Tonight on CBS their Emmy award winning reality show, Undercover Boss continues for an all new Sunday December 27, season 7 episode 2 called “Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip,” and we have your weekly recap below. On tonight’s episode, Shawnon Bellah, Crest Foods COO, works undercover at the company’s Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip.
Undercover Boss features a high-ranking executive or the owner of a corporation going undercover as an entry-level employee in his or her own company. The executives alter their appearance and assume an alias and fictional back-story. The fictitious explanation given for the accompanying camera crew is that the executives are being filmed as part of a documentary about entry-level workers in a particular industry, or a competition with another individual with the winner getting a job with the company.
On the last episode, season 7 began with Nader Masadeh, President and CEO of Buffalo Wings & Rings, working undercover in his restaurants and encountering a fiery manager who made one kitchen too hot to handle.
On tonight’s episode as per the CBS synopsis, “Shawnon Bellah, Crest Foods COO, works undercover at the company’s Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip and experiences a sugar crash when she fails to meet her own customer service requirements.”
The show airs tonight at 8pm on CBS and we will be live blogging all the details. So don’t forget to come back and refresh your screen often for live updates.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
#UndercoverBoss tonight features Shawnon Bellah, COO of Nestle Tollhouse Café. There are 147 locations and 1600 employees in the chain. Shawnon says she wants everyone in the world to taste a Tollhouse cookie.
The Tollhouse brand was formed in 2000 and she came on board in 2008 – they make $55 million in revenue a year. She hopes to make this a $500 million company. Shawnon says she didn’t come out of college and into this job – she never got her degree.
She was VP of Operations in 2010 and developed all the training and she says she changed the business trend and turned the company around. She became COO this year. We see her doing a cookie tasting. She says she’s a tough boss.
She talks about being a brand ambassador and she monitors the corporate test locations. She’s also a single mom of two kids. She says she’s very strict and challenges her kids to be better. She meets with her makeover artist.
They start out by blonding her hair and curling it. Shawnon says she wants to go undercover in the cafes to make sure they are on point. She also puts in colored contacts and dresses like a hipster.
Her kids laugh and so does her mother. Shawnon asks her kids how to act cool. She goes to Tucker, Georgia to visit a manufacturing plant that makes their icings for their cookie cakes. She meets Anthony, a production manager.
Anthony thinks she’s attractive but not built for manual labor like they do in the factory. Anthony has been there for 10 years. He shows her cream cheese icing. She has to haul huge blocks of cream cheese and it’s hard.
Anthony says she probably didn’t realize how hard it was to make icing. Shawnon is struggling to keep up and Anthony tells her she has to hurry. He takes her downstairs for a taste test. He tells her how much he likes the product.
Shawnon says he has no idea how important he is to her company since the icing is critical. He tells her he has five kids. He talks about how his mom has sarcoidosis and says she needs better care. Anthony takes her to show her more stuff.
Next she goes to Athens, Alabama, a location with a drive thru and says she’s never seen this feature in a store. She’s annoyed that the closed sign was up and hears they’re not open until 12. Shawnon is not happy to know that the speaker is broken.
She also sees that the girl is manning the front counter and the drive thru. A customer orders a vanilla latte and the girl makes it at the Nescafe machine. Shawnon has never worked a drive thru before and is not on her game.
She keeps working the drive thru while the other girl works the front counter. Bridgette shows her how to make an iced vanilla latte. The customer is getting annoyed that it’s taking so long. Bridgette says she’s going too slow.
Bridgette says she’s really slow and then people are honking because they are annoyed. Bridgette says in the South they talk slow, but you can’t work slow. Shawnon is freaking out and then she notices that the current recipe isn’t on the wall.
She sees they are not doing the current recipes she’s sent. Shawnon says the drive thru made her nervous. Bridgette says she’s been working there for five years. She says she had to drop out of college because she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease.
She says she moved back here because her doctors are close by. She talks about her twin brother and how hard it is to be away from her when he’s at college. She says she has her illness under control now but had to take a year off when it was bad.
Bridgette says she loves the job but she saw herself out of college by now and wants to work in marketing and open her own franchise. Shawnon says Bridgette is a lot like her and she likes her hard work and attitude.
The franchise owner Sascha showed up and Shawnon is worried since she met the franchise owner back in March. Sascha talks about how it’s harder because her location is not in the mall and says she doesn’t get enough support from corporate.
She says she had a week’s training when she was promised a month and says she doesn’t know as much as she hoped to. Shawnon is surprised that she didn’t get enough training and feels alone. She says that’s her fault.
