When AI Needs Humans with Sonja Breuer

When AI Needs Humans (with Hamra Enterprises)

Can an AI bot actually make your hiring process more human? In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, hosts Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Sonja Breuer, Senior Vice President of HR at Hamra Enterprises—a powerhouse franchise group operating over 200 locations across Wendy’s, Panera Bread, and Noodles & Company.

Sonja breaks down how adopting conversational AI transformed their hiring pipeline from a sluggish 13-day process down to just 4 days, slashed their reliance on expensive job board ads, and helped them keep 6,500+ positions filled across 11 states.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The “Easy Button” for Hiring:

• Slashing the Ad Budget:

• Daily Pay as a Game Changer

• Tech Meets Culture

• What’s Next for AI in HR

  
  

🍿 Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/p7_xJlff-a4

PART 2 - Work Today, Paid Tomorrow

PART 3 - AI Made Recruiting More Human

PART 4 - AI Rejected the Candidate

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house, as we welcome Sonya Brewer, SVP of HR at Hamra.

Chad Sowash: Hamra!

Joel Cheesman: Sonya, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

Chad Sowash: It's Hamra time.

Sonja Breuer: Thank you.

Joel Cheesman: It's Hamra time. That's right. And speaking of that, a lot of our listeners and viewers won't know who Hamra is. Give us the deets on that, as well as a little bit about you.

Sonja Breuer: Absolutely. So, Hamra is actually a family business, owned and founded by Sam Hamra back in 1975. So, we're 50 years old. Feel older than 50, but we own Wendy's, Panera's, and Noodles & Company. And we're one of the oldest franchises actually for Wendy's, and one of the oldest franchisees for Panera. So, we've been around the block.

Joel Cheesman: So, you're a conglomerate that becomes a franchisee of all these businesses under one business.

Sonja Breuer: I say it's an umbrella. Hamra is the umbrella.

Joel Cheesman: And your footprint is what? Midwest, South, what?

Sonja Breuer: Yes. All I'll say is yes. So, we are Illinois, Massachusetts, into New Hampshire, but we go down Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, New Orleans area. We actually just purchased seven Paneras in Houston that lost their franchise. And so, we're taking those over and we're going to open those up actually in June.

Chad Sowash: How many stores?

Sonja Breuer: Right now we have about 209.

Chad Sowash: Wow. How many employees under—

Sonja Breuer: About 6,500, you know, it kind of fluctuates.

Joel Cheesman: How many applications in a year?

Sonja Breuer: We get about 100,000 applications, yeah, and hire about 7,000 every year off of Paradox. We've been with Paradox actually since 2021. And coming out of the pandemic, when no one could get applications. And the neat thing about Paradox is that what we saw is that our managers were too busy on the floor, and they didn't have time to go back and call applicants. And nobody answers anyway because they don't know the phone number, and if they don't know the phone number, they're not answering. So, the applicant would call back after the manager was gone. So, it was this endless cycle, and from application to hire, we were about 13 days. And in our industry, you lost them. Because they can go down the street and get hired on the spot and start tomorrow. So, we saw that we weren't doing a good job. We were with a different ATS system at the time, and when we went on to Paradox, immediately saw a drastic change, and got it down to four days. So, date of application to date of hire went to four days from 13 days. And I can honestly say that we are very well staffed, and we actually shut off ads.

Chad Sowash: Stop it.

Sonja Breuer: I know, I know. People don't believe it.

Chad Sowash: What changed? What changed? You didn't just switch one off and switch one on. What actually changed within the process methodology? Tell us.

Sonja Breuer: The easy button. So, it's the easy button from the applicant's side, because the easy button is they can go on Indeed and just click a button and apply, and our application in Paradox takes about three minutes to get through. And they like the bot. You know, we have little bots. We have a little Frosty. He's really cute, he's got a little hat.

Joel Cheesman: Sam, right?

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, his name is Sam. And we named him after our owner.

Chad Sowash: Sam Ham.

Sonja Breuer: Sam, yeah.

Joel Cheesman: I got to cross off that question.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, exactly. How did we get Sam? So—

Joel Cheesman: Has a little Frosty hat.

Sonja Breuer: He's very cute. He's very cute. And then—

Chad Sowash: Everybody loves a Frosty.

