McDonald's jobs prized in down economy

When times are good, nothing spells "dead-end job" for many people like flipping hamburgers.

But with unemployment over 12 percent in the Tampa Bay area, more people are giving the quick-service industry a second look.

In Tampa, Caspers Co., a McDonald's franchisee with 51 restaurants in the Bay area, reports some of its lowest employee turnover figures ever, and it's able to be more selective with hiring. It's not clear if the workers will stick around once the economy improves, but for now restaurants are seeing the most skilled workforce in years.

Jennifer Trundy was a high-achieving real estate agent before the market sunk and now manages a Topper's Creamery ice cream shop in Valrico.

"I probably wouldn't have (entered quick-serve) if real estate was going well, but I'm glad I did," Trundy, 41, said.

The quick-service industry is notorious for high turnover, so when the economy gets roaring and labor gets especially tight, things can get downright ugly. That makes the current low turnover so remarkable.

Around 2000 and 2001, turnover among the non-managers at Caspers McDonald's stores was more than 200 percent. That means the crew at each restaurant was hired and left the company twice in the course of a year - and Caspers generally has lower turnover rates than other McDonald's franchisees, said Ed Shaw, an executive vice president and human resources chief.

To be sure, the bulk of the people who left were often young or worked only part-time. Many of the "core crew" members who open and close restaurants each day and do maintenance were more stable.

Keeping each restaurant staffed with more than 60 crew members and managers meant attending routine career fairs, making connections at schools and lots and lots of "hiring days." On these days, restaurant managers gave spot interviews to applicants who walked in the door.

Today, things have taken a 180-degree turn.

Caspers, which employs 3,200 people, still does some hiring, but it hasn't done career fairs or hiring days in at least a couple years, Shaw said. Instead of applicants walking in the door, many more now apply for jobs online. Meanwhile, turnover has fallen 40 percent each of the last two years.

Shaw wouldn't reveal Caspers' current turnover rate, but said, "Where we were well over 200 (percent), we are now well under 100 percent."

Other fast-food franchisees can't believe the quality of the some of the applicants dropping by. And, when people do leave their jobs, more often than not they were fired rather than quit on their own.

"I just put an ad on Craigslist," said Greg Sausaman, who was looking for a general manager to run one of his Topper's Creamery stores. "In five days I got over 200 applicants! That's more than double what I expected."

Topper's short-listed the candidates to 13 people, each of whom had experience in running a quick-service restaurant or had a bachelor's degree plus restaurant experience, said Sausaman, the company president.

Robert Dorfman, who owns a number of Five Guys hamburger restaurants in Tampa, Houston and Columbus, Ohio, started seeing people he never thought would be interested in a quick-service job. Wages in his stores run from about $7 or $8 an hour for crew members to $40,000 and up for general managers.

"Airline mechanics, you name it, we got it," Dorfman said of the applicants.

Dorfman took a chance by hiring some seemingly overqualified applicants for manager spots, people who had run full-service restaurants with bars and a wait staff, Dorman said. They often didn't work out, he said.

While they were skilled at customer service, these veterans from higher-end restaurants didn't care for the routines of the fast-food business: overseeing hamburger and fry cooks and keeping up the restaurant, he said.

"I think oftentimes when you hire people who were making a lot of money in a different kind of restaurant, they're not used to that kind of routine and hands-on experience," he said.

Fast-food places are enjoying lower training costs and better productivity as people stay on the job longer. But, despite talk around the water cooler that fast food is booming, even the quick-service industry isn't immune to the economy.

McDonald's had been resilient in the face of recession until recently. Sales at McDonald's stores in the United States open for at least 13 months - a measurement known as same-store sales - rose for most of this year, even as sales at other restaurants sunk.

However, McDonald's sales finally succumbed to the economy and fell in October and November.

Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a restaurant consulting firm, said sky-high unemployment finally caught up with McDonald's, which was the leader in fast-food breakfasts. If people don't have a job, they won't stop at the Golden Arches for a pre-work meal, Paul said.

At the least, low employee turnover is a silver lining to the very dark clouds circling most of the restaurant industry.

Comedians have made jokes at the expense of McDonald's and its fry-cook jobs for years, Bob Conigliaro, a vice president of Caspers, acknowledged. But workers might have a new appreciation for McDonald's' financial strength in the current economy.

In Valrico, Trundy said when the real estate industry collapsed, her income sunk, too. Banks didn't seem willing to negotiate when she wanted to arrange a "short sale" of a home, or a sale for less than the value of the outstanding mortgage. After five years in real estate, she got out and tried her hand in medical sales - only to have her employer lay off everyone after four months.

She also worked for a short while selling cemetery plots, but jumped at the chance to join a growing ice cream franchise. She hopes to work into to a corporate training position, she said.

"I'd rather deal with the cute little 3-year-old who says, 'I want 'banilla with 'prinkles,' than someone who's just lost a loved one," Trundy said.