to why. There was still one remaining order that I could not confirm. After seeing how are computer system handles voided items, it's clear that it should require employees to say why they voided an item. While we have trustworthy employees, other places my not. An untrustworthy employee could be voiding out completed sales and keeping the money. This example may be a bit extream, but definitely, something owners should be concerned about. Due to the issues that this problem causes I think there should become changed made to the P.O.S. system. 

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 9 of my D’andreas Internship

This week we began having problems with our POS system during a busy night. Upon taking a customer’s order the system would save it under the wrong name. This lead to myself charging a customer $25 less than I was supposed to. Over the course of the night, we had to adjust how we were taking orders to ensure this mistake did not happen again. Unfortunately, I had to cover the missing $25 as it was my mistake. This issue showed me that you should always double-check the system before charging people. It also gave me a pretty good idea of how to handle things when the computers are not functioning properly. 

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 8 of my D’andreas Internship

This week I got to see what it was like when an employee does not complete a task that was expected. We have a pizza maker who gets all of the pizzas for the day ready before she leaves. Unfortunately, this week after going home we quickly realized that we were missing some important things. For example, we did not have a single small pizza in the store. Due to this issue, we had to complete her job for her while taking time away from our own. This was interesting to see because our manager had to delegate what was missed across the whole staff. It was a good example for me to see what happens when things don't go as planned in the workplace. Without proper management, a simple issue like not having any small pizzas could cause many other issues. Such as causing orders to get backed up because we had to stop and make a small. I feel that a lot can be learned from seeing how a manager handles adding unexpected tasked onto their staff. 

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 7 of my D’andreas Internship

To my surprise, this week I was given a store key. This was because in recent weeks we have been training a new employee and it was time for him to learn how to close the store. Given that it was his first time working a closing shift and we were the only two employees, I am glad that it was a Wednesday night. If my boss had not taken the day of the week into consideration, we may have run into some issues. Luckily it was a relatively slow day allowing me to walk him through the closing process. This was a good experience for me because I have never been the manager of a one-on-one shift. It also helped me build some trust in our new team member because he was able to keep up with all of the tasks required for a close, allowing us to get out on time.

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 6 of my D'andreas internship

This week I had a shift at the downtown store. I was aware that the volume of customers was much larger than what we have at the north store. However, while they have more customers the ratio of people coming in to get slices versus buying a whole pizza is much different. At North we have mostly orders for whole pizzas and very few customers come for slices. While I was downtown I had noticed that about 80% of their customers are only buying slices. I'm not sure about the profit margins on slices or whole pizzas, but customers spend less money at a time when only buying slices. This means that it takes the downtown store much more sales to meet the same total revenue. It was interesting to see that our downtown store not only has a higher volume of customer, but also different top selling items.

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 5 of my internship at D'andreas

Recently we have been adding more people to the weekly schedule. The reasoning being that our sales have been steadily increasing. However, adding staff member at this time of year seems a bit misleading to me. Given that historically our sales have dropped every winter and we are entering that season now. Regardless we have been training a new employee for the past few weeks. I have had the chance to talk to him one on one and his last job was Stewart's. Hearing what he has to say switching from a place like Stewart's to D'andreas has been interesting. From what I understand, we would have much better profitability if we kept track of our inventory the way that Stewart's does. I will be asking my boss what he thinks about the idea of keeping a better inventory over the next few days, hoping to see why he doesn't keep a detailed inventory.

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 3 of my D’andreas internship

On Monday I went to D’Andreas at 8:30 to meet with the owner Rory. He walked me through counting the sales from the previous day. Surprisingly, the process is much quicker than I had thought. It only took about 30min for him to complete counting the drawer even while explain what he was doing to me. After counting the drawer and ensuring it has the correct amount of cash for the start of the day. After counting the drawer, Rory compares the sales numbers to the previous year. This gives him an idea of how the business is doing and if he needs to make any changes. Recently we have been beating last year’s sales week after week. The sales have increased so much that we are looking to hire another delivery driver to make up for the increased volume of orders. At this point, the store I work at in Wilton is showing higher sales than our store downtown Saratoga. This is impressive because the market in Wilton is much smaller than that of the downtown store. Leaving both my boss and I confused as to why the downtown store is underperforming. Rory works downtown almost every day and is looking for ways to bring downtown's sales back up to where they should be. Over the next week, I will be meeting our new counter person, and hopefully, we can find another driver.

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 2 of my D’andreas internship

This week we got a new delivery driver and because I'm the most experienced driver, it's my job to train her. In the past, it has not been my job to train so this has been a new and interesting experience. In the past,  I have trained people at other jobs but at the time I was not a BMME major. Now that I am I feel it’s necessary to apply the skills talked about in class and apply it to my job. This is both good and bad because I tend to second guess myself. For the most part, she has been learning quickly and seems to be a good fit. Tomorrow morning I am meeting my boss at 8:30 to see what he does before everyone shows up in the morning. 

[tim-vandusen-business-internship]

Week 1 of my D'andreas internship

After a week of interning at D'andreas my boss has not had much time to work one on one with me. Due to us losing our store manager at the downtown store 4 days ago. I have however, had the time look over some of the order forms for our new distributor. It was surprising to see how limited we are on what we can order. For example, a new chip company we are using "Uglies" there are only a few different flavors. Over the next weeks I will be learning what he does when counting the sales every morning.