When a business opens its second location, it almost never hires a second manager the same day. For months, sometimes years, the same person shuttles back and forth: mornings here, afternoons there, phone permanently on in between. It can work. But there is a world of difference between doing it with a method and doing it at a running pace.
The method-free version is easy to recognise: the manager decides where to go each morning based on who called first with a problem. Whoever shouts loudest wins, and the quieter store (often the one doing better) never gets a visit.
Presence in windows, not on demand
The first thing that stabilises everything is making presence predictable: Tuesday and Thursday mornings at store A, Monday and Friday at store B, and so on. Each team knows when it can count on the manager being physically there, and learns to batch non-urgent matters for those moments instead of scattering them across the week by phone.
But a window only works if it is protected. If any hiccup at store B can yank the manager out of store A, you do not have windows. You have good intentions.
A deputy is not a title, it is a list of decisions
During the hours when the lead is elsewhere, each site needs one person who can decide. Not everything: some things. And this is exactly where most setups fall over: the "deputy" exists, but nobody ever wrote down what they can decide alone. So they call anyway, afraid of getting it wrong.
The list does not need to be long. Refunds over 50 euros: deputy decides. Customer asking for an off-policy discount: deputy decides up to 10 percent. Supplier turning up unannounced: deputy signs and makes a note. Ten written lines remove eighty percent of the phone calls.
Two stores, two shift plans
The temptation to copy store A's rota onto store B is enormous, and it is almost always wrong: different footfall, different teams, even different delivery times. Store B's plan should be built on store B's numbers, even while those numbers are still thin.
The same goes for how the teams see each other. If the two sites feel they are competing for hours and for the boss's attention, every scheduling choice reads as a slight. Making both plans visible (who works where, when the manager is on site) removes the suspicion that the other place gets special treatment.
The signal not to ignore
If the manager spends more time commuting and firefighting than looking at sales numbers, the model has stopped holding. That is not a failure: it is the signal that you need either a stronger deputy at one of the two sites, or a redesign of the windows. Far better to read that from a written plan than from a resignation letter.
Running two sites on one calendar, with clear visibility of who is where and when, is one of the things Sked Solve does for a living: the site shows how multi-location planning works.