Sonja Breuer: Well, and a talking Frosty, why would you not like it? And then our Panera's, it's a little piece of bread with eyes, 'cause that's not scary, right, talking piece of bread? And then our Noodles & Company is an elbow noodle with little eyes as well. So, everything has to have eyes to talk to you, 'cause that's what food should be. So, applicants, it's fast, it's easy. They can get through it in about four minutes. They can actually get an interview, they know, "I'm interviewing tomorrow and this is where I'm going." And then we have lots of follow-up fun, because we want to make sure that we've engaged that person. So, we follow up with, "Hey, check out our benefits. Hey, do you know this about us? Hey, do you know this about us?" Because they see us as Wendy's or as Panera or as Noodles & Company. So, we differentiate Hamra by saying, "Yeah, well, there may be a Wendy's down the street, but let me tell you about what Hamra has." And so, we talk about the HERO Fund. So, HERO is an acronym for Hamra Employees Reaching Out. It's a non-profit organization. It's actually a 501(c) that we created about 15 years ago that helps our own employees in times of need. And we have given out about 2.5 million dollars to our own employees in times of need to get them off the streets, give them homes, medical equipment when they couldn't get medical equipment, things that they need to survive. We've flown people to their home countries when their mom has been put into hospice because they couldn't afford to go home and be with mom, and we take people out of domestic abuse situations, put them up in housing, and get them counseling. And so, we actually can change people's lives.

Joel Cheesman: Mo money. Mo money is what we're talking about. And you saved a bunch when you pivoted to a more automated process, I assume. And did I hear you say that you've stopped all advertising?

Sonja Breuer: Not all. Not all, but—

Joel Cheesman: Okay, so talk about savings, and then we'll venture into what you've done in advertising.

Sonja Breuer: So, if you think about a restaurant, a restaurant obviously operates with, you know, eight people, 10 people, depending on volume, right? So, that manager going off of the floor to go make a call, to go review applications, to go see if these applications that were coming in—and believe me, it wasn't paper, we had already gone into the digital age—but they still had to look at every single application and call them. They don't have to do that anymore, so they are actually more valuable on the line, where they're coaching, where they're making sure, you know, Wendy's, speed of service; Panera, quality. I mean, it's all there. So, we want our managers—

Joel Cheesman: That Joel guy's back again. Everybody red alert.

Sonja Breuer: That's—exactly.

Joel Cheesman: He's asking for a free Frosty again. He's a pain in the ass again, yeah.

Sonja Breuer: Always, always. So, getting that manager where they should be, which is managing the business, and then in the background, they're getting all of these applicants that are fitting exactly what they need, because we can say, "We only want days, we need you from this time to this time, and we need this." And so, we scale it, and it actually goes to exactly the applicants we need to then schedule exactly what we need, so it's less time filtering through all of the people that don't fit what you need.

Chad Sowash: And the hiring manager doesn't have to do any scheduling whatsoever. They just let the system know when they're open, and next thing you know, they have interviews on their calendar.

Sonja Breuer: Yes. For exactly what they need.

Chad Sowash: So, for that, and then on the candidate side, because candidates generally, they're really good at ghosting or forgetting and that kind of stuff. Are you doing like follow-ups to be able to like nudge them and say, "Hey, don't forget?" And maybe, I don't know, maybe you'll give them a free Frosty if they come in or Red Bull?

Sonja Breuer: We actually do. We actually do, yeah, because everybody likes food, especially cookies and Frostys.

Joel Cheesman: Keep telling Chad that.

Sonja Breuer: He doesn't—yeah, well, come on over, we can take care of you. So, yes, we actually do several follow-ups with our benefits because we are different, and then we say, "Hey, we can't wait to see you in 24 hours. We can't wait to see you in an hour." So, they're constantly getting those reminders, telling them how great we are, why they want to come—

Chad Sowash: How's that help, though? Has that—I mean, has that helped?

Sonja Breuer: The ghosting is down tremendously, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'll just say that we have some data, but I think the data isn't even as bad as what it used to be because our managers wouldn't put that they were ghosted, so it's up to our managers to get that data. But you can figure, you know, if you have five people, a couple years ago, we were getting ghosted by four out of five people. And that's also a big time suck. So, from—

Joel Cheesman: Time is money, Chad.

