Burger King’s owners, Restaurant Brands International, have taken some smart steps to turn around the languishing fast food chain — installing modern ordering kiosks, updating kitchen equipment and remodeling stores. Last week, it made one of its biggest moves in buying out its largest franchise operator, Carrols Restaurant Group Inc, for US$1 billion.
However, executives would also be wise to quickly ditch the cringeworthy customer service of its newly acquired franchise.
Deborah Derby, chief executive officer of Carrols, which owns about 1,000 Burger King restaurants in the US, told Bloomberg News in an interview two weeks ago that all workers are required to say “you rule” to every customer and offer each one a cardboard crown.
“Say it’s a guy who’s like 38 years old, no kids in the car, and I got to say to him: ‘Do you want a crown?’” Derby explained. “You can’t help but smile when you say that, and he can’t help but laugh back.” This small gesture is meant to create a “positive aura” that would make diners want to come back.
However, its strategy puts the burden of turning around company culture on taxed workers. Instead, corporate executives should focus on improving work conditions that might create authentically content — even happy — workers who are motivated to give diners genuinely good service.
While it is wise for Burger King to keep thinking about how to market itself as appetizing to changing consumer tastes, this move is likely to have little upside for the business. At present, it does not have the leeway to throw random ideas at the wall and see what sticks.
Restaurant Brands International, which also owns Popeyes, Tim Hortons and Firehouse Subs, has struggled to revitalize the iconic Whopper burger chain. Burger King restaurants have had sluggish foot traffic compared with its competitors, sending two major operators into bankruptcy last year. In 2022, the company announced a two-year US$400 million investment in the brand, including US$250 million in long overdue remodels and US$150 million in marketing. That helped the eatery pull itself out of a pattern of declining traffic just in the past quarter. Still, the company has a long way to go.
Burger King’s store remodels historically ramp up sales by 12 percent within the first year they are open — a pace the company hopes to accelerate with its latest billion-dollar investment.
That is something to lean into instead of requiring burned-out and underpaid workers to perform corny gestures. Many — including the executives who greenlit the idea — might wonder, “What’s the big deal?” For many workers forced to take these jobs to help make ends meet, a compulsory “you rule” or cardboard crown only adds to the stigma that fast food work is undignified and unworthy of respect.
Despite a brief moment of being heralded as “heroes” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation for fast food employees has not improved.
Workers still struggle with understaffing, unpredictable schedules and low pay as businesses often cancel shifts when traffic is slow. The mistreatment has reached a new low with humiliating and aggravating social media pranks. For instance, in one viral TikTok video, someone pulls up to a drive-thru and asks a Burger King worker to ring up the entire menu to see the total and cancels it all just to order a cup of water. In another video clip, someone calls a McDonald’s pretending to be a telephone service provider and asks a worker to repeat gibberish and hum the McDonald’s theme song to test the phone line.
Of course, as with any service job, fast food work requires a certain amount of professionalism and courtesy toward guests.
However, what Derby is asking is for workers to put on a show despite how they are treated by customers or their employers. Burger King has taken for granted the emotional labor that goes into this sort of performance. The term, coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, defines the work “for which you’re paid, which centrally involves ... evoking and suppressing feelings.” There is no reliable way to appraise emotional labor, but it has to be more than US$13 an hour before taxes.
Cheesy, feel-good antics have not gone over so well with customers in the past. McDonald’s Corp rolled out a short-lived “Pay with Lovin’” campaign in February 2015, where customers were randomly selected to pay for their food with an act of kindness instead of money in the hope that it would brighten the customer’s day. Instead, it created awkward and distressing interactions among customers. The campaign got more people to consider buying a meal at McDonald’s, but it did little for its sales. McDonald’s reported its first-quarter sales fell by 2.6 percent compared with the year before, and operating income declined by 11 percent.
Instead of handing out cardboard crowns, Burger King should focus on the basics of being a good place at which to work and eat. It should not only raise wages, but create meaningful career paths for frontline workers. An employee who has been with the company for 30 years should be able to look forward to more than just a backpack and a handful of candy. The company could consider requiring mental health benefits across all its stores instead of leaving it to individual franchises to decide. It could also consider prioritizing its investments in technology that creates predictable work schedules and helps streamline restaurant operations to reduce stress on the job.
The best way to show customers that they rule is to start by making workers feel like they are valued, respected and, dare I say, rule too.
Leticia Miranda is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. She was previously a business reporter at NBC News and a retail reporter at BuzzFeed News. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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