Hire for the Story, Not the Shift: The Values-Based Approach to QSR Staffing

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: I am super excited today to, to welcome a, uh, podcast, I guess. Podcast veteran, right? David, I think you've been on a lot of podcasts, including a couple. Yes, including a couple of mine in the past, but David Schar. And David's a good friend and love talking with him. And for, uh, those that don't know you, David, would you mind introducing yourself and telling the audience about you?

Speaker A: Sure. So I actually got my start in restaurants, which I think we'll get into.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So if you look at my CV now, the fact that I use the term CV instead of resume, you know, it's, you know, you, you would peg me as an academic couldn't be further from the truth. I started out as a serial entrepreneur. Tons of different businesses, culminating in an ice cream shop that we'll talk about. Loved every minute of that experience. Well, let's be honest, loved some of that experience. There's, you know, I also remember very distinctly a time when I was crying at my desk trying to figure out how I was going to make payroll. But anyway, that what I really loved about, um, the restaurant business was being able to. That leadership piece and being able to run a crew of people, people who, for so many of them, this was their first job ever. So they didn't know that work wasn't supposed to suck yet, so it didn't have to. And so through that journey, I developed a whole bunch of questions that I needed answers or Google wasn't enough. So I went back to school as an old man, got my master's degree in IO psychology. That's industrial organizational psychology, continued on and, uh, earned my PhD in business psychology, doing research specifically on passion for work and why sometimes we are madly in love with work until one day we show up on Monday morning and we're like, why are we here? You know, we don't even want to get out of bed, and we're now out of love with work. And what does that journey look like? How does it impact us? How does it impact the organization? Is there anything that we could do or we, as leadership could do to prevent that thing from happening? Um, and so that's why I explore, um, I have my own consultancy, uh, speak around the country to a lot of groups, including restaurants, which are leaders of all of all kinds. And I am the acting director and a lecturer at the University of Maryland's Industrial Organizational Psychology Master's program, where we teach people how to do the type of work that I do.

