Case Study: Kansas City Country Club

Bringing Ideas to the Table

by Laura Watilo Blake (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2007
 

The KCCC management team votes on which ideas they should enter in the Idea Fair during a staff meeting.

Good ideas for the club business don’t just come to managers in the middle of the night. At the KCCC, they show up every Wednesday afternoon at regular staff meetings, when everyone is encouraged to bring their latest list of new ideas. The concepts, in fact, are often generated through required outside reading, as outlined in the club’s management team manual, or inspired by sayings in the desk calendars that General Manager Greg Webb gives to each staff member at the beginning of a new year.

Greg Webb, GM, Kansas city country club

“This year, we have some new calendars that are great,” Webb reports. “One of the sayings was, ‘Don’t try to teach a pig to think. It can’t be done, and it irritates the pig.’”

The practical lesson to be drawn from that phrase, he adds, can be applied to employee training. “How many times do you try to train someone for something they can’t do?” he asks. “If you can’t make a sandwich, I’m going to take you off that, and give you something else.”

Regardless of their source, many of the ideas generated by the KCCC?staff are implemented and entered into internal idea contests, or shared publicly in the CMAA’s Idea Fair.

“It’s good to give away your best ideas,” Webb believes. “It forces you to come up with new ones.”

Webb is “good about keeping us fresh,” says KCCC’s Director of Tennis, Helen Wilson, who, in fact, calls Webb the “Ideas Fair Guru.”

“He pushes you to think outside the box,” adds Wilson. “He’s opened our eyes to keeping the traditional element of the club, but also being contemporary with programming and staying with the times.”

Related Stories: Great Ideas That Work...And Why  Case Study: Farmington Country Club Case Study: Country Club of Virginia Now Here's An Idea ... and Another and Another More Blue-Ribbon Ideas

For example, while the time that adults spend on recreation and fitness may have declined over the years, Wilson says KCCC?has found that “If we offer anything for families and children, it is successful.” A good example is the club’s increase in tennis participation, which is largely due to Wilson’s efforts to reach out to kids in ways that go far beyond just learning the game.

“I’ve taken the kids on an overnight with the animals at the Kansas City Zoo,” she reports. “We used to do overnights and sleep on the pro shop floor. We’ll even take the kids to [a local amusement park], so parents don’t have to get sitters. I come up with ideas and say, ‘Let’s just try it.’”

On the golf side, Head Golf Pro John Helmker has driven similar growth, not only in rounds, but also pro shop sales, by also tweaking programming with children and their parents in mind. For example, moving the junior program from Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon means more men have been able to participate with their families.

“It was a whole new opportunity to reach out to working dads,” Helmker says. “They can golf in the morning and bring their sons and daughters, then eat at the club with their wives.”

In the back of the house, Executive Chef Andrew Kneessy has also worked tirelessly to create ideas that keep members coming back. “When I came here [at the start of the decade, around the same time as Webb], the membership was not using the club a lot,” he says. “So, I treated it as if it were my own restaurant. I just started buying quality food, and the response was great. It got busier and busier.”

For Kneessy, educating himself on food trends has been the key to successfully introducing new menu items or kitchen practices. As he learns new things, such as wine pairings, he passes his knowledge on to the staff, so they can make suggestions to the members. As a result, wine sales at the club are at an all-time high. “I’m constantly trying to improve and stay on top of trends by reading magazines and implementing [what I read] at the club immediately,” he says. “I also go out to eat to get ideas.”

Kneessy attributes his ability to thrive to Webb’s management vision. “We have the same passion,” he explains. “The kind I have about food, he has about the front of the house. That’s unusual to see in the club environment.”