Leading People Well: Sarah Hansen on Building Better Frontline Experiences
Behind every great Dairy Queen is a team of hourly workers juggling school, family, second jobs, and life. In this episode, we talk with Sarah Hansen of Fourteen Foods about what it takes to create an environment where those team members feel supported, understood, and excited to show up. From generational trends to day-one expectations, Sarah offers a grounded, human perspective on leadership in QSR.
Podcast Transcript
AJ Thanks for joining the Hourly Podcast. Tell us about you, what company you work for, what you're passionate about. We'll just start there and see where it takes us.
Sarah Hansen Thanks for having me.
Sarah Hansen Yeah, I work for 14 Foods, which is the largest Dairy Queen franchise in the continental United States. We own 252 Dairy Queen locations. We're based out of Franklin, Tennessee. Used to be up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but about three and a half years ago, the owner decided to bring it down south. And so we relocated our home office here and I joined them about a year and a half ago. And then I worked for Dutch Bros, so.
AJ Very cool. Yeah, interesting. So going from Dutch Bros to Dairy Queen, what are some of the similarities? What are some of the differences?
Sarah Hansen Yeah. Not only did I go from Dutch Bros to Dairy Queen, I went from franchisor to franchisee, which was also a difference. I would say it's QSR, so it's fast pace. It's just quick service in general, work on your toes, which I love. So I really appreciated that. We do focus a lot more on dining, which was not something that was as much a part of Dutch Bros being it was predominantly drive through. So a little bit different model and where Dutch Bros was a little bit more generous, I would say, with their funding as they are continuing to grow really fast. Dairy Queen, being an over a hundred year old company, are a little bit more of finding the pennies and being as efficient as possible while still having the hospitality that's expected from a brand so old.
AJ Interesting. So tell me a little bit about how you got onto the people side of things because this is the Hourly Podcast. We love talking particularly around the frontline workers. Like what in your career kind of drove you down that path and why is it so important to the business?
Sarah Hansen Yeah, sure. So I have a feeling you haven't interviewed too many people who say that they dreamed about being an HR person when they grew up, right? And if they did, you shouldn't believe them. No, I'm going to fit that total profile. I grew up actually thinking I was going to work in broadcast journalism, which is probably one of those things that is stereotypical. You're either going to be a vet or you're going to work in broadcast journalism when you're young. And I realized that it was no offense to anybody, it is a bit more of a cutthroat industry than I think my personality was interested in. I tend to be more of the servant-minded type person, which kind of explains how I got to working in QSR, but I pivoted to working in public relations, which took me to event management, which took me to internal recognition and event management, which lands in HR. And I found a huge passion for making an environment for employees one that they're excited to go to, which isn't always the case. And so my kind of mission in my professional life was to do that.
Sarah Hansen And so I've worked for nonprofits. I've worked for public universities. But I found that where people most appreciated those services that HR can serve up to them or the experience that they feel good about is in frontline workers.
AJ I love that. So when you, you know, clearly having a lot of expertise in a lot of things, as well as working at a lot of different types of companies, what do you think's unique about this workforce that, you know, maybe you've really learned a lot about in the last couple of years or, you know, it's constantly changing through your career?
Sarah Hansen Yeah, it became very apparent to me generationally, the different wants and needs of the hourly workforce. Yeah, so self-proclaimed Gen Xer, right? We were the latchkey kids, entrepreneurs, you understand that group, and we're the ones that are kind of leading organizations these days. And so the current young workforce that's in the hourly space don't have the same work mindset. Not bad, just different. And so there tends to be quite the challenge in communication and just comprehension around what matters most to those employees. So I've spent quite a lot of time trying to better understand the Gen Z group. I use my kids, they're 23 and 20, to help me. Yeah, yeah.
AJ What's your read though? Like what are some of those things? Like I'm super curious to hear kind of, you know, I always laugh with my dad about it is, you know, when his vision of work and success was you hate your job, you work 80 hours a week, but you make those sacrifices so you could come home to your kids, have a white picket fence and live the American dream. And it drives him crazy that the younger generation may not feel that way. But then I always have to remind him my famous Thomas Jefferson quote, which is, parents were soldiers so that we could be politicians, so our children could be artists. And there's beauty in providing a life where there's flexibility and work may not be the center of attention. Now, a lot of people listening to this, I'm not saying I subscribe to that. I'm not saying that that's the answer.