Speaker B: That's wonderful. That's fantastic. I know. And I always see you on LinkedIn. You're big on LinkedIn and you are usually at an airport when you are doing a, uh, post or something. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker B: Well, I'd love to get started and really talk and you mentioned it a little bit in your opening there. But really the ice cream, I guess we call it the ice cream parlor origin story. You've told this story to me a few times in the past, but maybe talk about it because, you know, you talk about your journey to, in the meaningful work. Really started around managing the ice cream shop and watching your teenage crew choose to volunteer on their days off right now, that's remarkable in an industry where turnover can hit really 150%, sometimes annually. What was happening in that culture that quick service restaurant operators, you know, managing thousands of, uh, you know, similar younger employees are missing today and maybe kind of hit both of those.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I got involved in the ice cream business and specifically Cold Stone Creamery. I absolutely loved the concept because I loved the first of all ice cream. Having gotten over that, still love ice cream, but also I love the awkward situations. In the heyday of Cold Stone, you'd go in there and we would sing for tips. I had this dusty old banana costume that I would throw on to the dismay of every one of my crew members. Um, and it was, it was a ton of fun. But what I didn't realize I was getting into was this leadership aspect. This was my first true brick and mortar business with full time and part time employees. And so I didn't realize that I was having an impact and I didn't realize the impact that my crew members were having on me until a very specific day. So there were, you know, most of my crew members came from the inner city of Baltimore, really rough lives. A lot of them came from homes where their dad was either dead or in jail. Their mother may have been an not really there for them. They'd go to school and there would be armed police roaming the hallways. They would turn on the news and see themselves, their friends, their relatives as the criminals on the news. And so not a lot of confidence boosting for this group. Um, I had two crew members that I remember, you know, talk about culture shock. I was this upper middle class Jewish kid coming from the suburbs and I had these two crew members who thought it was so fun and funny and such a Romeo and Juliet story because they were best friends, but they could never go on a double date because one of them was dating a blood and the other was dating a crip. And, uh, you know, to me, that was horrifying and crazy that we could joke about this. But one day, one of those individuals, she must have been about 16 or 17 at the time she showed up to her shift. And I had this rule in my restaurant that you couldn't come in a bad mood if you were in a bad mood. Because as many of your listeners who are serv. Safe. Certified understand, you're taught that if somebody has the flu, they cannot come to work because everybody will catch it. Well, there's not much that's more contagious than a bad mood attitude. You know, those types of things are incredibly contagious within the workforce. Um, and we know this to be true in multiple aspects. And so this world, you can't come to work in a bad mood, same as if you have the flu. Find somebody to cover your shift, let me know, et cetera. One day, this one individual, one of these two besties, shows up and she's looking really down. And normally she would be the life of the party when she would come into work and the customers loved her and she would do all sorts of tricks. But none of that was happening this day. So her. Her customers. So. So I saw this and I called her in the back and I said. And I said, hey, you know you're not supposed to come to work in a bad mood, right? Like, really sensitive back then, you know, I probably should have approached it a different way. But she turned to me and I noticed for the first time that she had literal tears coming out of her eyes. And she went on to explain to me that her boyfriend, who was in one of these gangs, was found by the water in Baltimore, left for dead. He had been shot multiple times. Things didn't look good. They had to take him by. By helicopter to shock trauma. And that's never a good sign. And they didn't know if he was going to make it. So I told her, like, what are you doing here? Like, get out of here. Not just because she's in a bad mood. Rules are out the window at this point. But why are you here on the most traumatic day of your life? Go be with family, be with friends. Be somewhere quiet. If you need, whatever you need, go. And she cut me off and said, I can't go. I said, I understand that money is tight. I'll pay for the day. I'll personally cover your shift. And she cuts me off again, and she said, no, I can't go. I need to be here. I can only be here is my happy place.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And that moment sticks out in my m as a core memory of mine. Um, it was extremely similar to the birth of my first child in the sense that when that happened, I understood this. It was like this giant weight that I felt on my shoulders for the first time. When you become a parent, you feel that, that sudden. There's joy, but there's this sudden feeling of responsibility for this human. And at that moment when I recognized that I had accidentally fumbled into creating this happy place, this place where this one crew member who couldn't find meaning elsewhere, found meaning at work scooping ice cream, for God's sakes, you know that this was the place where she had a voice. This is the place where she felt safe, this is the place where she felt valued. That on the most traumatic day, this is the place that she had to be. The idea of that, the weight of that on my shoulders, that I could accidentally create that, and therefore I could accidentally create the exact opposite, was one of the most impactful moments of my life and changed the trajectory. That's exactly when I started going back to school because I needed to answer questions so, such as how were my crew members finding meaning in scooping ice cream? While so many of my friends, my family members who were doctors, lawyers, teachers, business owners, char professionals, they were working objectively meaningful jobs and dreaded going to work on Monday. And that's what I had to figure out. I had to reverse engineer that and understand what was working so well in my restaurant and what was so broken throughout our, uh, society.

Speaker B: No, it's, it's an incredible, impactful story that, that you, that you share and, and, and you know, talks about how important really the culture of the organization is. And I think, I know you're an expert in this, this topic too, but burnout, right? And, and I know you've described burnout, burnout as having, you know, really three core dimensions. Emotionally exhausted, being exhausted, cynicism, decreased sense of personal accomplishment, especially in qsr. Crew members are really dealing with all three of these at one time. Right. Simultaneously. Like the pace of everything. And a customer comes in with an issue and maybe little to no visible growth path in their, in their, in their job. You know, where do you see the industry being broken, David? And where's the lowest hanging fruit for someone that may own a franchise? How can they start to fix that?