Next Shawnon goes to work at a location at a mall in Houston. She meets Roberto the general manager. He starts out showing her how to decorate cookie cakes. Shawnon is not doing well with the writing.
Roberto talks about his vision problem and how he has to get close when he cuts cookies. He says one day he hopes to get LASIK to get rid of his Coke bottle glasses. She asks how he can decorate that well when he can’t see well.
He tells her he’d like to go to pastry school one day. He says sometimes they don’t have items in stock and talks about how they are out of cops and triple chocolate chip cookies. He says he was told they are on back order.
He says he knows he’d be in trouble with corporate since he doesn’t have them. Shawnon knows they only have seven cookie flavors so to be out of one is huge. He also shows her they are using plain cups because they can’t get logo cups.
Shawnon wants to get to the bottom of this and steps away to make a call back to corporate. She talks to Sharon, the distribution manager. Shawnon is upset and says this needs to be fixed today. She pushes on distribution and tells them to fix it.
The last stop is in Westland, Michigan and she’s headed to a corporate café. This is one that the corporation owns versus a franchise location. She says this is one of her worst performing location and she recently moved in a new general manager from another location.
Adriana, the GM, greets her and tells her they’re going to focus on customer service. Adriana tells her she needs to go faster. She talks about how she had to leave her boyfriend in Philadelphia because of her work transfer.
She talks to her about speed of service and says she needs to greet, serve and ring up in about 45 seconds. She says corporate standards mean they will be punished if they don’t do it fast enough. She gets done at more than two minutes instead of 45 seconds.
Shawnon says she can’t seem to get it to 45 seconds. She asks for a break and Adriana tells her no because there’s a line. Adriana tells her if they were audited, they would be in trouble then says they are watched by cameras all the time.
She tells Shawnon that corporate is ever vigilant and says the VP of the company watches the cameras for fun. She says she has gotten an email at 9 pm fussing at her about every little thing. Shawnon says she knows she’s talking about her and it’s the truth.
She says she doesn’t want it to be seen as she’s being watched for mistakes and wants to be trusted. Adriana says it’s not just her and says everyone is afraid of the VP of the company. She says she scares the teenage employees then they can’t work well.
Adriana says part of her job is to get things up to par so corporate doesn’t breathe down their necks. Shawnon is disappointed that she’s scaring all her employees so won’t communicate with her.
Shawnon is upset and says she learned that her approach needs to change. She says she’s tough on people but isn’t showing them she cares. Later, she talks to her kids on a video call. Shawnon says she’s not an emotional leader or parent.
She realizes she needs to relax and calm down. Shawnon has her makeover undone and thinks about how she needs to show more gratitude and better impact her company. She meets with everyone and tells them she’s “KJ” that they all met.
She then tells them she’s COO of Nestle Tollhouse Café. She tells them they were on Undercover Boss. Adriana smiles and says she doesn’t know how to handle it since she told her she was terrifying. She says she’s sorry.
Shawnon says no apology needed and tells her she would like her to help her and be honest with her. She says the 45 second rule is so hard. She asks Adriana to work with her on targeting speed of service and says she would like to put her through management training.
Adriana is thrilled she wants to invest in her. She says she wants her to be more than a GM. She says she’s giving her $20k to travel back and forth to see her boyfriend. Next she talks to Anthony and says she wants to take him to a Yankees game.
He’s happy and she says he inspired her with his tales about his mom and kids. She says she’s giving him $15k and he starts crying. Next she meets with Roberto and she tells him she’s going to work hard to make sure everything stays in stock.
She also talks about his skills and his vision problems. She tells him she’s going to pay for his LASIK and also give him $25k to go to pastry school. He says it’s amazing. He’s so happy and then she talks to Bridgette.
She tells her she’s a great brand ambassador. She says she noticed things in the store and says she’s bringing someone else in. She brings in Sascha. She tells her that she had never been there and says they take her for granted.
Sascha says she knows it’s a little store in the middle of nowhere. Shawnon says she’s going to give her $20k to bring the café up to standards, $10k for marketing plus more training that’s all expenses paid.
Sascha is thrilled. Then she tells Bridgette it was amazing to work with her and wants to use her for corporate training videos and is going to pay her for that. She says she wants the world to see what she saw.
Then Shawnon says she’s giving her $10k to take her brother on vacation with her to Hawaii. Shawnon then tells her she’s going to give her $170kto open her own franchise when she’s ready. Bridgette is thrilled.
In the weeks since the taping, Adriana took a dream vacation and got a marriage proposal. Anthony got his trip to the Yankees game and found a new caregiver for his mom. Roberto got his LASIK surgery and is headed to pastry school and Bridgette is back in college with plans to open her franchise when she graduates.
THE END!
