Raising Cane’s Is Raising Pay and Sending in Corporate Reinforcements

In October, the Baton Rouge-based fried chicken chain Raising Cane's announced they were looking to hire 10,000 people in 50 days, and they had a unique approach to doing it. They sent 250 of their corporate and support-office employees — many of whom work out of the Dallas office — into the stores to work alongside fry cooks, cashiers and drive-through workers.

Another 250 corporate employees also headed into the field and temporarily shifted to recruiting, marketing and training jobs. Anyone contributing an extra set of hands at a Cane’s location was housed in a hotel for one to two weeks at company expense.

In an article from Cincinnati Ohio’s WLWT5, co-CEO and COO AJ Kumaran is quoted as saying, "It's all hands on deck."

A Cane’s spokesperson told the Observer that with those 10,000 new hires, the company will have a total of 50,000 crewmembers systemwide — leading to the initiative’s name of “50 in 50.”
The company also made a commitment to raise salaries for existing workers.

“We made some major investments in wages over the past few weeks — totaling $100M in wage increases,” a spokesman explained in an email. “It’s a top priority of ours, and always has been, that as we continue to grow and expand in our success, we share in that success with all of those who made it possible.

“Thanks to these investments, the average crewmember in Texas received a $2.43 increase to their wages — taking them from around $9 an hour to around $12 an hour. In other places, for example, Oklahoma, the numbers were similar — the average Oklahoma worker received a $2.40 increase to their wages, bringing them to $12 an hour.”

While sending corporate employees into the field is a unique approach to hiring, it’s in keeping with the company’s principles. The corporate office at Cane’s is called the RSO: the Restaurant Support Office and its goal is to support restaurants however needed.

Every new hire at Cane's RSO spends a few weeks, or months, working in a restaurant to earn their “Fry Cook & Cashier” badge, something that every person at Cane’s, no matter their level, is proud to hold in their title.

“Having RSO here helping has been amazing, because you can just feel the weight lift off the crewmember’s shoulders, my shoulders, the manager’s shoulders,” area leader of restaurants in DFW Lindsay Harmon said. “So it’s been great that everybody has done their part to support.”

Julie Juvera, senior vice president of crew resources did some recruiting around DFW, but she also took orders, cleaned tables and made coleslaw, and was glad to get that experience. “Words cannot explain the feeling and positive momentum in our company and restaurants right now,” Juvera said.

For Cane's, the most important part of this initiative is to reaffirm to those working in their restaurants that they are all in this together.Cane's had been on Glassdoor’s “100 Best Places to Work in the U.S.” multiple times, including 2021. As of the first week of November, Cane’s had made over 6,000 new hires across their 500 locations.