Chronicle No. 41 · Lessons
Take Care of the Associates: The Rule That Grew From a Root Beer Stand
A nine-seat stand in Washington in 1927 produced one sentence that Marriott has repeated to its managers ever since.
In May 1927, J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice Sheets Marriott opened a nine-seat A&W root beer franchise in Washington, D.C. Summers in the capital were brutal, and cold root beer sold well. Winters were not, so they added chilli and hot tamales and renamed the place the Hot Shoppe.
Thirty years of food service followed before the company touched a bedroom. The Twin Bridges Motor Hotel opened in January 1957 with 370 rooms and an adjacent Hot Shoppe, and J. Willard handed the new hotel division to his son, J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr.
What travelled from the root beer stand into a global company was not a recipe. It was a sentence the founder repeated to his managers for decades: take care of associates and they will take care of your customers. Marriott still calls its employees associates rather than staff, and still names that line as the origin of its culture.
The belief was given machinery, which is what separates a slogan from a principle:
- The Guarantee of Fair Treatment, an open-door policy promising every associate, at any level, respectful and fair handling of a concern
- A working assumption that problems are best solved at the level where they occur, and fastest when confronted immediately
- The Spirit to Serve culture articulated under Bill Marriott, with hands-on leadership and constant property visits
The lesson is unglamorous and durable. A service company cannot ask its people for warmth it does not extend to them first. Culture is not what is written on the wall of the back office; it is what happens the day an associate raises a complaint.
“Take care of associates and they'll take care of your customers.”
Lesson: Look after the people who face the guest, and the guest experience largely looks after itself.
