“Once every few months.”
“See? You could fly in.”
“Yeah, but as you said, it’s just half of what I do.”
Pippa scrunches her nose. Oh crap, I know this reaction. She employed it rigorously when she was checking my homework way back when and found mistakes.
“Yeah, the other half needs some streamlining.”
“What?” I ask defensively.
“Alice, you’re a control freak.”
“Gee, finally caught up to that, didn’t you, Sherlock?”
She points to my screen where my weekly schedule stares back at us. I have tasks assigned for every hour.
“Let’s start with the most obvious part. Why do you spend lunch and dinner in the restaurant greeting patrons?” She points to those two words on the screen as if they’re an offense of the highest order.
“People like the personal touch. They like knowing the owner is there and really cares about them having a good time, not just about the money they spend there.”
Pippa nods patiently but scrunches her nose again. “Except you have three restaurants now. Which means you have to rotate between them, so at any given time, you have customers who never see you anyway. What’s the point to keep doing that?”
I run a frustrated hand through my hair, wishing we had more cupcakes. “When I expanded, I just wanted to keep the personal touch somehow.”
“Alice, I love you, but from a purely business perspective, it’s insanity. You’re micromanaging everything. Once you expand, the personal touch goes away. It has to, or you’ll kill yourself running around. You can’t be in three places at the same time. Just taking away that task from your list would free up a considerable amount of time. You can’t work twelve hours a day forever.”
“I know,” I admit in defeat.
“So after removing that, the last thing requiring your presence in the restaurants is supervising your managers. You seem to double-check everything they do. Do you not trust them?”
“I do, but I trust myself more.”
“Listen, in the early days of Bennett Enterprises, I did everything in the design area from drawing to prototyping. When we grew, I obviously had to let some of my duties go. I focused on design, others on prototypes. And guess what? They messed up. Once someone cut a twelve-carat diamond in half by mistake. Once—”
“Holy crap! How the hell do you cut a diamond by mistake?”
“I still have no idea to this day. The point is people make mistakes, and they learn. Then they mess up again. It’s normal. But if you don’t trust them to do their job, what’s the point?”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I feel a tad embarrassed. The worst one of my managers can do is order the wrong type of ingredients, or not enough, or forget to pay the bills on time, which compared to messing up a freaking diamond sounds like a fluke.
Sighing, I say, “I suppose I could have the managers hand me a daily report.”
“You should at any rate. We introduced a very handy reporting tool in Bennett Enterprises last year. Christopher could tell you about it, he knows the ins and outs. You probably don’t need half the options it has, but it’ll be very helpful.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“You co-own and run one of the locations with Blake. Ask him to do some of the tasks you don’t feel comfortable leaving to your location managers yet.” Shoving the laptop in my lap, she adds, “Imagine you’re living in London starting tomorrow. Make your daily plan based on that. Factor in spending one week every two months here. Monthly in the beginning if you need to. And don’t say the airfare will cost a fortune.”
“It is a point though.”
“Not when Bennett Enterprises owns a private jet. Using it won’t make you any less of an independent, ass-kicking woman.”
“Yeah, but I don’t work at Bennett Enterprises.”
Pippa smirks. “You’re a shareholder. If you fight me on this, I’ll tell Sebastian to give you a piece of his mind.”
I wince, remembering my brother’s stricken expression when he realized I’m donating all the income I get from the company. For the next hundred years or so, I’m going to make sure I only give him reasons to smile. He’s a great brother.