Chad Sowash: And money is time, yes.

Sonja Breuer: I've heard that. I've heard that. And so, it gets them exactly what they want, and we do all these follow-ups, and it's easy. And that's what people want. It's that instant gratification of "I have an interview tomorrow."

Joel Cheesman: You're saving time on both ends, the job seeker and the management side. Now let's talk about the money you're saving on job posting. What's going on there?

Sonja Breuer: Well, so right out of the pandemic, we were spending—Indeed is not cheap. Indeed is very expensive. And—

Chad Sowash: Aha!

Sonja Breuer: You like that? You like that? Yeah, yeah, indeed, yes. And, you know, Indeed for us used to be quantity over quality. Now what we're able to do because of Paradox, putting in all of the parameters of what I want—you know, if I need only night people, well, it's going to screen out all those day people. It's not going to give me the people that I don't need, it's only going to focus in on those that I do need. So, we have a budget of about $1,500 per restaurant location per year to actually advertise for just crew, okay?

Joel Cheesman: $1,500?

Sonja Breuer: $1,500 per location per year times—

Joel Cheesman: But that's not a lot of money for a location.

Sonja Breuer: Well, but also, you have to understand that Paradox has evergreen ads. So, we have evergreen ads, which are free to us, always up with Paradox, so we don't pay for those.

Chad Sowash: On your website?

Sonja Breuer: No, it's actually always—if you go and search a Wendy's, a Panera, a Noodles & Company, there's what's called an evergreen ad. We don't pay for that. So, the $1,500 goes much further than what you think it does because we constantly have that as a Google search or as a search for the evergreen ads. So, $1,500 per location per year—

Joel Cheesman: So, is this Google traffic on Google for Jobs, or is this Indeed traffic?

Sonja Breuer: Both, both, because it is posted actually in Indeed, and Zip, and some of the other ones that are pulling in people. So, I can tell you, we're not even spending $1,500 a year per location. We're actually, last year, about 30% of our total budget was used because we didn't need it.

Joel Cheesman: So, sorry, are these organically posted jobs on these sites that you're avoiding paying for them on a yearly basis?

Sonja Breuer: So, are you talking about the evergreen ads?

Joel Cheesman: The ads on—like, yes, ads, cook. I assume cook, line cook is a job that's posted all the time. Right? But how, I don't want to get in the weeds on this, but—

Chad Sowash: You already are.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, I can see you're intrigued about this because it is, I'm sure a lot of people are the same, saying, "I'd love to know how I can only spend $1,500 a year on Indeed."

Joel Cheesman: Per location. Okay, I have one location. Right. So, tell me how to do that.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, so Paradox, we have ads through Paradox, and we open up our ads, our jobs. And so that job I can actually toggle open, or I can toggle it closed, okay? If it is open, that is what's called an evergreen ad, so that means that it is always searchable, it is always available, and I don't pay for that, okay?

Joel Cheesman: Okay. All right.

Sonja Breuer: I know you're in disbelief right now, right?

Joel Cheesman: I'm fine. We can move on from this. Maybe it's a side conversation, but Chad, save us from this. Ask a separate question.

Chad Sowash: So, back to the actual candidates. Now you talked about you're generally looking for shift, right? So, you have a day shift, night shift, what have you. But if you get a bunch of day shifters in, they're still going into your database, right? So, you still have them for later. Are you remarketing to those individuals when you do have like a day shift open or something? So, you don't have to go back to Indeed or what have you? What are you using for that? Is there a CRM? What are you using for that?

Sonja Breuer: So, through Paradox, we can actually do a search and we can actually look for those candidates. Yeah, and so we can put it out, you know, typically, we're always looking for night people, right, late night Wendy's, that's usually the revolving door. And so, if we do have candidates that are applying for daytime positions, then we can actually look at the conversation, and if everything else looks good, they have 20 to 30 hours—each company can actually specify exactly what questions they ask, so our questions may be different than someone else's questions, right? So, we ask how many hours, what days are you available, we ask a slew of questions, and if someone does say that they want to work for us and everything fits, we can actually do a re-invite, and we can do that all through Paradox.

Chad Sowash: And if you have multiple locations, I would assume that you do in certain areas, and somebody applied for a Wendy's position and you've got a Panera position open, I mean, you can use that same candidate database.