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I think that we all sort of are, what's it called, Pennywise, pound foolish. You know, we see things and we try to protect ourselves. And um, I think that we all have this negativity bias in general. And what happens is when we have, you know, as business owners, I know the things that stick out to us. As restaurateurs, I know the things that stick out to us. It's that one customer who writes the nasty thing on Yelp. It's not the hundreds that write that just give you five stars, right? It's the one that writes the nasty review. It's not. It's not the crew member who's been with you for a year and is loyal and a hard worker and doing all the right things. It's the one who steals the money out of your safe, the one that you trusted and shortchanges you, right? That's the guy who sticks out. And so we start looking for that stuff, uh, all the. Everywhere we have this negativity bias. And so, and that's okay because. And it's natural and it's evolutionary, right? Like, we have this idea like if your ancestors would come out of their cage, you know, or out of their cave rather, you know, a millennia ago, and the first thing they're doing because they're so optimistic is looking for the sunrise, they wouldn't be here. It's the ancestors who climbed out and looked to the right and looked to their left, looking for the saber toothed tiger before they would relax enough to look for the right. So we are naturally have this negativity bias and we, and we ingrain it in ourselves. Because within the restaurant business, for sure, we are constantly looking for smoke because we need to see the smoke to prevent the fire, both literally and non. Literally, right? And so we're constantly on the lookout for all these things. But what ends up happening is we end up othering each other. So leadership doesn't trust the manager, the manager doesn't trust the crew, the crew doesn't trust anybody. And so we create our own reality there. And what ends up happening is that everybody ends up carrying their own load and being alienated and alienating others. If we can turn that around and we can understand that we are all one team and really invest in each other, then we've got each other's back. We could support each other. And one of the core principles of burnout is that it's not just when things get busy that you burn out. It's not that simple. It's when it's this job demand, resources model where the demands are so high and the resources, including support from others, isn't there, and that support can look like a variety of different things. It could look like somebody actually jumping in. Does your manager actually jump up there and help on the line when a rush comes in? Or do they just cross their arms and look at their crew members to make sure everybody's doing the right thing? Are you jumping in there? If you happen to be in there and you're doing some things in the office and you see some people walk in, are you jumping in there? I was guilty of just watching the monitor and saying, oh my God, why are they not moving faster? Well, get your ass up and go out there and help. Right? Because it's not just helping those customers in the moment. The signal that you are sending to that crew member, that staff in that moment, is a beautiful thing that will pay you dividends. Because now they don't feel so overwhelmed. They feel like they have the support and that you could throw anything at them, but they've got the support and it's okay. And that's just one dimension of it. The other dimension, real quick is when we think of job demands, that's not so clear cut. Um, we think that when there's a lot of work that we burn out. And that is not true. What happens is think about if you've got a bar, right, For a restaurant with a bar. Or, um, if you don't have a bar, you've been to bars, and you might even just see this on your line. But think of a busy bar on a Friday night and you've got this bartender back there and they are taking a ton of orders and tips are flying at them and they're, you know, in that moment, they don't look like they're burnt out because they're not. If anything, they're in a state of flow, right? It's just this natural, almost Zen like thing that's happening where their body is moving automatically and they're making everything work and it's actually invigorating. It's not draining. Now take that same bartender. But every time somebody places an order, they turn around to grab a glass and either the glass is dirty or, or it's not there for them. Now you have somebody on the path of burnout. Your people are there because they want to do the work that you hired them to do. If they're unable to do that because they don't have the supplies, because they don't have the support, because there's too much bureaucracy, too many checklists, too many this, too many that, and they don't see the answer to or the reason for, then that's going to burn them out. That's going to burn them out.

Speaker B: So do you think the organizations that are. That are successful with avoiding the burnout just have more of a, you know, plan in place on. On how to. Maybe it's training, right? It's. Maybe it's training or what are your thoughts on that? How to. How are the ones that are doing it? Well, what are they doing?

Speaker A: Right, Absolutely. One, training is excellent because what training does is it gives people direction, it gives them clarity, it teaches them things, but it also is another form of support. And more than anything, it gives them confidence. Um, so it's not. Training is great because it gives them competence, but even better because it gives them confidence, right? So that they become confident in their abilities. And that's a big help. The other thing is that support thing that I was talking about that is so essential. And the other thing is to really frame things in a way where they understand what they're doing. If they're using a checklist, if they're restocking when things are slow, if they have to sit through a, uh, training that maybe they don't see the purpose of, connect the dots for them. Show them that greater purpose. If you can tie this to something bigger than just serving food to the next customer who comes in, then. Then, like now it's. Now it's about something bigger. It's. It's like my crew that found meaning in scooping ice cream that didn't happen accidentally. It's reframing this stuff so that they're now doing something bigger. What that does is it gives them more confidence. It gives them more of a sense of meaning. It gives them more of a sense of community with the other people, with ownership, with management, with each other, with the customers. But it reframes everything. But basically everybody looks for three intrinsic things. They have three intrinsic needs that they look for from their work. One is a sense of autonomy. So they need to feel like they're like they have autonomy, like that they have input, that they are choosing this type of work, a sense of confidence. They need to feel like they are growing, that they're not stagnant, that there's something happening here, that they are bettering themselves as people and that they're being successful. And then there's the relational piece where they feel like they're part of something bigger than them, that they feel like there's a sense of community and support. If you can provide those things, that's a pretty great, powerful antidote to burnout.

