Fast Food and a Living Wage

The Unconventionals

Walk into a fast food restaurant and count the number of smiling employees. With the way fast food workers are paid, chances are your count won’t be too high. That’s the MO John Pepper, founder and former CEO of Boloco, tried to erase when he started the burrito chain. Pepper wanted to create a culture where employees received better wages — which would lead to them caring more about their job and treating customers better. And hopefully the customers would be more satisfied with being treated well and it’d lead to future visits.

In this episode, host Mike O’Toole sits down with John Pepper. They discuss how John wanted to make a difference in the fast food industry by improving the wages of the people who work in it — and why that idea didn’t necessarily fly with key stakeholders.

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