Sonja Breuer: We could. We could. Typically for us, we find that it's a different candidate. Yeah, it's a different candidate that applies to a Wendy's, to a Panera, to a Noodles & Company. It's quite interesting. I opened up a Wendy's and three months later I opened up a Noodles in the exact same town, 100% different.

Chad Sowash: So, are the demographics different, or just what the people are looking for? What's different, really?

Sonja Breuer: Both. Both, yeah, both. You know, I think burger places, people think of flipping burgers, and I say we're more educated than that now, we sear them on both sides. We have a clamshell, you don't have to flip your burger anymore, like it's that simple. So, I think that there's a certain person that maybe has worked in QSR that wants to continue to work in QSR, as opposed to a Noodles & Company or a Panera, which is just a different clientele, it's a different applicant. It's amazing how different they are. It surprised me, actually.

Chad Sowash: So, since they're so different, do you from a competitor standpoint, instead of looking at other fast food companies or what have you, are you looking at other hospitality companies that might actually fit those personas? Do you target those types of competitors? Who do you mainly target that's outside of your industry?

Sonja Breuer: Well, it's our competitors, you know, so if it's a Wendy's, I'm going to go to other QSRs, and if it's a Panera, I'm going to go to a Chipotle, I'm going to go to other competitors, and same with Noodles. So—

Chad Sowash: So, not really hospitality as in going like the local hotels or something of that nature.

Sonja Breuer: No, no. Food is just its own nature, I guess. Either you love food or you hate food, you know? There's no in—well, consume it or eat it, right? To work there, I should say. So, we really haven't had a lot of success with getting applicants or managers from other industries, so it's kind of its own little niche, yeah.

Joel Cheesman: By the way, Chad, when we're looking at the decline of Western civilization, we don't flip burgers anymore. Coincidence? I don't know. Coincidence, I don't know.

Chad Sowash: We've talked about flipping before, so yeah.

Joel Cheesman: You offer daily pay, it looks like, to all of your employees. What kind of impact has that had on competing with other restaurants, being more appealing, what has that meant to the business?

Sonja Breuer: Huge, huge. When we decided to go with DailyPay, we looked at several different companies and, one of the things we liked is that we could actually load our hours and our employees can work today, get paid tomorrow is what we tell them. And initially we thought it was going to be used as an emergency fund. Unfortunately, it's turned into an ATM, and so our employees use it often, and some part of me says, "Ooh, I don't like that," but I was talking to a crew member, and I said, "Do you use DailyPay?" And he said, "Yeah, that's the reason why I'm here." And I said, "So DailyPay is the reason why you're here?" He said, "Yeah, because I needed money immediately. The place across the street was hiring, but my first check wasn't going to be for three weeks. Here, you told me I could work today, get paid tomorrow. That's why I'm here." So, okay, all right, good to know. And I've had other people tell me that even if they don't use it, they like it as a safety net. I had a cute kid tell me, he said, "Oh yeah, I used it 'cause my prom date ate more than I thought she was going to."

Chad Sowash: She chose lobster.

Sonja Breuer: And I went to the bathroom and did an instant, 'cause you can do an instant. Darn her, I thought she was going to do the salad. So, he actually went to the bathroom and did an instant 'cause he knew, he looked at how much it was going to be, and he knew he didn't have enough in his account, and I was like, "Well, that's an emergency." Absolutely, you don't want your prom date—

Chad Sowash: You don't want to lose face.

Joel Cheesman: That's what makes this job fun, is the stories like that, saving some dude's ass on his prom date.

Sonja Breuer: Right.

Joel Cheesman: You mentioned jumping into the conversational AI piece in 2021, you said so, relatively early, relatively early. A lot of companies are still debating, "Should we do this or should we?" What would you tell that company that's on the fence or "We don't know how to sell it to the executives," what do you tell those folks to get them off the fence?

Sonja Breuer: Well, if they're my competitors, I tell them, "Don't do it," okay?

Joel Cheesman: Yeah, tell them there's a newspaper ad in Austin.

Sonja Breuer: This doesn't work.

Chad Sowash: Help wanted, yeah.

Joel Cheesman: QR codes on billboard.

