In this episode, we chat with Jasmine Donovan about her dynamic journey from the Navy to leading the iconic Dick’s Drive-In chain. We explore how her military training shaped her business acumen and discuss the challenges and triumphs of maintaining a beloved family-owned restaurant.
Key Takeaways:
- Transitioning Careers: Jasmine shares insights on shifting from a military career to business leadership, highlighting the skills that translated well.
- Family Legacy: Understand the importance of sustaining a family business across generations and the strategies that have kept Dick’s Drive-In thriving.
- Community & Employee Focus: Learn about Dick’s Drive-In’s commitment to employee development, community involvement, and maintaining core values amidst expansion.
Guest:
Jasmine Donovan, president of Dick’s Drive-In Restaurants and granddaughter of co-founder Dick Spady.
Resources Mentioned:
- Dick’s Drive-In: Website
- Dick’s Drive-In: LinkedIn
- Instagram: Dick’s Drive-In
- Facebook: Dick’s Drive-In
- X/Twitter: Dick’s Drive-In
- Health Professions Scholarship Program for the U.S. Navy
Quotes:
-“My military training gave me the discipline and resiliency needed to tackle the challenges in the business world.” – Jasmine Donovan
-“When you invest in your employees and community, your business reaps the benefits long-term.” – Jasmine Donovan
Listener Challenge:
This week, reflect on the core values that drive your work and consider how you can integrate community involvement into your business practices. Share your thoughts with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Jasmine Donovan, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s great to have you here. Welcome.
[00:00:04] Jasmine Donovan: Thank you so much for having me on, Mark.
[00:00:06] Mark Wright: So Jasmine, I’ve been really looking forward to this because Dick’s Drive In is such an iconic restaurant chain in Western Washington.
[00:00:13] Mark Wright: I mean, how many restaurants have been mentioned in a Sir Mix A Lot song or have been featured in a Macklemore and Ryan Lewis video? I mean, that’s pretty cool, right? If you think about it.
[00:00:23] Jasmine Donovan: It is super cool. Our Capitol Hill location on Broadway got featured a couple of times, and that’s really, really fun. We show up in all sorts of, you know, highlights of Seattle videos for our favorite baseball teams and football teams, and it’s really cool to be part of the fabric of Seattle iconic culture.
[00:00:45] Mark Wright: And part of the fabric and, that this is a multi generational thing, is one of the reasons that I thought it would be so fun to talk with you. Jasmine, you’re the granddaughter of co founder Dick Spadey, the company’s namesake, who opened the first location, I guess what, just across [00:01:00] the street from you there in Wallingford in Seattle?
[00:01:02] Jasmine Donovan: Exactly, yes. This, the original location is just a stone’s throw away from where I’m standing right now, and I still work out of the same offices my grandfather and his partners had across the street on 2nd Avenue from that location.
[00:01:17] Mark Wright: Wow. So 1954, the flagship store opens. Fast food isn’t even a thing, back then. We’ll get into that in just a bit, but I’d love to know more about your grandfather. Jasmine, uh, I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but he was such an iconic figure in Seattle. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather.
[00:01:36] Jasmine Donovan: My grandfather was very charismatic, a very positive person, definitely a glass half full kind of guy. He was always thinking about the future. He had a deeply entrepreneurial spirit when he was growing up. always wanted to start a business and had a bunch of different little businesses as a kid and talked his way into a job at the [00:02:00] railroad in high school and, he believed strongly in serendipity.
[00:02:03] Jasmine Donovan: So his, life journey was very different than he thought it would be. And he often found himself in circumstances that were not of his choosing, but he believed deeply that those experiences were setting him up for his future success. Even if they were things that he didn’t quite understand why they were going to help him yet, and, it really helped him be successful in his life.
[00:02:25] Mark Wright: And he passed away not too long ago. Was it 2016?
[00:02:29] Jasmine Donovan: He passed away in January of 2016. Yes, he was in his 90s.
[00:02:34] Mark Wright: Well, tell me about the vision that he had in his, what, he was in his twenties and decided to start this restaurant with a couple of partners. Where did he, I mean, where did they get the idea in the first place?
[00:02:46] Jasmine Donovan: So my grandfather served in the military twice on active duty. He was drafted in World War II and served in the Pacific. And while he was there in Guam, he met one of his future partners. [00:03:00] Uh, Warren Gormley while he was there. And then later he got to use the GI bill to go to college and, uh, he became, graduated as an officer in the air force reserve and ended up serving in the Korean war in Japan, running a commissary that served, 10, 000 soldier sailors and airmen every day.