Speaker B: M those three points are Excellent. And yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, I, uh, want to switch gears a little bit on you because you mentioned it earlier, David. It was the passion decline topic that you mentioned writing your doctor, um, thesis around this. But can you explain, um, what that is? And maybe you mentioned potentially between I work too much or I don't work enough and I'd love to learn more about, about all of this. So. Yeah, take it, take it from there.

Speaker A: Yeah, this was one of the most fascinating things from my research.

Speaker B: Right, yes.

Speaker A: Um, there was, there was a lot. My research was basically long form interviews with people who had been completely passionate about their work and passion. Meaning that they, that it, that it wasn't just something they love to do, but it was part of their identity. You know, where for most of you who have chefs, a chef isn't a job that you have, that is a, that's an identity to be a chef. Right. And so their work was part of their identity. And then, and then one day they fell out of love with work. Interestingly, it was almost directly down the line. 50% of, uh, approximately 50% of my participants, the people that I interviewed about this pointed to overwork, too much work as the catalyst or at least a partial catalyst for their decline in passion for their work. And the other 50% pointed to a lack of challenge, a lack of work, a lack of development as a catalyst or a partial catalyst to falling out of love with work. So two polar opposite things. Um, and I found that absolutely fascinating because I just actually posted something on LinkedIn about this. This was like, uh, when I was doing my research. I think whenever you get into research, you're looking for that silver bullet. I'm going to find the answer to this problem. And I was frustrated because I'm like, wait, when you dive in, people have these very different experiences and in this case polar opposite experiences. Like what do I tell restaurateurs? What do I tell business owners and leaders and HR professionals? Do I tell them give them less or do I tell them give them more? They just want the answer, but I think the answer is there. And I think the answer is exactly in this dichotomy kind of between those two things. And that is that the silver bullet is knowing your people. It's, there's a couple of things. There's one, what kind of work are they overloaded with? Are they overloaded with trivial, mundane work that they don't see the meaning in? Or are they not getting enough of that type of work that is meaningful and helps with their Development and they see their growth and where they're going from here and not feeling like they're just stuck in a dead end starter restaurant job for the rest of their life. Like, what does that work look like? But even more so, what does that person look like? What are they looking for at this season in this moment of time? And the answer is, you need to know your people. I always tell, I always, you know, with all of the people that have consulted in small, medium and large, large scale, large size businesses, I, I don't think I've ever had a client who has told me anything but the fact with pride about their open door policy. They're all so proud of their open door policy. My retort to that is that the only open door policy that I've ever seen work is when that door is open wide enough for you to get your own ass out of your office. Because you can tell everybody I have an open door policy. They don't feel comfortable coming to you. Not all of them, not all the time, not about everything. But if you use that door to walk out of there and meet them where they are as an external consultant that nobody knows. When I walk into organizations, nobody knows me, right? And I'm this external consultant. They assume I'm completely aligned with leadership who's writing me the check, you know, how I get people to open up space, specifically in restaurants. I take the trash out with them. I see them walking out to the trash can and I to the dumpster and I say, let me help you. And I grab the dirtiest bag of trash and I walk out to that dumpster. By the time I get back, I know everything about them and everything about your restaurant. Meet people where they are. Don't just encourage them to meet you where you are. If you can do that, then you can really understand who they are and where they are. And that's the silver bullet. Then you know, does this person need more, does this person need less? What does this person need throughout everything in terms of do they feel supported enough, what are they going through at home, what, what do they need from me in this moment and from my management and from my staff in this moment?

