Webinar

Customer Service

Setting Seasonal Employees Up to Give Great Service

Looking to make your seasonal staff shine? Watch this fun, insightful webinar designed to help you set your team up for success during a busy season. Whether you’re gearing up for a holiday rush or preparing for summer crowds, this webinar will show you how to create an environment where seasonal employees can deliver standout service with […]

Open Book Management

Workplace Games To Hit Your Goals

It may sound silly, but workplace games have proven to be effective! Games can help your team hit its goals, improve your organization’s results, boost energy, and encourage creative thinking.  Any organizational issue you’d like to make improvement on is a great candidate around which to design a game. We’ve played workplace games to highlight and fix chronic […]

Open Book Management

Practical Steps to Implementing Open Book Management

In 2002, Zingerman’s decided to adopt open book management, a system where everyone in the organization takes responsibility for the effective operation of the business – financial and otherwise. At that time, we were a community of five businesses in various stages of development. Zingerman’s Delicatessen was 20 years old, while the Creamery was only […]

Organizational Culture

Women With Vision: 30 Years of ZingTrain

Join us for a special conversation with ZingTrain Founder, Maggie Bayless, and Managing Partner, Katie Frank, two women who have carried ZingTrain for 30 years with their vision and leadership.  The very idea of ZingTrain came to Maggie when reading Zingerman’s first organizational vision! She wisely foresaw that a growing organization would need training for consistency […]

Leadership Development

How to be an Effective Servant Leader

Here at Zingerman’s, we’re keen on servant leadership. The theory was developed and coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader”. Paul Saginaw & Ari Weinzweig discovered his compelling ideas in the late 80s. Ever since crossing paths, Greenleaf’s ideas have become deeply embedded into how we train and develop leaders […]

Business Visioning

How To Create a Company Vision

Zingerman’s has used visions to guide our organization’s success for 30 years! Co-founding partners, Ari & Paul, wrote our first company vision back in 1994. They imagined Zingerman’s growing into a community of several Ann Arbor-based food businesses – and ZingTrain was founded in this same year! In 2007, the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses had […]

Organizational Culture

Zingerman’s Perpetual Purpose Trust

In February 2022, Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw, co-founding partners of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, announced they transitioned ownership of the Zingerman’s brand to a perpetual purpose trust. This radical, yet practical move was the result of over a decade of work to best answer this question. How do you preserve the culture of an […]

Business Visioning

How To Finally Love Visioning

In 2001, Ian Gurfield co-founded Ian’s Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin.  In 2003, Ian attended his first ZingTrain seminar hoping to get direction and vision on how to thoughtfully grow his small business.  Today, Ian’s Pizza is bringing pizza to the people at 9 locations across 4 states and their cross-country team is actively working towards a shared vision […]

Training & Business Systems

A Practical Guide to Onboarding New Employees

This webinar is Part 2 of a two-part series on the basics of our Bottom-Line Training® method. Part 1: Set New Employees Up For Success with an Effective Training Program A new hire walks into your organization for their first day. Do you feel confident you’re able to give them a great onboarding experience? Do you have […]

Training & Business Systems

Set New Hires Up For Success with an Employee Training Program

This webinar is Part 1 of a two-part series on the basics of our Bottom-Line Training® method. Part 2: A Practical Guide to Onboarding New Employees In the mid 90s, after a decade of organic growth, Zingerman’s needed to more formally develop its employee training program. Enter Maggie Bayless, ZingTrain’s Founding Partner. Her expertise in […]

Training & Business Systems

A Proven Recipe for Effective Organizational Change

Change is an inevitable part of life. Organizations embark on new initiatives, businesses begin to offer new products and services, managers want to improve the way their team is working, individuals desire personal and professional growth. But for many of us, change is also challenging. We humans are creatures of habit. Our brains love recognizing […]

Organizational Culture

No Drama Part II: Going Direct

Download the slides or watch the webinar: If you missed the first webinar in this series, check out Creating A No Drama Work Culture Want to learn more about ‘going direct’? Sign up for our virtual workshop, Courageous Conversations!