Sonja Breuer: Exactly, as you're driving by. Then, all right, my best friend I would tell them that it has increased our quality of applicants because again, you can put so many different filters into each ad that it really does hone in on exactly who would be the right person for that job. And once they come and talk to us, we know that they're going to love us, so we know that it's—I'm a Gen X-er, as we kind of talked about before, and this whole technology thing, and I'm a human connection type of person. But I said this to someone, and it kind of surprised me when I said it, but I still stand behind it. AI interview scheduling has made me more human with my conversations because we're not needing to talk to 50 people to find that one. I can have the system find that one and have a great conversation with that one and onboard that one person during the interview process so that they love us, we love them, and that's going to be a great employee, as opposed to doing interview after interview after interview, you know how it is, you go "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" after a while, and try to find that diamond in the rough. I'm finding it because the system already found it for me. And then I just hook 'em in with how great we are.

Joel Cheesman: Become more human through technology, to sum that up.

Sonja Breuer: Yes, 100%.

Chad Sowash: More time to be empathetic and love thy neighbor.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, kumbaya.

Chad Sowash: We've talked a lot about technology. What would you like to see, what is next for you? I'm sure you've already been thinking about it. What's next? Maybe Chat Onboarding? What is it?

Sonja Breuer: So, Paradox knows us quite well because we say yes to everything. My team is all millennials and I'm the mom of the group, and they think they have to convince me on going to technology, but I'm actually the one saying, "Bring it, bring it. We need to move faster, we need to stay ahead of this." And so, we have actually gone, we were one of the first ones to do conversational AI with Paradox. We did that a couple years ago, it was great. You load in your handbook, so if someone says, "I'm pregnant, do you still hire me?" Sam's not going, "I don't compute." Sam's saying, "Yeah, absolutely, we follow this," and it's giving great responses.

Chad Sowash: FAQ data.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, great responses, or "What's your dress code?" Sometimes you'll see that in the string, and it actually will tell them what our dress code is. And so, we've done that, we've done the analytics, we're actually just about to launch employee communications through Paradox because for our industry, my managers have emails, but that 16-year-old kid that only works Friday nights doesn't, so how do I make sure that they know about the benefits? How do I make sure that they know about these great things, because I can't communicate with them? And I can put a beautiful poster on the wall, and it's wallpaper.

Chad Sowash: They're not reading that.

Sonja Breuer: They don't look at them. And so, with employee communicate, I will actually have the ability to text my entire team and to put information in front of them about the HERO Fund, about things that they can get from us. You know, we pay them to actually do their schoolwork for an hour each shift. We pay them to sit in the dining room. Do all the kids know about this? We also pay them $300 a semester if they get all A's, we pay them $200 if they get A's and B's, we pay them $100 if they get all B's. Do they know about these things? That's always my worry, we have so many great things, but if they don't know about them, then what's the use? So—

Chad Sowash: And it's digestible because you're sending it out in chunks. And if you look at one of those posters, it's just all noise. It's all noise.

Sonja Breuer: Exactly, and let's face it, I sound like my grandmother when I say it this way, the kids of today would rather look at their phone with a text than read my beautiful big poster that I spent a lot of time making.

Chad Sowash: Yeah, unless it's AC/DC, I don't want a poster in my place.

Sonja Breuer: Right, right.

Joel Cheesman: Farrah Fawcett, remember that poster that everyone had?

Sonja Breuer: Oh, with the red bathing suit? My brother had one.

Joel Cheesman: Yeah, feathers.

Chad Sowash: Everybody, everybody.

Sonja Breuer: I had Duran Duran.

Joel Cheesman: You love self-expression, I read it on your website somewhere. And who loves self-expression more than the kids you just mentioned in your comment there. How do you guys approach social media, whether that's letting the employees post about stuff they're doing on the job, or whether you're advertising specific messaging, are you using social media to connect with them and how so?

Sonja Breuer: Yes, yes. So, we have our own Facebook page for Hamra employees, and it's fun, actually, one of our Wendy's just posted yesterday, they dropped a bunch of butter packets and they went all over and people were laughing about it 'cause it was funny, right?

Joel Cheesman: That's hysterical, butter packets.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, butter packets everywhere, and so, you know, I always respond, and I said, "Not the right way to take inventory."

Joel Cheesman: Sorry, which restaurant has butter packets? You have Wendy's, Panera, and—okay, Wendy's.

