Nation's Restaurant News

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. (May 16) - Despite wearing different uniforms and running 30 different restaurant concepts, FoodBrand LLC employees take great pride in working for the food court management company based here, according to a recent survey. 

That was encouraging news to FoodBrand executives, who have been working to lower employee turnover by creating a unifying culture and a workplace environment that encourages employees to stay, attracts quality job candidates and motivates workers to offer excellent customer service.

The FoodBrand survey of nearly 900 of its 1,250 employees also concurs with a recent ollegiate study that found happy employees also were more productive employees.

'Virtuous Organizations: The Value of Happiness in the Work Place' by Richard Mason of Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business in Dallas and Joanne Gavin of Marist College, showed that in order to maintain healthier, happier and more productive workplaces, organizations are well advised to place more emphasis on positive psychology. In other words, organizations should create work environments that promote employee satisfaction, which in turn produces better customer service and profits, researchers reported.

'We know that there are many facets that affect performance,' said Tyler Gompf, president of Tell Us About Us, the Canadian-based research firm that conducted the survey for FoodBrand. 'Without employee satisfaction it's hard to motivate or to satisfy customers. And if an employee is unhappy today, you'll see a drop in profitability tomorrow.'

SMU's Mason said companies in recent years have wrung economic productivity out of the average worker in large measure at the cost of his or her health and happiness.

'But organizations have the capacity to create healthy and happy as well as productive lives for their members if only their leaders commit themselves to it,' Mason said.

The SMU study profiled two companies that currently employ positive psychology and workplace practices: The Container Store, a specialty retail store, and TDIndustries, a construction company specializing in large-scal projects.

For FoodBrand employees, pride was a stronger factor than wages when it came to job satisfaction, according to the companywide survey.

FoodBrand runs food courts in 10 shopping centers on the West Coast and in mountain states. Partially owned by the Mills Corp., a mall developer, and Panda Enterprises, FoodBrand manages 80 restaurants, from quick-service concepts, such as Burger King and Starbucks, to full-service operations, such as Houlihan's and Tony Roma's.

Studying employee attitudes gives FoodBrand a benchmark to see what it is doing well and where it can improve, said Carlos Bernal, chief executive of the 6-year-old company. The recent survey was the first step in a project to gauge customer satisfaction and the profitability of the company.

Tell Us About Us, which works mostly with U.S. companies, particularly restaurants and retailers, is continuing the study by evaluating customer responses. The firm then will compare employee and customer satisfaction rates with FoodBrand's profitability. FoodBrand did about $60 million in systemwide sales last year.

In the FoodBrand survey, employees indicated that other factors important to their job atisfaction were having positive relationships with co-workers, enjoying the work they do, approving their supervisors' performance and having the freedom to participate in decision making.

'The biggest 'a-ha' for us was people taking pride in working for FoodBrand,' Bernal said. 'The second was that relationships with coworkers was very important. That validated for us some of the things we've been doing from recruiting and training perspectives. It's starting to pay some dividends to us.'

If employees enjoy their work and have friends at work, they are more likely to encourage their friends and family to apply for jobs with FoodBrand as well, Bernal said.

To encourage that, the company increased its referral program to up to $2,000 for the person who refers a job candidate and for that candidate, if he or she is hired and stays on the job long enough, said Tina Root, director of human resources.

'When we set out to do the survey, one of the goals was to identify the key drivers for satisfaction and loyalty,' Root said. 'When the key drivers are pride and relationships, then it's our hope that you would recommend [FoodBrand] to friends and family. From that, we hope to recruit and retain those great employees, and we think we can be successful in decreasing our turnover.'

Although the company's hourly turnover rate fell 11 percent in the first quarter of the year, the average still is higher than reported averages for the industry, Root said.

Companies that can create a positive culture do better at attracting qualified people who want to stay, said Tyler Gompf from TUAU.

'What's important to employees is finding a place where they belong, and culture is very important,' Gompf said. 'For employees, a friendly culture is more important than increases in wages.'

E-mail the author at: dberta(at)nrn.com