[00:03:18] Jasmine Donovan: So learned about food production in a way he wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. Uh, when he would tell the story about how the concept of the driving came to him, He was sitting in a 1950s style diner. At the bar, behind the bar, a server opened a refrigerator. It was full of hamburger patties, and he asked the guy, wow, that’s a lot of hamburger patties.
[00:03:37] Jasmine Donovan: Can you serve all those before they go bad? And the guy said, oh, I serve all of those and a refrigerator twice as big, twice as full every single day. And my grandfather would tell the story either He was struck by lightning or a light bulb went off. There was light involved and, uh, it was hamburgers.
[00:03:53] Jasmine Donovan: Hamburgers were going to be the business he was going to start. And if he could make five cents on every hamburger, it would be a really successful [00:04:00] business. And he reached out to his old Navy buddy, Warren, who was living in Seattle and was excited about this hamburger concept and wanting to start a hamburger restaurant together with him.
[00:04:10] Jasmine Donovan: And uh, Warren’s wife worked for the first tenured professor of dentistry at University of Washington and she told him about it. And he had heard at his church from someone else about the McDonald Brothers starting in California and he thought that was a really interesting idea, they should check that out.
[00:04:26] Jasmine Donovan: So, Warren and my grandfather actually went down to California and, Learned about what the McDonald brothers were doing, quick service, fast food. Those terms didn’t exist. they loved it. They loved how fast it was. They loved how, they could use high quality ingredients, keep prices low. There was nothing like that in Seattle.
[00:04:42] Jasmine Donovan: They wanted to bring that back to Seattle. So that’s where the idea came from. And, they through a bunch of, again, really amazing circumstances were able to pull it off. And, uh, the first Dick’s Drive In location opened in January of 1954.
[00:04:56] Mark Wright: Wow. In the early days, it sounds like money was, pretty tight. [00:05:00] And actually the first restaurant was built by a contractor who took, I guess, a promise of future earnings. Is that right? For his role in building the restaurant?
[00:05:10] Jasmine Donovan: Yeah, that was one of those crazy circumstances I mentioned. So when they came back to Seattle, they had this whole business plan. They loved what the McDonald brothers were doing. They wanted to bring that back to Seattle and sell hamburgers for 19 cents. The dentist was an investor. He put in 5, 000.
[00:05:25] Jasmine Donovan: They all had to put in 5, 000. That was their pot of money, 15, 000. They found a landlord who would lease them property. My grandfather was doing commercial real estate at the time. So he did an analysis and found all the best spots, found the landlord lease. To them, but would not build the building because it was this crazy new design of a kitchen.
[00:05:43] Jasmine Donovan: Nobody was gonna want this, wasn’t gonna work. He didn’t wanna be left with this custom building. Nobody was gonna operate. so he wouldn’t build the building for them. They tried to borrow money from the banks. The banks are like, this is, 19 cents. People are going out of business selling it for 35 cents.
[00:05:56] Jasmine Donovan: Are you kidding? And also this whole. people standing outside [00:06:00] in line that might work in California, it’s never gonna work in a place where it rains all the time, so the banks wouldn’t loan them any money. And my grandfather found a guy who had inherited his father’s construction business in Alaska, was in Seattle, looking for jobs in the winter.
[00:06:13] Jasmine Donovan: And my grandfather, who could talk anyone into anything, convinced this guy that he promised, he could just get this building built. He promised he’d pay him as soon as they were open. They had a handshake and an IOU. There was no collateral, nothing. Uh, the guy did it and, it worked, it was great.
[00:06:30] Jasmine Donovan: Customers loved it. They loved how fast it was, how good the food was, how low the prices were. And, uh, it was love at first bite, as we say. And it was great because they had all sorts of people they had to pay, including the contractor, right after they opened.
[00:06:44] Mark Wright: It’s hard to imagine America before the era of fast food and you mentioned the McDonald brothers. I mean, that goes so far back that, you know, when McDonald’s was actually owned by McDonald’s before they sold to Ray Kroc and, became this [00:07:00] global, juggernaut. what an interesting start.
[00:07:03] Mark Wright:, and so I’d love to know Jasmine, as they started to grow the company, what was the key to the success of this thing? And before we get into that, I have to tell you, I mean, the idea that who’s going to line up, I was at the Wallingford location, a number of years ago, and, I’m in line and an SUV pulls up and a woman gets out and look, she looked very familiar and she, she got behind me in line and I was like, Is that who I think it is?
[00:07:30] Mark Wright:, and so I, I got up the nerve and I said, excuse me, are you Melinda? And, uh, she said, yes. I said, Oh my gosh. I said, I’m such a fan of the work that you and your husband are doing at the foundation. And I just wanted to say thank you for that. And she said, well, that’s, it’s our pleasure. And it was Melinda Gates who had just gotten out of an SUV full of security guards and was standing in line at Dick’s.