Sonja Breuer: Wendy's, yeah, yeah.

Joel Cheesman: Oh, the breakfast.

Sonja Breuer: Breakfast. You want to go get some now?

Joel Cheesman: Continue, continue, but you stymied me, "Butter packets?"

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, yeah, actually Panera has them too for bagels.

Joel Cheesman: Okay, I was thinking Panera would.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, yeah, they both do. So, by this restaurant posting this, that we all are human, and we want to feel like a family, and we're in 11 different states, and so this really brings us together, and we post different things, and we always comment, and I commented, "Not the right way to do inventory."

Joel Cheesman: So, this is a private—

Sonja Breuer: It is, a private group.

Joel Cheesman: What about public-facing?

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, we do have, we're on all social media, we have our marketing person that actually puts out content on everything, and we do have some people that will post things, so we have to be careful because of proprietary things with Wendy's and Panera.

Joel Cheesman: So, this marketing person, are they putting job content as well as, "Hey, we got a new sandwich," and how do they balance that?

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, not as much job content, because in all honesty, we don't need it. I know that sounds really strange when I say that, but—

Joel Cheesman: Getting cocky, too.

Sonja Breuer: I am kind of cocky.

Joel Cheesman: You've earned it.

Sonja Breuer: You're an X-er. Exactly, exactly, we drink out of the hose, we know what to do. So, it's mostly just about the things that we've done in our communities because we really do believe that we support our communities. You know, we have this line, we want everyone to live a life they love. You know, it sounds corny, but we truly do want them to live a life they love, and by doing that is really helping out their communities with, "If your Boy Scouts come in, we're going to give you 30% of all the proceeds for the day that you've picked," you know.

Joel Cheesman: 30%? That's very generous.

Sonja Breuer: That's very big.

Joel Cheesman: You're unique in that, if I apply to a job, I go directly to the conversational AI, as opposed to the traditional, "Here's a job posting, click apply, go to the 45-minute process of giving us your application." Was that a conversation internally? Was that a challenge to make that move? Was it like, "We're here for it, ATS, the whole thing, let's go," 'cause it's not a typical user or job seeker behavior to look at apply and then, "Oh, let's chat."

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, yeah. Coming out of the pandemic, 2020, 2021 were tough, especially in Wendy's, because Wendy's increased sales because drive-thrus, right?

Chad Sowash: Ah!

Sonja Breuer: And no one wanted to work because also the government was offering up to $600 per week to not work, so we weren't getting applicants. And so, when we actually looked into Paradox, and I started to really dig into it, I said, "We're going to go full force. We're going to do this." And again, it took us from that 13 day down to that four days, and then we even said, "We're going to go faster," and so we started to narrow down even some of our questions, and we really do feel that we're well-staffed today because of what we've done, because we've been innovative in what we've done.

Joel Cheesman: How is the business looking at automation? It came to me as you were saying that, I know Wendy's corporate or bigger entity started doing AI ordering. And you would drive up and order, my local fast food place, there's a kiosk, I put in what I want, they bring it out. How do you guys look at automation, and balancing that with employees, and what's sort of your, do you take a side on that, is it a balance, where do you guys fall?

Sonja Breuer: There's a balance. Some people go out to eat for the human interaction, right? Especially the older group, they want to talk to someone, they want to ask them about the ingredients, they want to have that interaction. That's why they didn't go through the drive-thru, right? And so, but there's also this huge community of rapid pickup, where they order online, they come in and they pick up their bag and they leave, and so we are able to satisfy everyone, you know? So, we still have cashiers in all of our restaurants, we have kiosks, we have rapid pickup, we have drive-thrus, and the rapid pickup sector is actually growing and growing and growing, because people are so busy, and so they can order online and they can come in and just pick it up and leave, and eat in their car or at their office or take it home, people aren't eating in restaurants.

Joel Cheesman: But for the foreseeable future, there's a human cooking and preparing what's going into that bag.

Sonja Breuer: Yes, yes, absolutely. There's been no talk of automation in our kitchens, yeah. There's some things that have been streamlined tremendously.

Joel Cheesman: The flipping thing.

Sonja Breuer: Searing on both sides, it's a lot faster.

Joel Cheesman: I had no idea that was a thing.

