Samantha Malone : Taqueria La Mejor
We are in the second quarter of our adventure with La Mejor and we are happy to say that the Center for Employment Training (CET) has broken ground! Last quarter was full of building relationships, planning changes, and estimating prices, but now we finally get to see our changes happen. Construction started last week and the photos so far look great.
Our biggest challenge this quarter has been trying to coordinate our schedules so we can meet with Maria, our business owner, to finalize menu and hours changes. We will be able to visit later today so we can begin redesigning the menu and updating the restaurant's online information immediately.
When we redesign the menu, we will have to order a new box to put up on the wall, like the current one in the photo below.\
This may be more expensive than we initially thought, so we will measure out the dimensions and visit Sign Jose, a company that will make the sign, to decide on which materials are best for the project and our budget.
We are also hoping to teach Maria how to use her Point of Sale (POS) system to its full potential. Though she has had the system for around a year, she relies on her calculator and cash register for most transactions. She finds the POS system complicated and it makes her ordering system more difficult because it does not list the type of protein that the customer wants. For example, if she enters a carne asada burrito and a chicken burrito, it will only show as two burritos. She would then have to write in the protein choice on the paper before putting it in the kitchen area, which costs so much time that it is easier to continue with her traditional ordering system.
While we have enjoyed working on La Mejor with Maria, we also had the opportunity to listen to a lecture from Professor Barry Posner, who just released a book on leadership. His lecture and the following exercise gave me great insights into group projects and the most efficient ways to work. While working on what is essentially a five-month-long group project, it is important to find the most effective way to work together. A group is not healthy or efficient if someone does all the work or stops after his or her part is completed. Working as a team means understanding that you may have to pull apart something that you just finished so that the group may finish its task. I am learning to appreciate this program more and more as we progress because I am increasingly seeing how skills developed here will help me with work after college.