LaMar’s Donuts answers worker walkout with hike in prices, pay. Will customers help?
After a worker walkout at its Overland Park store, LaMar’s Donuts is responding with an aggressive price increase that is supposed to fund higher wages and bonuses.
The price increase will be 20% or more. That’s OK, if it means fairer wages and happier workers. This is a shift we’ll have to see a lot more of, in a world forever changed by COVID-19.
Will customers happily pay more to do more for the people who serve them? I hope so, because this adjustment has been a long time coming in American commerce.
“LaMar’s donuts are going to cost you more. We’re going to take care of our people,” says Ron King, national public relations manager for LaMar’s, begun in Kansas City by Ray LaMar and for years now based out of Denver. “We want them to know they are valued, and we’ll put our own company finances at risk to prove it.”
The Sept. 25 walkout at the Overland Park store led to long lines and a five-hour shutdown. King insists the action wasn’t as dramatic as first reported, involving only four of 15 employees.
Still, it got the attention of King and others who have flown in to shore up the store, assess the situation and announce the new corporatewide employee pay and incentives. It comes after complaints in the media from the four walkouts — about being underappreciated, underpaid and overworked, as well as store cleanliness. King answered that staffing challenges have been shadowing all such businesses for well over a year.
In fairness to LaMar’s, the Overland Park store passed nine of 10 points in a surprise inspection Monday by the Kansas Department of Agriculture. The only suggestion was better traps for fruit flies. The store is also remodeling and working on sink and drainage issues. And to its credit, besides new employee incentives, King said all stores’ daily cleaning will now be enhanced with monthly professional services, instead of quarterly. There are 25 LaMar’s locations in five states.
Staffing issues have plagued nearly every business in America since the pandemic started, and as a result there’s been a seismic shift in the employer/employee relationship. Frankly, LaMar’s swift and sure moves to assure worker satisfaction have been earthshaking in their own way, and more businesses should follow its lead.
“We depend on employees as much as we depend on customers. We can’t have one without the other,” King says. “We’ve got a long tradition of handmade donuts to live up to. We want everybody who works in LaMar’s to feel that same pride. We want everybody here to feel like they’re a part of something important.
Getting a doughnut, let’s face it, should be a happy occasion.
“It should be as enjoyable serving a doughnut as it is eating one,” King says.
If only all businesses thought that way.