Sonja Breuer: It actually lifts up 'cause it knows how long it will take that burger to cook.

Chad Sowash: Technology.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, even I could do it, which means a lot. You don't want me in the kitchen.

Joel Cheesman: That's not how we did it with the McDLT days, you know?

Chad Sowash: Hot side hot, cool side cool.

Joel Cheesman: So, your kiosk ordering, that option, that kind of automation, you're cool with. The cooking of the food, the talking to grandma, that's a human being for the foreseeable future.

Sonja Breuer: Yes.

Chad Sowash: Sounds like you've got like a hybrid approach that's going on in the store.

Joel Cheesman: Customer-focused.

Chad Sowash: Well, it's customer-focused because you have your own option on what you want to do. You can go through the drive-thru, you can order the fast pickup, you can use the kiosk if you want to, or you can talk to somebody at the register. So, how do you do that on the recruiting side? How do you do that on the talent side? Is there more than one option, or is there literally just kind of like, "Here's the flow. Can I eject and talk to a human being, or do I get the kiosk?"

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, yeah. So, we actually have a TA that actually watches Paradox, and we have Paradox set up where there's certain words that will flag her. So, bad words obviously are in there, there's other words and things like that, but she gets alerted if someone gets kind of stuck in that system, and/or asks to speak to a human, and then she can insert herself, or I can do it too, and I can say, "This is Sonya, a real human being," and join that chat, just like Sam was talking to them, but now I'm saying I'm a human and I'm talking to you. We actually had this happen because an older gentleman had applied, and one of the first questions we ask is, "Are you over the age of 16?" And he put, "No," and then he went through, and then he got our standard, "I'm sorry, but your age isn't meeting our requirements." He said, "I'm 67 years old. Am I too old for you?" He didn't realize that he had clicked "No" on the 16. So, our TA said, "Sonya, what do you want me to do with this?" I jumped in and I said, "Hey John, this is Sonya Brewer," he didn't realize he was actually talking to a bot, which I think that's great. I think that's great, but he was confused, and so I jumped in and I just said, "Hey John, let's jump on a call." So, I called him and super sweet guy, and I said, "If you're like me, it's kind of like Lost in Space, 'Danger, Will Robinson, danger,'" 'cause I knew he knew that show and I knew he would know that I was older, so I wouldn't disrespect—

Chad Sowash: There's a connection there. There's a connection.

Joel Cheesman: Thank God you didn't say, "Yes, you're too old." That might have caused some problems.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, and that's the good thing is that by loading our handbook into the system, it knows our policies and it knows all of that, so it's not going to answer incorrectly. So, poor John just didn't understand he was talking to a bot and he didn't understand that he actually answered the first question wrong.

Chad Sowash: Did he get the job or not?

Sonja Breuer: Yes, we hired him.

Chad Sowash: It's a happy ending. A happy ending.

Joel Cheesman: Happy ending at Wendy's, Panera, or Noodles?

Sonja Breuer: That was a Panera. That was a Panera.

Joel Cheesman: So, you've mentioned that you're the guinea pig of technology, you'll try almost anything. What are you looking forward to in the next six to 12 months in tech of trying, of testing out?

Sonja Breuer: It's going to sound strange when I say this, bringing more human into the tech. So, talked about ghosting, and our CEO is Mike Hamra, it's actually the founder's son, and he's quite dynamic. If you sit and listen to him talk, you just fall in love with him in the business. So, as soon as someone applies, I want this video to pop up, and Mike Hamra going, "You need to come work for us," and have him actually talk to that person and really engage them and get them to fall in love with us, because right now it's a link, and some people press the link and some people don't. But I want that video of him saying, almost like Uncle Sam, "We want you," to really get them engaged and get them excited about it. So, it's technology with the human.

Chad Sowash: And that's the culture.

Sonja Breuer: It's all about culture, yeah, it's that Hamra-fied culture.

Chad Sowash: Hamra-fied, Hamra time.

Sonja Breuer: That's right, we have lots of funny little things.

Joel Cheesman: Thanks for hanging out with us.

Sonja Breuer: Yeah, it was fun.

Joel Cheesman: Guys, that was Sonya Brewer, SVP of HR at Hamra Enterprises. This is The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman, he's Chad Sowash. This has been the AI series. And we out.

Chad Sowash: We out.