As a matter of fact, there isn’t one single franchise unit of Montana Mike’s in the state of Montana. There’s only one in all of North Dakota, here in Minot, at 3816 S. Broadway, in front of Walmart. A creation of a group called the Stockade Companies, which began with a single restaurant in Oklahoma City in 1966, 80 restaurants are now in operation in nine states and Mexico out of Round Rock, Texas. Twenty-eight of these restaurants are Montana Mike’s, with plans on the books for two more this year – but not in North Dakota.

Along with the name, the Montana Mike’s-franchised restaurants carry a mountain lodge theme and decor. I suppose they are designed to appeal to the rugged individualist hiding out in all of us, but troops of Girl Scouts have been known to dine there. Montana Mike’s is a steakhouse. It also serves chicken, ribs, chicken-fried steak and the usual assortment of salads, sides and appetizers. Restaurants cut their meat onsite, and they cut and process their vegetables fresh daily. They make their dinner rolls from scratch, including making their own dough. They hand bread their own onion rings: These don’t come out of a frozen box. They have a full bar. No live bands or Muzak, so it’s a good place to have a conversation without having to shout over the “entertainment.”

You can access their entire menu online. The last time I dined there, I ordered the Strawberry Salad with Chicken ($12.99) with a grilled chicken breast, fresh strawberries, candied pecans, craisins, bleu cheese crumbles, red onion, chow mein noodles on crisp romaine, with a light raspberry vinaigrette dressing. For an entree, try the Mile High Ribeye Steak, 14 oz., presented exactly as I ordered it, medium rare, and worth the $23.99. Service was good, friendly and unobtrusive. My choice of words about the service is intentional: There is a fine and important line between friendly and overdoing it. Too little and the customer may think the server is unfriendly or aloof; or at the other extreme are servers launching into an extensive monologue, especially about negative aspects of their life and not knowing when to shut up. They have a job to do, but creating a friendly and welcoming atmosphere is a part of that job. An experienced server has refined the social skills of exercising restraint and exiting a conversation graciously. When you consider the fact that most of these servers in our local restaurants are teenagers, it is amazing how well many of them do at this.

The challenges of staffing in Minot

This restaurant employs about 40. Benjamin (Benji) Thomas, the 33-year-old general manager, said the local labor market is stable. The key to success with the staff is, first of all, selection. When potential servers or kitchen staff walk in the door, they bring their cultural values and attitudes with them. If they have a work ethic, they are keepers, and the rest of the story is treating them with respect and solid training. Benji, who has been working in restaurants since he was 14 years old, said his rule of thumb is your employees work for you (the manager), but you work for them, too. Restaurant work is physically and sometimes emotionally demanding, and the hours can be long. When looking for supervisors or key lead people, Benji looks for level-headedness. The worst thing is to hire or promote someone who power-trips with a little bit of authority; he says you give them a set of keys and they think they own the world. Benji says turnover can be a problem, but he is happy that 10 percent of his staff has been with him since the restaurant opened.

The franchise is owned and operated by Gangl Hospitality. Shannon Gangl was born and raised in Mandan, and he owns a couple of hotels in Mandan/Bismarck and another in Fargo. Both Shannon and Bernie Eckroth (presently vice president of operations for Gangl Hospitality) began as dishwashers. Bernie eventually apprenticed himself to an experienced chef in Fargo. He says he loves the kitchen, but has enjoyed meeting the challenges of managing all aspects of the hospitality industry. Bernie had his own formula for keeping staff: Treat them as individuals, always show respect for them, put fun into the work whenever possible, lead by example and acknowledge achievement – in front of their peers whenever possible. Take ordinary things and make them memorable.

Bernie says there is always some drama among the staff; the manager needs to be patient, ask questions and not rush to judgment. For example, he says cooks will often get upset when food is sent back to the kitchen. The best cooks are those who have had prior experience as servers. Then they understand what the server has to deal with. He says whenever he dines out, if the service was good but the food was bad, he tips the server anyway. (It’s rarely the servers fault.)

