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In Texas, health care workers quit jobs to work at fast foodshops

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George_Mills

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Rapid, across the board increases in the minimum wage reduce incentive for job seekers to move into more skilled positions early on. Why go through a lengthy and sometimes expensive training or apprenticeship program to learn a growth skill when your neighbor who flunked out of high school is earning as much or more than you handing out shamrock shakes at the drive-through window? Keep an eye on this story in Texas because you are going to see it start playing out in California and New York before very long.

George Mills
 
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George, agreed on this completely. In fact, this has already happened in California years ago. Uber and Lyft popped up 5 years ago or so and people left their jobs to drive their own cars around and make good money doing it while making their own schedule. One of them even ran an ad claiming you could be your own boss by working with them.

Through simple economics, these two hired too many drivers and have recently started paying their drivers much less percentage and with all the drivers out there, there’s less rides available. Since December, I’ve had an inordinate amount of Uber and Lyft drivers applying. I advertised on Craigslist one time when I needed to add another driver to our fleet and explained my drivers make more money than Uber/Lyft drivers and they deliver great food to smiling happy customers instead of listening to someone in the backseat tell them how and where to drive. Received 30+ unhappy Uber/Lyft drivers and I hand picked 2 from the bunch. I’ve never had a better fleet of drivers in my 15 year career!
 
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Being in Wisconsin, I do not see that obnoxious minimum wage increase happening anytime soon, (Thank you Gov. Walker)

But, to try and attract a higher skilled workforce, we now start our entry level workers (if they are not total idiots who need to be reminded to not breathe while underwater) at $13.00/hour with talented people bouncing around $20.00/hour range

How did we do this without raising our prices to cover these extra labor costs?
We went to a “No tipping Allowed” environment, then added on a 15% service charge to all menu items. It shows up on the receipt as our “Fair & Equitable Wage Program” (EWP) and these funds get disbursed equally to all employees, not just floor staff, to cooks, dishwashers, deliver drivers, everyone but the ownership.
We look at total “EWP” funds collected, divide that up by hours worked, we were able to get everyone up to a wage where they can afford our locally high cost of living (Tourist town) and not be a depot of lowlife labor.
It also stopped the butthurt between BOH workers and FOH workers , it got our TEAM working as an actual team with cooks and dishwasher willingly pitching in to help the FOH staff when they need it, and vice versa.

So, instead of line cooks saying, “That’s not fair that the servers make $300.00 in a shift, but we don’t get that kind of money” I’m sure you’re all aware of that age old battle.

I had one customer complain about it, I’m sure there’ll be more. But the overwhelming response to this program has been positive by customers and employees alike.

the situations that propelled me to do this was when a cashier booked a large catering order, they would do all the legwork, to get it set up, the cooks did the extra work to get it all prepped, cooked & packaged.
The day comes for the customer to pick up the order, they decide to tip a generous amount, but that tip only went to whoever collected the money, not the person who took the order or the people who prepared it. By law, tips that floor people collect cannot be divided among other staff. SO this cured that situation too

Here is a link to another Wisconsin restaurant that also has gone this route, I spoke with the owner at length about his program, and gave it a shot here with some modifications. I expect to lose a few customers over this, but having an actual team environment to lead is well worth it IMO. Linky>>> http://www.deltadiner.com/follow-up-on-comments-regarding-no-tip-policy/
 
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