Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 31, 1990 TAG: 9006010635
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the dream, his child will grow up to accept a Nobel Prize.
In the nightmare, his son, instead, will make a living asking, "Do you want fries with that?"
All kidding aside, parents may consider the latter far from a nightmare, since a career in the fast-food industry offers not only a full benefits package and competitive salary - with some employees earning in excess of $650 a week - but also the chance to acquire valuable restaurant-management skills.
"Fast-food management is becoming a respectable position," said Jack Hager, manager of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Lexington and the New River Valley.
"It's not just flipping burgers," said McDonald's spokesman Armando Ojeda, in an interview from the corporation's home office in Oak Brook, Ill.
"It's a launching pad for a lot of executives in this country," said Ross Garland, Boddie-Noell Enterprise's district vice president for Hardee's restaurants in Eastern Kentucky and Central and Southwestern Virginia.
"Jay Leno makes fun of us, but he's out there selling Doritos," added Mike Sloan, director of operations for the Burger King franchise for Roanoke, Martinsville and Danville.
"The service industry - fast food in particular - gets a bad rap and that's unfortunate, because that's where there's the most potential for jobs in the future."
For that reason, some high school graduates have traded their caps and gowns for the fast-food service hats and uniforms they had occasionally donned as part-timers.
Boddie-Noell's Garland is one such student.
He began as a Hardee's crew member at the age of 15.
Today, he oversees 73 Hardee's restaurants. "It's been a great opportunity and a super company to work for," he said. "I don't think I could have gone into anything else and done as well as I've done with this company."
Hager, the manager of 11 Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, also started behind the counter. He worked for the chain part time through high school before accepting a position as a store manager in the 1970s.
He said the fast-food industry has changed a lot since then.
"When I started, $125 a week had you working all waking hours. But the wages [today] are competitive. You can make a good living."
For example, Sloan said a Burger King restaurant manager, depending on experience, can earn a weekly salary of $275 to start, with the potential of earning more than $650 a week.
In recent years, many of the major fast-food chains have offered attractive compensation packages in an effort to attract employees.
"It's a matter of supply and demand. We don't have the number of quality people we would like," said Sloan, who attributes the worker shortage to the Roanoke Valley's low unemployment rate in addition to competition from other retailers.
Hourly employees at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy's, Burger King, Hardee's and McDonald's restaurants in the Roanoke Valley earn above minimum wage.
Kentucky Fried Chicken pays new crew members with no prior work experience $4 an hour, while experienced workers earn $4.25 an hour. They also undergo a biannual raise review.
Howard Ricketson, president of Wendy's of Western Virginia, said beginning Wendy's employees make $4 an hour.
New Burger King crew members in the Roanoke Valley make $4.25 an hour, plus quarterly bonuses. Sloan said trained Burger King workers can earn up to $7 an hour.
Garland, on the other hand, would not disclose what Roanoke-area Hardee's workers earn. "I can't quote you any figures, but I can tell you we are competitive in the industry."
He did say, however, that full-time employees are subject to periodic reviews for salary increases and are offered their choice of three different medical plans.
Boddie-Noell also has a scholarship program for its high school employees and workers with children, as well as credit-union and profit-sharing plans and a promotion policy that favors in-house advancement.
McDonald's, according to Ojeda, pays its hourly employees $4.80 to start and considers them for raises three times a year.
He said McDonald's also has hired tutors for its student workers and language instructors for foreign exchange students employed by the corporation.
"And we sponsor a lot of high school activities," he said.
Of course, to attend high school events, student workers need time off, and they get it, the spokesmen said.
"Our kids can determine their own schedules," said Ojeda.
"It depends on what their parents allow," said Ricketson
"It's not difficult to work around a student's schedule," said Garland.
"One thing the students like [about Kentucky Fried Chicken] is that we don't stay open real late in the evening," said Hager. "We try not to work the students two consecutive nights in a week, and we try to give them weekend time off," said Hager.
"Because they can't get the employees they need, they will bend over backwards to get students who will work for them," said Patrick Henry High School Marketing Education Coordinator Toni McLawhorn, who placed seven of her program's 50 students in fast-food jobs in the past school year.
"Some students don't like the kind of work they have to do, like cook and pick up other people's messes. They'd rather be in a store selling or doing something that is more - quote, unquote - glamorous," she said.
"Unfortunately, they haven't always seen the advantages and opportunities [of a fast-food employment]," such as flexible hours and good wages.
McLawhorn recalled three former students who worked for the same fast-food companies throughout high school.
"They're now managers of their own restaurants and making quite a bit of money," she said.
Another advantage of the fast-food industry, according to Sloan, is that it allows employees to learn skills that can be applied to other industries.
"Personnel, accounting, customer relations, health and food safety - all of these skills are applicable to any business," he said.
"Right now, in excess of 80 percent of our [Burger King] managers started as crew members," most of them in high school.
Hager, who estimated at least half of his work force consists of high school students, currently has two managers in the Roanoke Valley who worked part time for Kentucky Fried Chicken while they were in high school.
"We took them under our wing and taught them all they needed to know," said Hager.
"We've also had a number of students stay on as [Wendy's] managers," said Ricketson.
"More than half of all of our [McDonald's] managers started out as crew members," said Ojeda., adding that Ed Rensy, the current president of the McDonald's Corp., started out as a crew member.
Of the Hardee's workers in his district, Garland estimated that 30 percent are high school students. Seventy-five percent of his management staff, he said, "started [as crew members] while in high school and continued on with us."
by CNB