Five Guys, Chic-fil-A, Panera Bread vs. McDonald's, BK, Taco Bell (not food related)

Birds of a feather flock together. Quality attracts quality.

Add Canes to the higher quality employee group. They obviously have good hiring practices for a fast food joint.

I don't know about Panera or Five Guys, but I know at Chick-fil-a the owner has to actually work at the business for a certain number of hours per week. They probably just fire shitty employees.

Their employees are vetted better. I would rather get a new set of dedicated high school employees every 2 years rather than have shite employees that aren't reliable or trustworthy behind a register.

FWIW The popeyes by my office has had the same employees for years, they are very polite and efficient. I've never had an order wrong and them not catch it at the counter before handing it to me.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to management and their desire to work with their employees.

I think it's more of who they target.

McDonalds doesn't give a frick. They give lip service to employee education, allowing ONE 2500 scholarship award per state.

Chill-fil-A actively targets up and coming college students when in spite of probably paying similarly, they also offer a lot of benefits in scholarships, 30 times more than McD

They actually conduct interviews to gauge the person's qualifications, while the others say fill out a sheet and you're hired.

Building a positive culture at the conception of the franchise is key

Some places are in too deep. Decades of bad culture would take mass house cleaning to change. As it stands now, it's going to be a slow process to change your poor customer service places


When you're pulling from a talent pool that's some of the poorest, least educated people in the nation, and paying them minimum or just above minimum wage, it's an uphill battle. You're trying to change an attitude that's been ingrained in them since birth. People's expectations of quick service restaurants are ridiculous - what do you expect out of these people? Either stop eating it or stop bitching if you ask me

I think it's pretty simple. The first 3 take pride in their customer service and demand the same from their employees. As a result, they don't just hire any broke-dick off the street. The others don't really care who they hire as long as they can dunk french fries and fix a hamburger. They know their usual caliber of employee won't be all that reliable or invested in the job, so they just have to deal with constant turnover as efficiently as they can. Thus, they hire basically anyone off the street.

At least in some locales, McDonald's, BK, etc would be better off going with almost full automation. Quality and efficiency would increase almost 10 fold in many places.

I think the others have been around so long there is a bad stigma working at them. Even hs kids looking for a first job think McDonald's and Popeyes are beneath them.

In the construction industry, I have seen the exact same individuals, working for the exact same company perform much better under different supervision. I would assume it's much the same with the restaurants. Hiring better quality management means that people are willing to do a better job for them. Also, those people who never plan to work know better than to even apply somewhere with a real manager.