run-brand-standard-audit

name

run-brand-standard-audit

description

Run a repeatable brand-standard audit across franchise units and turn it into a coaching loop: a weighted checklist tied to the franchise agreement's operating standards, a scored audit per unit, the specific gaps framed as contract risk, and a coach-and-re-audit cadence. Reach for it to keep quality consistent across locations and protect the license. Used by `multi-unit-performance-manager` (primary).

Skill: run-brand-standard-audit

Invoked by: multi-unit-performance-manager (primary).

When to invoke: standing up cross-unit quality control, or when consistency is slipping across locations.

Output: a weighted, scored brand-standard audit per unit + a gap list framed as contract risk + a coaching/re-audit cadence.

Procedure

1. Anchor the checklist to the operating standards. Pull the required standards from the operations manual / franchise agreement — brand standards are a contract obligation, and failure is a termination risk, not just a quality ding. Group into categories: cleanliness/facility, product/quality, service/speed, safety/compliance, merchandising/brand presentation.
2. Weight the items by customer and contract impact. A food-safety or brand-integrity failure weighs far more than a minor merchandising miss. Weighting keeps the score honest.
3. Score each unit the same way, same period. A repeatable rubric (pass/partial/fail per item → weighted score) so units are comparable. Photograph/note the specific misses.
4. Frame the gaps as risk + action. Each gap: what's out of standard, the contract/customer risk, and the specific corrective action with an owner and a date. A critical/safety miss is escalated immediately, not queued.
5. Coach, then re-audit. The audit is worthless without the loop — review the score with the unit manager, agree corrections, re-audit on a cadence to confirm they held. Feed the audit score into the manager scorecard.
6. Rank units to target coaching. A ranked audit-score dashboard shows where the consistency risk concentrates — coach the tail.

Worked example

5-unit portfolio, quarterly audit.

• Checklist → 40 weighted items across 5 categories; food-safety items weighted 3x.
• Unit 3 scores 78% with 2 critical safety misses → immediate corrective + re-audit in 2 weeks (not next quarter).
• Gaps → each with owner + date; audit score flows into unit-3 manager's scorecard.
• Ranking → units at 78 / 88 / 91 / 93 / 95 → coaching focused on unit 3, spot-check the 88.

Guardrails

• Brand-standard failure is a contract risk — treat critical misses as license-threatening, not cosmetic.
• An audit with no coaching loop is theater — the re-audit is what changes behavior.
• Weight by impact — an unweighted checklist lets ten trivial passes hide one safety failure.