Speaker B: So basically being in the trenches with them, right? I mean, is what you're saying is. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Spending time with them and. Absolutely. I think you made a great point earlier too, as far as, uh, you know, not everybody's comfortable just going, yeah, you may have an open door policy like you said, but you're right, not everybody's okay with just sharing Everything with you or going in. So like, you know, leaving, leaving your, your position and going down and spending time with them. That's, that's a huge, huge point. And I think kind uh, of leading in my next question here. Can you talk a little bit about the general manager role? Because we see it in restaurants where that's um, really the single biggest role really in the system or in the restaurant is, is that manager in the middle. Right. How can they really help out their, their team and because that they may be. They may have crew members that report to them, maybe talk about that role and uh, how, how you can help develop them and, and um, you know, protect them and help them to grow in the organization too. As someone who's, who is, um. That's. It's just a huge role in the organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. Because they really do get it. The toughest shit rolls downhill and stops at them. And if they're a good manager, it stops at them because you want to be able to unload on them. You know, if you're a franchise, the franchise, the RDO or whoever else you have, you know, the regional guy or, or straight from the top, they're coming down, you're not there, they're unloading on the manager. Right? So it's not just you, it's them, it's the customers. They all unload on the manager. And if you have a good manager, they're filtering that and passing, passing it on as much more constructive criticism to the crew. So it's rolling down to them and hopefully not beyond there. But the shit also rolls uphill from their crew members who are giving it to them as well. They get so stuck in the middle. And I think that's a big part of why across the board we see middle management tends to suffer from worse burnout than anyone else. You expect them to live it, to breathe it, to be on call 24 hours a day and they catch the flack for everyone and everything.

Speaker B: They do.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it, and it's incredibly challenging understanding that being open to that, being a teammate of theirs and understanding goes a really long way here. But understanding and being empathetic to what they go through is a good first step.

Speaker B: Step.

Speaker A: But beyond that, lightening the load on them so that you can step in as well. Not always making them the bad cop. Sometimes it's really helpful to have your manager as the good cop. Right? Like have them stand in and be the good cop. Have them be the one who's there for the crew. Oftentimes we expect our managers to manage. We give them no leadership training, and really our expectation is that they will just manage that. They're gonna, um, watch the cogs, make sure that we're not spending too much on food, make sure we're not spending too much on labor, make sure that there's, um, uh, that they're minimizing theft. We want them to police, police, police. If you invest in them as a leader and you develop them in leadership skills, you're going to be helping them again with that sense of competence, with that sense of autonomy. Right. And with that sense of meaning and the relational piece. But you'll also be helping everybody else, because now if they're taking this on as they're a mentor for their crew, then that's going to help everybody within your organization. And I think that that's what we really have to invest in. Invest in our managers as leaders. Beyond that, we have to be able to step in and we have to have shift leads or secondary managers. Or you yourself, if you have a smaller operation and just don't have those other resources, make sure to give them space and time, make sure that they have access to mental health care that they have access to. Not just that, but. But hobbies. I have a client who is a restaurant manager in a very unique, uh, environment. He's a private chef, runs the kitchen for somebody in their home with a staff of like a dozen people. Like, really, really unique in that sense. Yeah, but this individual doesn't. You know, he was. He was there every single day. And I saw in front of my eyes, as I was coaching him, I saw his health deteriorating. He. He had one health risk after the other and was pushing off, going to the doctor, you know, and just sort, uh, of trying to take care of it himself. The stress was unbelievable, and it was rolling downhill and impacting everybody. But this person also had these two specific hobbies. They loved music and were part of a band, and they also loved to go out on a lake, on a boat by themselves and just do some fishing, mandating that stuff, making sure that they scheduled that stuff and that that was sacred time that nobody could touch was such a huge piece of their recovery from this, because they have this place to stretch artistically and socially, but then also this place where they could completely unplug, and it made them a better manager overall across the board when they came back to the kitchen. So I think those things are extremely important. Being able to have balance and being able to turn off the phone at some points. Those Things are incredibly valuable. We know that with passion, not to go down too much of a rabbit hole, but with passion. We've discovered that there's a healthier kind of passion and a less healthy kind of passion. And people with a less healthy kind of passion, it's called obsessive passion, because they can't unplug. Right. People with this other, this healthier type, we call it harmonious passion, because at the end of the day, they're able to close their laptop and forget, like, leave work at work. It turns out that people that are obsessively passionate put in significantly more hours than the people who are harmoniously passionate, and yet they are not an ounce more productive. So the person who's putting in fewer hours is just as productive, if not more productive, than the person putting in all of the hours and never turning it off. Wow. That, that reset that refresh that pause that. Turning off the cell phone pays back in dividends.

Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Because we're all addicted to our phones. We're on our phones all the time. And that's just one example. But. Right. Yeah, just, just I think getting to know your, your team too, and find out what they're passionate about. So if they, if they do like fishing or if they do, like, do, uh, have the hobbies, I guess as a manager, finding out what those are too. Right. For your crew members and then for the owner on down to the gm, finding out what, what, you know, motivates their, their people too, is, Is huge. So. Yeah, very. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, they like fishing. I would, I would purchase them a, you know, a boat charter or a fishing trip or something with a specific time, give them off on that day on the schedule and give them the certificate and send them on their way. Don't take no for an answer. Sometimes people will say, no, I need to be here. Like Simone. Right? Like that, like that story. Yeah, but. But sometimes when you just put down the hammer and say, this is you time, I've got this, there's a ton of power there.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Um, kind of want to switch gears a little bit on you, uh, talking about. We're recording right before Memorial Day, so actually I was listening to a podcast this morning about here. The big hiring wave is coming, right. With the summer jobs and everything. And, and when we talk about, you know, the hiring process in, in quick service restaurants, it's more desperate transactional, like, hey, can you start today? You know, rather than, you know, more of a values based approach. So from your perspective, you know, what would a more informed hiring process look like, you know, for a franchise operator? Um, and is it realistic, you know, at the, at the volume and pace that these, you know, restaurants operate? Now, what would be your thought as we kind of approach a, ah, time in the year where, you know, people are going to be hiring again and at rapid paces now, what are your thoughts around. Around that?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you've got to know who you are and tell them who you are. Right. So this, this means two separate things. One is, who are you beyond just serving food? I don't go into your restaurant because you serve hamburgers. There's, uh, a thousand places to go get a hamburger, including at home. There's a reason why I step into your restaurant to get a hamburger. If you don't know what that is, you better figure that out and translate that to your current employees and to your new hires and your applicants, make them want to come to your restaurant. When we look at work culture, stories are so important. We have these stories, like, we know stories about organizations that we've never been a part of. Nordstrom was famous for their. Nordies are the people that go above and beyond at Nordstrom, right? This department store.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And I know this story about Nordies where there's a story where somebody comes and to return tire chains at the end of the winter. They come and try, like, try to return these tire chains. And the person who worked there says, you know, like, I don't know if I could do that. And they're saying, no, I know I bought it here. Are you sure you bought it? I'm sure I bought it here. And they said, well, do you know how much? And they tell them how much. And they gave them the full refund without a receipt or anything. And the person walked out. The most amazing thing about that story and is that Nordstrom not then nor never sold tire chains. So it wasn't even a product they sold. But that's a story that's a legend, which tells you everything you need to know about Nordstrom. That they put service above profits, and that is where they get their profits from, that they put service above everything else and trust in their customers, et cetera. For us at, uh, Coldstone, there was a story with one of my crew members. She must have been 16 or 17 at the time. I wasn't there at the restaurant. She was the shift lead at the time. And then we had a couple crew members there. But somebody came to pick up a cake, and it said happy birthday, Grandma on it. Our cake decorator had done it, she wasn't there anymore. She had left the cake for him. The guy comes in to get the cake. Little did we know, before he came in to get the cake, he had parked in the parking lot right next ours, which was for the Safeway grocery store. And if there's anything you know about Baltimore City, it's like you can't