Employee compensation has always been a touchy subject for a lot of people. When you hear “you get what you pay for?”, what are your thoughts?

The first thought that some of you might have, may be about paying very little for a service and getting some shoddy work done. And that would be absolutely correct. However, if I say “what about in food service”? Was the first thing you thought of something along the lines of “well sure, you pay $.99 for a burger, you should not expect the best quality”.

Of course it would be simple if that was the topic I was trying to discuss; however, it is not. Recently, I was reminded of two times where I couldn’t stop laughing about something that happened to me while in the drive-thru at a fast food establishment. The first involved going to McDonald’s with my sister and ordering several McFlurry’s (Early 1990’s). We had various ones with different toppings, but it was when we got to the last one that we started having a problem. One wanted a McFlurry, plain, or basically just the ice cream in a cup.

They gave us several reasons for why it was impossible to make a plain McFlurry, ranging from “it couldn’t be entered into the register”, to “the spoon only gets added when it is used to mix the topping into the ice cream”. It took almost five minutes of arguing in the drive-thru and then finally getting a manager into the conversation before the employees were shown how easy it could be done. I was in the drive through of a Dairy Queen, wondering how they might handle a person asking for a blizzard with no toppings, as this memory came rushing back.  

The second event involved an incident at Burger King; incidentally, it also dealt with ordering an item plain. When you order a double cheeseburger plain, you should still expect to get cheese on it, otherwise it would be a double hamburger and not a cheeseburger. The employee defended what they did by saying that “plain meant nothing on it”. As a former Burger King Manager, I can attest to the fact that not all employees are like that; however, I do remember asking one of my employees why they were putting so much mustard on the sandwiches they were making. Come to find out that they liked mustard so they thought everyone else did as well.

I am sure that some of you might consider these incidents as standard for the fast food industry, but I can honestly say that there are “some” fast food establishments and that I absolutely enjoy going to since I have never had an issue with the products or service I receive. So it makes me wonder, have
you ever thought that paying employees crappy wages results in getting crappy products/service? It is an interesting question and revolves around the subject of Employee Compensation: “you get what you pay for”.

Compensation Research

Research has shown that taking care of employees and paying higher wages has resulted in increased productivity and profits for companies that understand quality employee compensation. If you have ever eaten at an In-n-Out, you would know what paying employees a decent wage does for service and quality food. This can also be seen at companies such as Southwest Airlines, UPS, Costco, Quicktrip, and Trader Joe’s to name a few. This research can be found here: Productivity: You Get What You Pay For (And Then Some)

This research has also shown for for every dollar of increased wages resulted in an additional $10 or more in revenue, some even as high as $28 increase. Costs associated with low wage employees increase as turnover increases. If a company has 100% turnover (common among a lot of food service establishments), then each employee is actually resulting in a company paying the price of two employees based on turnover.

In my own research on food safety, it is the employee that impacts health inspection scores the most, with employee behaviors being the reason that inspections go from an A to a B to a C. Paying employees a better wage allows for companies to demand higher quality employees, which in turn provides higher quality guest satisfaction.

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