Sarah Hansen Absolutely, I think that's a great way to look at it and I think that Gen Z doesn't see work as the center of their life. I would say, like for me, I work until the things get done. I don't work until the clock says five o'clock. But for Gen Z, not to say that they don't have a strong work ethic, but they're confident enough to think that they're gonna get it all done by five because they have plans outside of work that they wanna get to. And so work is just a means to get to those.
Sarah Hansen I also think though, interesting that there are some similarities that we just think the motivation for them is different. One is bringing home the money, right? They're just so much in debt from school loans and whatever hustles they have that needed funding ahead of time, that the amount that they make is more important than these little perks that might come with the job. Whereas the prior generation, we were leaning into the big lunch for free and the bright and shiny things in the office and the napping sessions. I don't think Gen Z really cares about those. They'd rather you put it in their paycheck because they have their own bills to pay.
AJ Yeah. And so when you think about the things that you've learned, I love the fact that you're learning from your own kids, cause you're seeing it day to day intimately, like at the kitchen counter. What are some things that maybe you've been thinking about or have implemented at 14 Foods to kind of address some of those emerging trends?
Sarah Hansen Yeah, that's a great question. I'd like to say there are a lot of things that I would have implemented, but being on the franchisee side, there's quite a few restrictions in that space. And a hundred year old company translates to traditions, translates to “this is what has worked and we would like to continue this.” So our ability to be creative is a little bit less afforded here. If I go back to my Dutch Bros days, there was more of that being company-owned stores. We could implement those types of things. Flexibility being one of them that I think a lot of young people gravitate to working for Dutch Bros because their schedule is very fluid. And if they plan an impulse trip somewhere, the likelihood of being able to adjust their schedule or find someone to cover for them, just because of the culture, was pretty easy. I think that was something that was really important and we needed to make happen. So we would hire well more employees than we needed because we wanted to afford that flexibility. There wasn't a management complement that we needed to keep to or number of employees based on sales. Like, you know, we're going to overstaff because we know we're going to have that fluid change in and change out and make it a little bit...
AJ Yeah. And is there anything else you've been thinking about that, let's say maybe you didn't introduce it at the company because of process? And honestly, when you have 252 locations, I get it. Change is hard. It's like change management. There's literally departments designed to just help implement things that you think of. So it's not as easy as maybe a two-unit group or a single-unit location. But let's say we're blue-skying here, you're a single-unit location, you have complete autonomy.
AJ What are some things that you think you would change immediately to help recruit and retain at least the hourly workforce based on what you've learned?
Sarah Hansen I would say I think our response rate from offer to onboarding is something that we can be quicker on. There are plenty of systems out there that I think can afford that for us that we maybe just haven't had time to dive into, but their attention span is 24, 48 hours. If they don't have an answer, they're moving on. The market kind of slows down a little bit. I'll admit we probably have the luxury of an extra day, but I think there's an opportunity for us to do that.
Sarah Hansen I think there's also, states are more and more getting into, “I want to be the unique state that has my own compliance requirements or my own employee-forward requirements.” So trying to weed through that stuff more quickly where you don't burn your new hires out to the point where they're like, “I'm bored. I don't have any intention of finishing all of this.”
Sarah Hansen I think those would be some spots where we could do better. And recognition, real-time recognition. Not waiting for a bonus or a paycheck. Daily pay or pay that you can get on a daily basis has been a game changer. We have probably 75% of our employees on the daily pay service, where they can just get what they've earned. If they've earned the money, they can pull it on a daily basis rather than wait for their check to get there. That's been a game changer. And then just we're working right now on a points recognition program where we can—it's called basically “Win the Day.”
Sarah Hansen So rather than look at trying to hit goals that you can celebrate at end of the week or two weeks or a month or a quarter, we want to find ways to recognize them in real time, that instant gratification for doing a good job to motivate them to continue and to, quite frankly, motivate them to stay because there's no points.
AJ Right. And so like, what's interesting is like the two things you talked about, retention, earned wage access and recognition, like they're both very similar in a way, right? It's like the graph is the instantaneous. It's not the, I don't know the word, “spotness” of it, right? Like you get to win now instead of in the future. Like why that? Like, I feel like we're talking about an interesting thing here, right?
Sarah Hansen Yeah, right. Yeah, as a parent, I want to teach my children to be patient. But as an employer, I'm not, I'm actually enabling the lack of patience in the employees. But yeah.