park anywhere without a tow truck being pretty close behind you. And so Safeway would allow these tow trucks or commission these tow trucks to watch their parking lot like a hawk. It was a moneymaker. And so the person parked at Safeway, they went into Safeway, got all the supplies, the birthday balloons, the candles, the plates, all that stuff, brought it back to their car and then, um, and put it in the car and then crossed over to our parking lot where they came to pick up their cake. They're in our store for maybe five minutes. They get their ice cream cake, they walk out, it's pouring rain as they're standing there with their giant paper cold stone bag with this cake in it, and the rain is drenching the bag as they're looking around for their car. They can't find their car anywhere. They're walking our parking lot, they're walking the other parking lot and finally figure out what happened. The second they walked off of the Safeway parking lot, they were towed. And as they come to this conclusion and think, what am I going to do? That paper bag rips open and the cake splatters across the parking lot. He comes back in, explains all of this to my crew member, to my shift lead, Amber, and tells Amber everything that just happened and says, you, uh, know, I could pay for it, but is there any way that you can get me a replacement cake? It's my fault. I'll pay for it. And she said, well, we don't have a cake decorator, but I can write something on it. Which was a bad move. Amber could not write on cakes back then, but she learned eventually. But she, she did her best and grabs, uh, a cake from the freezer, writes on it, and then instead of going to the register, she walks around to the front of the store where the man is. And he said, how much is it? And she said, let's go. And he said, what do you mean? And she said, let's go hop in my car. I'm taking you to a grandma's house. And he said, what? He was late for the grandmother's birthday party that was picking up the cake for. So Amber, the 16 or 17 year old girl, I mean, like safety aside, which I went into with her, but safety aside, she puts this customer in her car with the free replacement cake and drops him off at the party with the cake in hand. You got to believe anybody who ever walked into our store, anybody who ever applied to work there, they heard that story. That was our recruiting story. It was our sourcing story. It was our selection story. If that story spoke to you, we wanted you to work with us. Wow. And so know your stories. What makes you you. What makes you so special? Why do people want to work there? That's what you need to share with people so that they're not coming in to scoop ice cream. They're coming in to create experiences like Amber did that day. Hopefully in a safer way, but like Amber did that day. Um, and the second piece of it is be, uh, as honest about who you are. Also be honest about who you are and where your limitations are. We know realistic job previews, meaning you tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly, they end up creating more engagement, further tenure. People don't turn over quite as fast, and they don't burn out quite as fast if they understand what they're signing up for. So often we come in, somebody's interviewing with us, they're telling us only all the good things about them, and we're telling them all the good things about us and maybe stretching the truth about some of it, right? You say we're like a family here. They roll their eyes. They know that's bullshit. Even if it isn't. They're assuming it is because everybody says it now, right? And whatever you're. Whatever you're trying to sell, they're not even buying it. But. But the little bit that they are buying means that they come in on fire, they're ready to go working for the perfect restaurant ever. And it only takes them a couple months to figure out that that is not what this is. Now the honeymoon period is over, and they burn out fast. So let them know your flaws on the way in. Say, here's what we do amazingly well, better than anyone, and here's what we're still working on. And if you come in and you can help us with a little bit of that, you know, a little bit of this toxicity or a little bit of the fact that we, you know, are a little bit slower than other restaurants or something like that, like, that would be. That would be awesome. We want you to come in and help us work toward bettering ourselves in that way. That's giving them the full picture will make Them thirsty for what you're offering and also without unrealistic realistic expectations.

