Jillian’s is FUN! Community Blog

Jake’s Cooks make it their own…Making perfection…

The warmth of Southern California has come once again to the street of Colorado.  You can see the many new faces and visitors of Pasadena walking up and down Colorado looking for a quick bite to eat. Then the smell finally hits them, the intense stong smell of the best burger of Pasadena Jake’s! It has been great to see such a turn around I’ve had with my cooks. We had a very strong amount of food sales in December around 9K a week but with their hard work, dedication to small detail, helping each other out, and most importantly passion for the love of the food they make we are averaging just short of 15k. “It takes a lot of time and planning to work in our kitchen.” say Everado Patino. “At first we use to laugh at Jaime about how much we should plan ahead and organize ourselves in the kitchen like office work or the military like it wouldn’t pay off but, when you have the cafe filled with customers wanting to eat “my” burger we have to keep our guard up and give them our best.” I have them constantly working with the tools I used in my training we have become legends when we use our Lettuce system we love the p-mix because we have the correct gauge on how much we need to prep and order. We also love the Kitchen Financials because we all sit together and organize the best times to fit the schedule and how much to prep. Yet I may have shown them a few tricks here and there with the Lettuce program, they impressed me with what they gave me this following week. My cooks have made their own daily cleaning program. They worked on what was the best time to get the kitchen clean to “our” standards. I was very impressed what they came up with and how dedicated they have been on getting it done; especially with our new dish machine and the installation of Butler Chemicals. Their doubled efforts have carried on another trend another perfect score from the Health Department. Now their next goal is to be the best burger in Southern California. And I believe to the fullest they will do it and do so much more!

 

 

 

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Bar Fights at Jake’s

 

 

Street Fighter IV was released with great anticipation in January of 2009 and sold out before it was even on shelves in stores.  Despite it’s popularity we were not too sure of the success that could come with hosting a Street Fighter tournament at our club.  Not willing to turn away any possible sell whether it be $200 or $2000 Jake and I met with someone interested in doing a tournament here.  After a few meetings we decided that the event was worth trying if nothing else but to get 100 people in our club that wouldn’t normally come. 

Shortly after we started to realize how “BIG” this community of Street Fighter acutally was.  Our host Ryan is one of the top players in the nation and had committment from the other top players in the nation.  It turned out that Ryan “Gootecks” has his own very well established website and was a star within this community.  The excitement started to build when he came in and filmed a mini commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A4rHDgt8Vg&eurl) talking about the event and Jake’s, and informed us that people from Japan and Canada wanted him to stream the event for them.

Although there seemed to be some buzz about the event we never would have imagined that it would turn out to be as “BIG” as it was.  The event was scheduled to begin at 5:00 pm, but we had guests starting to arrive as early as 12:00 pm.  By 3:45 we had a line that stretched down the alley to Colorado Blvd of the attendees that wanted to enter the “Beat a Pro Contest”.  We realized by 5:00 pm that we were at our 278 occupancy and we would have to start a line.  We had employees from neighboring bars coming over to see what was going on, we even had the Pasadena Police who were eating next door perturbed at the amount of people waiting to see this event.  It turned out that the Pros were all stars within the community, there was filming, interviewing and tons of picture taking.  

The best part of all was that these were people coming in to just watch so they were generously purchasing food & drinks.  In order to take the event to the next level we set-up promos with Jager and Bud Lt to have their girls come out, and we had a sampling from a new beverage company. 

   

   

 

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Team SFO Kicks-off Q1 with Great Communtiy Service

As you all know each Jillian’s & Jakes location must participate in one meaningful Community Service effort each quarter.  At the beginning of each year at our Annual New Year Managers meeting I pair the entire management team to head up one or more initiatives per quarter.  

To kick-off Q1, RaeAnne Turner ESM and Gil Frias AGM selected a great effort. Jillian’s of San Francisco Adopted a City block.  In conjunction with the City of San Francisco Public Works Department the team cleaned up an area just down the street from the club. The main area is the over and underpasses to HWY 101 and a major transportation route out if the city.  So on March 27th they, Gil and RaeAnne and a few trusty warriors headed down to the fwy area to start.  The team picked up garbage, swept, removed and painted over graffiti and the general clean up of the area are just a few of the important jobs they completed. 

Many people stopped to watch the team in the “Jillian’s Volunteer” shirts and thanked the team for helping keep our city clean.  In the coming weeks there will be a sign posted that the block has been adopted by Jillian’s of San Francisco.  it will also serve as great exposure as this route exiting the city is very heavily traveled.  I was blown away by this effort and even more grateful for the effort once I found out the team will continue with this effort once a month.  Wow, is all I can say!  We have once a month clean up and from last year we have continued with on-going Volunteering at the world famous Glide Memorial Church Soup Kitchen (seen in the Will Smith movie Pursuit of Happiness).  

Thank you team for giving your on-going efforts to the community and city at large. You are all truly making a difference in this world one person at a time.  

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