Servers have what is called “side work,” chores that need to be done during slack periods, to get ready for rush periods or for the next shift or the next day – things like refilling the salt and pepper shakers. Some are diligent about doing this; others less so. Generally, servers are rotated among the sections of the dining room. If a server who is routinely diligent about completing her side work is assigned to a new section and she notices that none of the side work was done by one of her peers the day or shift before, there’s going to be conflict, because the diligent server is going to have to scramble catching up the side work in the section. From our point of view as the customer, if the salt shaker is empty, it is likely not the fault of our server, but the negligence of a different server from a previous shift or the previous day. But the diligent server may be doubly penalized; first her or she has to scramble to catch up the extra work, and secondly, their customers may reflect their displeasure by reducing the tip.

With regard to hiring, Bernie looks for outgoing people who are honest and trustworthy. He says most of the time you can tell within the first five minutes of the interview, by what applicants say and their body language. But no one has a crystal ball and some bad hires occasionally get in.

Corporate vs. local restaurants

Franchise restaurants are a form of what I call corporate stores, but they are not the only form of corporate eateries. There are non-franchise restaurants that are locally owned by people who have had the benefit of years of working in corporate stores before getting into business for themselves. There are a number of these in Minot. They take the benefits of what they have learned with them.

The advantages of a franchise restaurant are undeniable. They have a lower failure rate, and locally we have seen a slow but steady parade of restaurants that have quietly closed up and gone away, including in just the last six months. Apparently serving good food is not enough for survival or success. There are others that manage to stay open, but at the price of exhausting the owners and staff, and depriving them of vacations and time away from responsibility to rejuvenate that the rest of us take for granted. Corporate operations focus on systems, set ways to do things, and almost zero tolerance for deviation from those formulas and systems. They usually are quick to take advantage of information technology, and they benefit from software that provides them with valuable information and management tools not even dreamed of 20 years ago. They manage by the numbers, and everything gets measured.

For example, in most of such restaurants, a server is expected to take a lunch order from a customer, and get both the salad and the entree out to the table in 10-12 minutes. For a dinner, it’s 12-15 minutes. Some salads are custom made, and are treated as an entree, but most of the salads are treated as a side dish and only come in two or three varieties; i.e. garden salad, Caesar salad or maybe a Cobb salad. With some systems, the number of salads that will typically be required in a section of the dining room on a given day of the week will be averaged out for the server. That server will have to prepare those salads in advance of the rush. When the order from the customer is brought into the kitchen, the server will usually deliver the salad and the entree to the table at the same time. By the numbers, she has met the requirements of the system.

But now let’s suppose you are the customer. You have ordered and received a beautiful, sizzling steak, cooked to perfection. You have received with your steak a fresh, crisp and refreshingly chilled salad. Now if you eat your salad first, your steak will continue to cook as it cools, so that as you finish your salad, your steak is now past it’s prime and no longer even warm. Or, in this Sophie’s choice, you can eat your steak first, and then move on to your by-now soggy and wilted salad that has lost its crispness and chill.

I presented this dilemma to Bernie and asked him if there is a solution. Because no matter what you say to a server, anywhere, any restaurant, you are probably going to get both your salad and steak at the same time, or worse, they will bring your salad out, and keep your steak under a heat lamp. I confessed that I have resorted to ordering my salad first, without indicating what entree I will be pairing it with. When I am almost finished with my salad, I then order my steak and there is no overlap between the two courses. Bernie says this can be difficult with some IT systems, because the entree and the salad are put in as a unit. Let me know if you have found a solution of your own to this dilemma. I don’t like feeling rushed through a meal or that a computer is calculating at precisely what time my party should be vacating our table.

It seems to me most hardened veterans of the restaurant business appreciate what you gain with corporate training; greater accountability, ways to pinpoint problems and progress and maximizing profitability. They also concede what is often lost: independence, flexibility and creativity of the cooks, staff and owners, and a more human connection with the product and the customer. We might compare it to the difference between a bed-and-breakfast and a casino hotel where the small refrigerator in the room is already stocked with products the chain wants you to buy, and if you remove one of their items, a computer somewhere automatically adds it to your bill, even if you never open it. Dining out now resembles so many other parts of our economy, including health care, where both medical practitioners and their patients feel like they are both on a conveyor belt, everything is on the clock, and profits and incomes are maximized by moving everyone through a little faster.

High tech has become low touch. Thank God for those very special service workers and professionals of all kinds that greet us with a warm smile and make us believe they are glad we came. It is still the human touch that brings us back.

Your comments and suggestions about less-well-known but outstanding dining experiences and locations are always welcome.