Crepe Crazy @ Austin

Crepe Crazy @ Austin

Small disability-owned business with jobs for deaf community

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Dealing with fast growth: How Crepe Crazy's owners stay sane as the business expands

Kent Bernhard

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/03/01/dealing-with-fast-growth-how-crepe-crazy-s-owners.html

Austin Business Journal, Mar 1, 2019

Crepe Crazy started in Austin, Texas with great food, and it has now grown into a three-part success story as an immigrant business, a family business, and a business that’s owned and operated by a staff who is deaf.

“It’s difficult. I’m not going to say it’s not,” says Michelle Giterman, chief operating officer of Crepe Crazy.

Michelle’s parents, Vladimir and Inna Giterman, were born in Russia and the Ukraine. They moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1990 and later moved to Austin because both their children — son Sergei and daughter Michelle — were deaf. Austin has a top-notch school for deaf children.

Before opening Crepe Crazy, the couple experimented with other business ideas, but they gravitated toward serving crepes because the family recipes Inna made for friends were such a hit.

“She’s the one who’s creative,” says Michelle, adding that her mother traveled around America and Europe gathering ideas for the crepes.

Vladimir and Inna started Crepe Crazy as a food truck in 2006, making appearances at festivals such as South by Southwest. Since then, the business has grown into a full family business — Sergei is CEO and Michelle is COO.

The family has continued the food truck business and has opened brick-and-mortar locations in Dripping Springs, Texas and Austin. Most of Crepe Crazy’s employees are deaf, and others are fluent in American Sign Language.

As Crepe Crazy has expanded to include more family members, employees, locations and menu items, the Gitermans have learned how to maximize their own productivity, and that of their workers. Here are the tips they learned along the way to scale their business.

Organize and prioritize

The family has clear divisions of labor. Inna is the chef, coming up with the menu, weekly soups and monthly crepe specials, and is the owner along with Vladimir. Vladimir runs the food truck and festivals. Sergei is the CEO, charged with managing the staff, coming up with business ideas, handling problems and daily operations. As COO, Michelle manages payroll and bookkeeping, designs menus and coordinates events.

In addition, the family has a general manager supporting daily operations and 10 additional managers and shift leaders at the restaurant sites.

A clear structure allows each individual to play to their strengths, organizing and prioritizing the tasks each needs to accomplish to keep the business running smoothly.

“We all chip in and help take care of our responsibilities,” says Michelle. “We each have different strengths and roles within the company.”

Of course, with so many cooks in the kitchen, it’s critical to have financial oversight into all activities. One tool Michelle recommends is a business credit card.

“Given the number of managers we have, it’s helpful to see every transaction made by our staff,” says Michelle about her Chase Ink® small business credit card. “It is really nice that everything is transparent, and knowing we have complete control over our purchases. When something looks off, the account is easily put on a hold.”

Crystal clear communications

Good communication is essential to any enterprise, especially one like Crepe Crazy, which has grown in complexity over the years.

The Gitermans meet weekly with upper management, including all family members. They communicate regularly with the entire staff through biweekly updates and meeting several times a year. They also make sure communication is clear across the multiple locations, using the Glide video messaging app for deaf people.

“We all work together,” says Michelle. “We’re not wasting time looking at the same problems across the stores.”

Part of keeping communications flowing is cross-training and letting the team know both what an individual is doing and how they do it.

“It’s not just the day-to-day grind, it’s about being part of the whole system,” says Michelle.

Within stores, the company uses tools like whiteboards to clearly communicate tasks like what needs to be cleaned or whether additional crepe batter is needed. The family works together to address the larger issues head on.

“We believe in open communication. Transparency is very important to us,” she says. “Bottom line, communication is a huge priority here.”

Find solutions, not problems

All businesses have their fair share of challenges. But successful business owners know problems can also be opportunities to find solutions that make their company stronger.

As Crepe Crazy grew from a food truck traveling between festivals into an operation with multiple restaurant locations, one problem the family faced was trying to organize and schedule all the employees that joined the team with expansion.

Instead of dwelling on the problem, the Gitermans concentrated on the solution by hiring a general manager to make sure someone was focused on the operational details, freeing the owners to concentrate on other issues.

“Before we hired our general manager, we used to manage all of the employees and scheduling, but it became too much,” says Michelle. “We had to streamline our work.”

Another problem business owners face is setting up an operation that can run smoothly when they’re out of the picture. There’s the big picture part of that — succession. But there’s also the more routine question of having people in place so a business owner can take time to recharge with a vacation.

The Gitermans have addressed that hurdle by hiring effective managers who are steeped in deaf culture and then cross-training managers and family members.

“If you have a management team that’s able to manage your business when you’re away, that’s huge,” says Michelle.

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