There is an experiment every owner should run at least once: switch the phone off for a full day and see what happens at the store. Not out of cruelty, but as a diagnostic. If you come back to fourteen missed calls and three matters left frozen "because we didn't know if it was allowed", your delegation exists only on paper.
The trouble is that "deputy" is often a courtesy title, not a mandate. And the difference always shows at the worst moment: the card terminal dying on a Saturday, the furious customer with an unusual return, the supplier demanding an answer today.
Delegation is written in cases, not principles
"When I'm not in, Laura decides" sounds clear and is not clear at all. Decides what? The useful version is a list of concrete situations, each with its answer: off-policy returns up to what amount, the maximum discount grantable without asking anyone, what to do when a shift is short (who gets called, in what order), when the engineer is called immediately versus later, and what is never decided alone (hiring, pricing, personnel matters).
Ten to fifteen lines. Their mere existence changes the deputy's day more than any motivational speech: the courage to decide comes from a clear perimeter, not from personality.
The deputy is needed even when the owner is in
A widespread mistake: activating the deputy only during absences. That way their first real decision happens the day you are on holiday, the worst possible moment to learn. Better to run a break-in period: days when the owner is present but unreachable, decisions flow through the deputy, and there is a debrief at closing. Three or four rounds of that and delegation becomes muscle rather than theory.
The break-in also exposes the opposite problem, which is real and more insidious: the owner who delegates in words and then corrects every choice upon return. After two public corrections, the deputy stops deciding forever. If the call was a judgement call, correct it privately and update the list; only if it was outside the perimeter do you address the method.
The team must know beforehand
A delegation the rest of the team discovers live does not work: faced with the unusual request, someone will still call the owner "just to be safe", going over the deputy's head and hollowing them out. The investiture happens in advance and in front of everyone: on days X, Laura decides, full stop. It should be visible on the rota too: who today's point person is should never be a question.
Mind the load, finally: being deputy while covering your own normal shift is extra work. If point-person days are not recognised (in hours, in pay, or at least in preference priority), the willingness runs out fast, and the delegation with it.
Always knowing who the day's point person is belongs on the calendar, not in a chat: in Sked Solve, everyone's shifts and roles are visible to the whole team, as the site shows.