Summer brings a distinct set of pressures for multi-unit managers. High footfall, seasonal staff, increased turnover risk, and teams that can burn out just as fast as they do at Christmas.
The sites that come through summer strongest aren’t the ones with the least pressure on them. They’re the ones who planned for it and achieved summer consistency across operations. Here are the eight things we’d encourage every multi-unit manager to focus on this summer.
1. Prioritise the guest experience
Walk into your sites, introduce yourself, and actually ask guests how their experience is going. Not via a survey or the data, but in person. The reaction you get is worth it on its own; most guests genuinely don’t expect someone at that level to care enough to ask.
But the message it sends to your teams is where the real value is. It says the guest experience isn’t just a metric on a dashboard. It matters to the people at the top. Make the customer journey the heartbeat of every visit this summer, not just an item on your checklist.
2. Support and energise your teams
While everyone else is heading off on holiday, your teams are showing up. Every day. Often in the heat, under pressure, with a smile too.
Lee Cockerell talks about A.R.E, appreciation, recognition and encouragement. It’s a simple framework, but there’s no better time to live it than summer. We don’t mean dropping off a box of doughnuts on a Friday. We mean a genuine commitment: on every single visit, find something to appreciate out loud. Catch someone doing something well and name it in front of others. Ask how someone’s doing and actually listen to the answer.
This matters even more when it’s 28 degrees, kitchens are under pressure, and food safety comes under greater strain. Seasonal colleagues are often the ones answering allergen questions with limited experience, and busy sites can also see increases in stock loss, till discrepancies and cash-handling issues simply because everyone’s under pressure. Nobody gets tired of being told they’re doing a great job. Summer is long, help your managers feel seen.
3. Coach on the floor, every visit
Summer often brings in a wave of new or seasonal staff. Your experienced managers are stretched thinner, your new starters are learning fast, and the gap between your best and worst-performing sites can widen quickly. This is exactly when coaching on the floor matters most.
Seasonal colleagues don’t just need coaching, they need accelerated coaching. They’re often only with you for a short period, so you need to be laser-focused on what they absolutely must know, rather than trying to teach everything you’d normally cover with a permanent team member. It’s about prioritising the essentials and shortening the learning curve.
When coaching is a mindset, every moment on a visit becomes an opportunity to develop someone, give real-time feedback, or simply be a visible, steadying presence. Summer trading patterns can be very different from the rest of the year, so visiting the same sites at the same times every week might mean you miss the real operational pressures. If your newer managers are stretched right now, they don’t need more distance from you. They need you closer.
4. Audit your brand and service standards
Summer footfall has a way of revealing the gaps. When it’s quieter, teams can paper over the cracks. When it’s busy, everything shows: the cleanliness, the consistency, the service moments that either land or don’t. Jim Sullivan put it well: “you have to inspect what you expect.”
But we’d add something to that. When you’re doing your audits this summer, don’t just look for what’s wrong. Use them as a chance to celebrate what’s right, especially when teams are under pressure to deliver. At MMU, our mantra is that the road to operational excellence is paved with discipline and consistency. Summer is when that discipline gets tested, and proven.
5. Reflect, learn, and capture insights
The summer peak will end. And when it does, most teams will breathe a sigh of relief and move on, without ever stopping to examine what just happened. Don’t let that be you.
We often talk about the three I’s: the Incident (what happened), the Impact (what the data tells you), and the Insight (what you’ve actually learned from it). The Incident is the whole summer period. The Impact is your trading results, your team turnover, and your guest feedback scores. But the Insight is the thing that makes next summer calmer, smarter, and less reactive by design.
Peak seasons don’t have to feel like an ambush every year. Not if you take the time now to capture what worked, what didn’t, and what you’ll do differently. That knowledge is gold; don’t leave it behind with the sunscreen.
6. Plan for the Great British weather
Our weather can have a big influence on trading. One week we’re in blazing sunshine, the next it’s pouring with rain, and that can completely change footfall depending on the brand.
Plan for volatility rather than averages; our weather rarely stays the same for too long. Keep a close eye on weather forecasts, local events and school holidays, and be prepared to flex labour scheduling, stock ordering, and even visit priorities accordingly.
7. Watch your leading indicators
And not just the results. This means not waiting until your NPS drops, guest complaints increase, or customer feedback deteriorates. Instead, watch the things that predict those outcomes. For example:
- Are queue lengths increasing?
- Is food taking longer to reach guests?
- Are coffee service times creeping up?
- Is the team looking tired because they’ve been working flat out for several days?
- Are sickness and absence levels beginning to increase?
Spotting those trends early gives managers the chance to intervene before the lag measures start telling the story.
8. Plan your cover
Summer is the one time of year when your best people are often away on holiday, and that includes multi-unit managers too. The question becomes: who’s holding the fort when your strongest GM is on a beach in Portugal, and you’re away for a fortnight?
It turns succession planning from a development conversation into an operational necessity. The teams that seem to sail through summer are usually the ones that planned those gaps before they appeared.
Bringing it together
None of these tips work in isolation. Guest experience, team energy, coaching, standards, reflection, weather planning, leading indicators and cover all reinforce each other. Consistency in summer isn’t about doing one thing brilliantly; it’s about holding the whole system together while everything around you is under strain.
If you’d like support building this kind of consistency across your business, get in touch to find out how we help multi-unit managers lead with excellence, whatever time of year it is.
