This comes as the restaurant industry faces a national shortage of workers.
If you’re tight on cash, you might consider looking for a job at this Florida McDonald’s, which will give you $50 just for showing up for the interview. That’s how desperate for employees they are, the company behind the franchise said.
“We’re scrambling for help,” Blake Casper of Caspers Company, which owns the Tampa franchise, told Insider.
He explained that it has been hard to hire during the coronavirus pandemic – especially when considering the risks of contracting COVID-19 in combination with the onset of stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits.
"The biggest challenge out there is the federal government and the state government are going to continue with this unemployment, because that is truly creating the incentive to not work right now," Casper said, according to Insider. "And, how do you blame somebody?”
He explained the idea to offer a $50 incentive for interviewees came from a general manager and supervisor who were desperate to staff their drive-thru.
Despite advertising the incentive on their marquee, Casper said they still didn’t find many applicants, so he continued to offer more, including referral programs and signing bonuses. He is even considering offering applicants a starting wage of $13, despite Florida’s minimum wage being $8.56 an hour.
“You can make more money on unemployment — and so, we've got to be at least above that,” he said.
On the flip side, business is booming, thanks to the launch of the new crispy chicken sandwich, he said, calling it “the perfect storm.”
And it’s not just in Tampa that the fast-food chain is seeing success. Despite a dent on international sales due to COVID-19, McDonald’s U.S .sales were up in the fourth quarter, announcing that sales at restaurants country-wide grew 5.5% in that 3-month period, CNN reported.
In fact, it has been extremely hard to hire across the restaurant industry. “Everybody in the world is hiring at the same time,” Katie Button, a chef and co-owner of two North Carolina restaurants, told The New York Times.
“Restaurant workers have been working for years and years and years at really low wages. When the government is helping out, it’s a lot better for them than when they’re actually at work working,” Michigan chef Aaron Hyatt told WJRT. “Maybe the whole industry needs a rework, because it’s obvious that people aren’t being paid right.”
