Monterey gets down to the ‘meat’ of things

There is nothing meatier than meat itself. Well, Monterey is unlikely to argue with the fact. It is said to have revolutionized meat retail business in the country and continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

By now, the familiar, quaint-looking neighborhood Monterey meat shop is deemed a routine stop to home bound customers. What made its meat items on top of everyone’s grocery list can be attributed to the way it manages the "meat" of its booming business.

The real deal on meat

A Monterey meatshop is like sugar to ants. Given a good location, expect people to flock in almost immediately. After sometime, regulars pop in just to see what would be a good pick for dinner.

Such a rave about its wide array of meat products made Monterey a lot more rigid in keeping tabs on every store’s operational standards.

As disclosed by Armi Fontanilla, Selling Systems, Training and Audit head, Monterey provides regular training for franchisees and their meatshop staff. Every program enables participating butchers, cashiers, etc. to fully understand their role in the business. It consists of classroom as well as hands-on training.

"Our goal, really, is to make every staff capable enough to see to the needs of all types of customers. We want them to be flexible and ready to offer assistance like what type of choice meat would be best of a particular recipe. This is not normally available in a regular supermarket, wet market or talipapa."

From food safety and work place housekeeping, butchering and culinary skills, quality audit, inventory management and even a tour of the meat plant, Monterey is all heart in pursuing efficiency in all its stores.

Fontanilla relates,"we conduct a rigid quality audit system to verify the performance of our meatshops. Of course, we expect every store not just to do well in sales but also, meet quality standards."

Meat-ing quality

Despite Monterey’s success in meat retailing, it is still keen on a few enhancements here and there. For one, it will implement a new audit scheme to upgrade standards and come up with more training.

According to Fontanilla, a number of activities are already lined-up for the year, "we are looking at skills enhancement workshops, refresher courses on specific topics and customer service."

She further stressed the need for franchisees to maximize the benefit by sending more people to Monterey training, "we encourage them to send their people so they could experience first hand the flow of business."

To know more about the Monterey Meatshop franchise, call 633-MEAT (6328), or log on to www.montereyfoods.com