Speaker B: Wow, that's a great story. Well, I think you're right too, about just being, um, if, uh, you're trying to hire someone just being authentic, you know, as a business, as an owner, just saying, to your point, you might. We do, we do this. Well, we're struggling in this area, but I think that helps. You know, it goes a long way. Being authentic in that process too, I would think is very important. Yeah. Well, to wrap us up, I have one more question for you. I love talking about, you know, the future of the industry, kind of where things are going. And, uh, you know, you talk a lot about in your work, the future of work and what it means, what it requires. And AI is everywhere. You can't turn TV on, listen to a podcast, or read an article that doesn't talk about AI these days. You know, so you mentioned a lot about that and that the future of work requires more flexibility and that people aren't using, you know, jobs because of the pay. It's about more equity and, you know, feeling respected. Uh, but given that QSR operators are navigate navigating those, you know, really, the anxiousness around AI, you know, Gen Z workforce, you know, shifts and the tight labor market right now, you know, what separates the operators who, uh, will thrive from those who will keep struggling. And where do you see the industry? Maybe it's 2030. Where do you see the industry going, in your opinion?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that people are going to be thirstier and thirstier for human experiences. And what's more human than going out to a restaurant and interacting with humans and eating in the restaurant and things like that. And even with, even with takeout, like, there are ways to make that feel more human. I think that the more robotic your operation is, the easier it is going to be to be replaced by robots. Right. I think that the more human you are, the more competitive advantage you have. And these things don't have to be hard, they don't have to be complicated. They don't have to be as dramatic as Amber throwing that customer in her car. Right. It can be as simple as, you know, the other day, um, we were in. I want to. I don't remember exactly where we're at. We may have been in Virginia beach, which Brian was recently. Virginia beach, too? Yes. I think it may have been a pizza shop in Virginia beach where we ordered a couple pies of pizza. We're a big family of seven and we also love pizza, so buys a Pizza. And on the inside of each of the boxes as we open them, they had written, handwritten, a personal message, like, uh, you rock. Or, or like a saying, a motto, something like that in each one, like an inspirational message, that little thing. And maybe we're a corny family, probably cornier than, than the average, but that was human and that made us smile. And my little kids loved it, and us older kids loved it too. You know, anything that makes you more human. If people can feel seen, if your crew members can feel seen, and therefore pay that forward, because everything at work is contagious. If they feel seen, they're going to make your customers feel seen. And if they feel seen, they're going to continue showing up for you. Because it's not about the restaurant. I used to. So when I was at my Cold Stone, we were right next door. We shared a wall with a Starbucks. And I was spending so much money at Starbucks every single day, and I thinking that I wanted coffee and I needed coffee. I always need coffee. My wife bought me, um, one of those desktop K cup things back then, and those were a little bit newer back then. She got me an assortment of all the different flavors and stuff, and it just sat on my desk super easy. Do you know I kept going to Starbucks twice a day? Turns out it wasn't about the coffee. It was about getting out of my store and seeing different people and being served, you know, by people who at least seem to give a shit about me, you know, in those.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: In that small transaction during the day, that was something, you know, and we've lost our way with that so often. And if you are not, we're not providing that, then, yeah, you're going to be replaced by robots. And obviously I'm not like, maybe you should be, right? Because why am I paying the extra overhead for a more expensive version of a robot that's going to do everything robotic? And where I don't feel seen, where I don't feel special, where I don't feel acknowledged, where I don't feel like I'm getting any value added, if you're adding the value, I'm going to pay for that added value. And so while we have this AI coming our way, you have two choices. You can invest heavily in the robots and. Or you could invest heavily in the humans. And if you, if you invest heavily in the human experience, then I think that cures all of your other problems. It cures the AI problem. It cures that, that generational problem where it's always the youngest generation. That we blame. They don't want to work anymore. Well, I've done my research, literal research. I've spoken to those people. They do want to work. They just want work that's meaningful. They want. They want their work to mean something. They want, um, their. Their life to not just be about scooping ice cream, flipping burgers. It's gotta be about something bigger. So you've gotta make it be about something bigger and show them how it's about something bigger. If you can do that, you're gonna be fine. More than fine. You're gonna have the competitive advantage.

Speaker B: Very well said, David. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time. How can someone learn more about your work? How do they find David Schar?

Speaker A: Yeah, you can find me at davidshar.com or at illuminatepmc.com my two websites. David Schar is more of my speaking side of the business. Illuminate more on the consulting side. And then I'm always, um, on LinkedIn. Love to have conversations on their active conversations. You can find me there. We can set up a phone call to discuss your particular stressors and things like that. And I'm a curious guy. Like, I'll do that for free. I want to help you with your problems, but you got to make that call.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, always, always great talking to you, David. Appreciate your time. And, uh, we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker A: Thanks so much, Brian. It's a pleasure, Sam.