Fast food chain Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers takes on a new approach to solving the labor shortage at their restaurants. They have opted to use their corporate staff to help man the front lines of their business. Trying to find a loophole to ensure that they don’t experience any more operational loses, Raising Cane’s is asking its corporate employees to work at one of their 500 drive-thru’s across the country.

“It’s all hands on deck,” co-CEO and COO AJ Kumaran said this is a new approach for the company to try and stop the loses that have come as a result of the pandemic. Additionally, they are investing $70 million into workers’ wages, with hourly workers receiving 15-22% wage increases over the next few weeks. These efforts will hopefully encourage applications to flow in to help ease the loses of this past year.

The restaurant industry has seen tremendous decline and difficulties due to the restrictions that are imposed due to COVID-19. Being constantly at risk for exposure to covid has halted people wanting to get jobs and also just coming in and continue working, specially when the wages for cashiers and fry cooks aren’t enough to sustain anyone, even in a regular economy. In the economy of the pandemic, a regular minimum wage job is not enough to support yourself, live comfortably, and survive inflation. Inflation and lack of sufficient minimum wage is a big issue that has been brought forth  due to the conditions brought on by the pandemic. Due to the Delta variant, consumers have also chosen to avoid public settings causing more harm to the restaurant industry. September marked the second straight month in which the US economy added less jobs than what was expected, after employment growth slowed down dramatically in August.

From a PR perspective, I think Raising Cane’s took an interesting approach to trying to solve this issue internally. In a way this initiative could serve as a way to level the hierarchy that happens within the “food chain” of the business world. I think that often times the way that people view the structure of a fast food chain is the workers and then the management. There is often a lot of stereotypes and judgment towards people that work in fast food chains. This could have been used as a PR strategy as a way to promote the respect and proper conditions of their frontline workers. This experience can be a way to ensure that employees at every level are trained in customer service and are adaptable at all levels of their business.