Pizza veteran in line for top honor

It’s not easy being a restaurant manager.

The days are filled with dealing with employees and customers, and then you try to get off at a decent time to go home and enjoy your family — and inevitably disaster strikes.

It’s a clogged toilet in the bathroom, or a busload of hungry kids straight from the track meet. Either way you’re going to end up late for dinner.

But every once in a while, all that hard work and dedication to customer service gets rewarded.

Raleigh Flint, general manager of the Columbia Falls Pizza Hut, knows this.

In 1996 he was named manager of the year within High Plains Pizza, the Liberal, Kan.-based franchise company that owns 76 Pizza Huts in the Northwest and middle-South states. He was rewarded with a trip to Cancun.

Now his restaurant is one of three finalists left in the running to be named the number one Pizza Hut in the country. Out of some 6,200 restaurants nationwide, it’s quite an honor.

“I’m pretty excited for my team,” he said.

He will fly to Orlando May 1 for the awards ceremony. Before the winner is announced, he and his wife will get to play in Disneyworld on Pizza Hut’s dime.

Flint’s restaurant is up for the Kendall award. If he wins, the Columbia Falls location will be named the best Pizza Hut in the nation and he will receive a check for $10,000, which he says he will share with his employees before replacing his 10-year-old pickup truck.

Montana has done pretty well with the Pizza Hut brand. Two years ago, the manager of a Hamilton location took home the prize.

But if anyone knows Pizza Hut, it’s Flint.

He started as a delivery driver in Kalispell in September 1989 and has worked his way up the ladder ever since.

“I love what I do,” he said. “I take care of this like it’s mine.”

Much of his loyalty stems from his good relationship with High Plains Pizza’s owners, the Colvin family.

“They’re my second family,” he said. “If it wasn’t such a great family, I probably wouldn’t still be with them.”

And as with any business, the customers are a huge part of the longevity equation. After putting in 13 years in Columbia Falls, Flint figures he knows pretty much every customer, at least by face.

“The customers are just as much a part of it as the team is,” he said.

He has a group of line dancers come in every Tuesday.

When he celebrated 20 years with the company last fall, they brought a cake and put on a performance in front of the buffet station. But it isn’t just him they take care of. Those dancers also pay attention to when his employees graduate from high school or get a promotion as well.

“If you don’t show concern for your customers, you’re not going to make it,” Flint believes.

And the customer is always right, isn’t he? Flint laughs at that. He agrees that most of the time they are, but not always.

And it’s especially important to remember at those times that it’s the customer who helps pay the bills and that right or wrong, he still needs to be taken care of.

Taking care of customers is part of his motto. He calls it the “three C’s:” customer, crew, company. He believes that if you take care of them in that order, things will naturally fall into place.

And so far, the method seems to be paying off.

Reporter Erika Hoefer may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at ehoefer@dailyinterlake.com