3 Best Fast Food Restaurants to Work At

Fast food restaurant chains employ millions of people across America. For some, they are a great place to get a first job and gain work experience, learning valuable real-world skills and operating under pressure. For others, they provide a career path to management or franchise ownership.

Still others take advantage of the flexible hours they offer to work part time and supplement income from another job.

What fast food jobs lack in glamour, they make up for in experience. Most chains have well-established brands and infrastructure that allow for uniform training across the country and, in many cases, easy roads and opportunities to advance for people who work hard and follow directions.

While different chains share similarities, they each have their unique management styles and philosophies, and some rise above the others. Here are three of the best chains in the fast food industry for employees to work.

Chick Fil A prides themselves on employees that exude positivity. That may seem insignificant but given the traffic at a busy location at any meal time, it’s fairly extraordinary. Sure, managers and franchisees can train staff to be cheery, but that only goes so far.

Staff has to buy in to make the image work, and Chick Fil A gives employees plenty of reason to do that. You only need to be how old to work at Chick Fil A, which gives young people a terrific opportunity to get started early and work their way up.

Also, the positive attitude that is so interwoven into Chick Fil A’s brand, that it’s important to realize it is not simply taught to employees who work the registers, but to staff members from the top down, managers to custodians.

With over 14,000 locations in the U.S., McDonald’s is among the world’s most recognized companies. It is also among the original businesses to truly establish the franchise model, and practically invented “fast food” whole-cloth. McDonald’s universal standards and myriad of properties allow for nearly limitless channels for employee’s success.

Staff members at McDonald’s locations frequently tout their robust insurance benefits. Beyond that, their “Archways to Opportunity” programs place a strong emphasis on furthering its employees’ educations, whether their goal is a post-secondary degree or to get on McDonald’s management track.

While it may not technically be considered a fast food chain, Starbucks shares so many common characteristics with other titans in the food service industry, that it warrants inclusion here. Starbucks has expanded at an impressive, almost alarming rate, and its commitment to quality control and standardized training is exemplary.

Starbucks expects its employees not only to handle point of sale cash register transactions, but also adds the assumption that its staff members will be able to achieve proficiency or mastery in the art of coffee making as baristas. They must do all this while dealing with high volumes of traffic during all their many business hours.

In addition to benefits like health insurance, Starbucks employees often espouse the company’s employee assistance program, where workers can call a hotline and receive guidance for matters from medical concerns, stress management, and even substance abuse issues.

It’s Starbucks’ opinion that this service only improves the quality of life for people in their workforce, which makes them better at their jobs, and happier with the company. This benefit also makes Starbucks a more attractive company for prospective employees who will consider it as they conduct their job search.

The connective tissue between these well-regarded fast food retailers is that their corporate and management structures value their employees on a personal level and believe in respect. It’s easy to write concepts into a mission statement or employee guide, but these companies truly live up to the promise.

They recognize the intrinsic value of each person they employ to enrich themselves, their company, and the brand as a whole. This is what sets them above their competitors.