AJ Yeah. Yeah, no, it feels like that. But if it works, right. And is that also a generational thing? Like if you looked at your earned wage access, do you think that if you looked at age of people or like, let's just say generationally, the younger people use it more versus the older generation? Any thoughts kind of around that?
Sarah Hansen 100%. I mean, the technology has taught that generation to get things instantly and why not, and customize them so they get them the way they want as quickly as they want. So why wouldn't they expect that out of their employment experience as well? I think that's just, it's almost an expectation, I think, of the generation because that's how they were raised.
AJ Yeah. And I'm kind of like that too. It's like, did the work today, like where's the money? You know what I mean? Because if you think about it in its raw sense, especially in the eyes of the hourly worker, they just gave you 10 hours. And then now you get two weeks to pay me back. And like, if you think about just the dynamics, you're like, that's interesting. Like, would a company ever front load and give them 10 days to pay them back? I don't think so. So that's why I love earned wage access. And there's a million platforms that do it. In my opinion, it really balances the scales of who has what power. And that's an important thing that we talk a lot about here, right? And I think, you know, during and after COVID, it's getting...
Sarah Hansen Yeah.
AJ I think more employer-friendly now, like you've touched on a little bit as people are coming to work, feeling like they need to stay a little bit more than we just had three, four years that the employee had a lot of power. And we saw a lot of change in wages and benefits and a resurgence of some of the ability for them to kind of dictate themselves what it would take to work. But...
Sarah Hansen Yes, yep, lots of choices.
AJ What I'm finding—curious to hear your thoughts—is the pendulum is swinging a little bit as things get harder in the macro and inflation continues to increase, that people are going back to work with a little bit less ability to negotiate wages and other benefits. Are you finding a similar thing in your work?
Sarah Hansen Yeah, I think we're noticing that. I think there remains the tension, I think, particularly with that age group of, I would say, climbing the ladder or developing in leadership, the concept of, “Well, pay me now and I'll show you what I can do. Promote me now and then I'll show you what I can do,” versus “Earn your stripe and then get the promotion,” which older generations, they're like, “We didn't get paid until we could prove that we could do it.” Yeah. Yeah.
AJ Yeah, I never asked for a promotion. Like I hear that all the time. It's like, well, that's probably why you didn't get it. I mean, that's, you know, that's like generationally the primary difference, you know.
Sarah Hansen Sure, yeah, you're like, “My work will speak for me and they will promote me because they see how well I'm doing,” whereas the current generation's like, “No, I'm confident in my skillset, so trust that you're gonna get it from me and pay me now and then I'll show you.”
AJ I don't know what's better or worse. I don't know what side is delusional, what side is sensible. I really have no idea. Because there's a wonderful, beautiful thing about being so self-assured and confident in your abilities that you have so much self-worth that you're willing to demand a promotion before you actually earn it, right? Like that's a wonderful thing, but that's like—you probably look at me saying that and you're like, “That's crazy.” When there's also a beautiful thing about keeping your head down,
AJ working until you demand so much respect from your co-workers that you're the obvious choice to get the job. And I think generationally that's a divide: those two different paths.
Sarah Hansen Yeah. And I think that seeing their future is really important. Like one of the other things that we're working on right now is, in a learning management system, to really create a clear understanding of the path that they have to ascend through the ranks and developing very clear training programs so that they can be really, you know, the owners of their own destiny there and take the courses and know when they're at the point of “ready now.” And then do they have the patience to sit in that ready-now state? How long are they willing to sit there before an opportunity opens itself up before they're like, “You know what, I've got the training, I'm gonna go somewhere else, which I saw a job posting for the job I want.” So we're in that process.
AJ Super interesting. I hate to leave it at this. We're gonna have to do a part two, part three, but we're already like three minutes over. I always ask though—we're gonna have to do it because I feel like we were just getting into the good stuff—but I always ask the same question to end every podcast. What was your first hourly job, and were you fired from that job or did you leave gracefully?
Sarah Hansen My first hourly job was at Kmart. Gosh, that dates me, doesn't it? Yeah. I worked at the register, and I ended up leaving. And I left to work in a non-retail environment for the city, working with kids for a while while I was in school, because the schedule was more flexible. It was an after-school—there you go. Of course.
AJ Love that. All right. Lesson learned. Lesson learned. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