[00:07:53] Mark Wright: I’m guessing that’s not an uncommon occurrence at Dick’s, right?
[00:07:57] Jasmine Donovan: We have all sorts of celebrities that [00:08:00] come out to visit us, and it’s one of the things that makes the drive in so special for me in particular is It’s for everybody. It’s for the conveners that are part. I mean, it’s a convener, right? We can, we, everyone wants to go to Dick’s. Uh, everyone wants to get a burger fry and a shake.
[00:08:15] Jasmine Donovan: And it doesn’t matter if you’re an elite athlete, uh, a famous, a philanthropist, or the local plumber, right? Uh, you have beater trucks next to fancy Ferraris, in the parking lot. you can be a high school student, a senior citizen. It’s something that everybody enjoys here and it’s a really, cool thing to be a part of in that sense.
[00:08:37] Mark Wright: you told me when we spoke a few weeks ago that, the business model really was high quality ingredients, fast service, for an affordable price. how was that able, as you were saying that some restaurants were going out of business selling burgers for more than that. how did Dick and his partners, make it in those early years?
[00:08:55] Jasmine Donovan: So first it was unique, right? It was unique that we could have high quality [00:09:00] ingredients, instant service and, uh, low prices. quick service started to become more common, but we maintained those core elements throughout the process. We got started earlier. So we, We optimized our processes sooner.
[00:09:16] Jasmine Donovan: We also built our kitchens. In a little bit of a different way in that we maintain the fishbowl, what we call it. So our kitchens are on display. You can see in our kitchen. So the cleanliness and quality in our kitchens, you can see all of our equipment. You can see our employees working, training, washing hands, sanitizing things, right?
[00:09:37] Jasmine Donovan: We have a very strong commitment to cleanliness, and safety in our kitchens, and that’s on display for our customers. Right. So extremely transparent, in our core values that the core value that ties back to is integrity. And it’s something that built trust with our customers, from [00:10:00] the beginning, so that consistency, reliability of quality, in a clean environment.
[00:10:05] Jasmine Donovan: And then we invested in our employees. So the original founders always from the beginning paid the best wages and benefits in the industry and continue to build on that as we continue to grow and we’re more successful and they could do more for their employees. And then those employees take better care of our customers.
[00:10:24] Jasmine Donovan: And that’s a. virtuous cycle, as my grandfather would say, and then also those employees when they go on to do other things in their lives, as we expect many of them will do, and we’re very proud of that, they’re amazing brand ambassadors for us and speak highly of our restaurants and what it was like to work there and, that also helps us.
[00:10:42] Jasmine Donovan: Bring customers back and they bring their children back to work for us and their children back to eat with us. And so again, virtuous cycle, and over time, as you’re able to do both of those things and the original partners were, they invested in their communities as well in small ways. And then larger ways over [00:11:00] time, because of our community striving, our business would thrive.
[00:11:02] Jasmine Donovan: And so we intended to be here a very long time. This was not something that, that they did. Kind of as a short term business venture. Um, and then especially when my family bought out the other two partners and that deal closed in 1991, we really became a family business and, then had a very long perspective, right?
[00:11:22] Jasmine Donovan: So we’re thinking about wanting to keep the business in the family for another seven generations. That would be 10 generations in total at a minimum as a start. and so that gives you a really long term perspective, and can lead Different choices when operating a business.
[00:11:40] Mark Wright: It sounds like Dick and his partners from the beginning didn’t see the employees just as a commodity, but really as an integral part of the operation that if they took care of their employees, there was also a wasn’t there a scholarship program as well for employees.
[00:11:54] Jasmine Donovan: We have a scholarship program now that is very robust. Uh, in the beginning, it [00:12:00] started with them helping as much as they could, those employees that were working with them or being shift managers with them. And eventually we were able to, as we continue to have success, expand that out. And today, all of our employees who work with us at least 20 hours a week and have passed their first skills test have access to our scholarship program.
[00:12:20] Mark Wright: So your father joined the companies you mentioned in the early 90s to, Buyout Deal. It sounds like it was a little bit of a precarious time because the company had grown in value to the point where buying out your partners was not an easy option. And it could have been, I guess, if all the three partners said, Okay, yeah, we want to sell.
[00:12:39] Mark Wright: It would have been an easy transaction, but then your family would have been out of that business forever. So what, what was key, to your dad negotiating that, that transfer of ownership from the original partners to your grandfather?
[00:12:54] Jasmine Donovan: That’s a question I wish he was here to answer, but I’ll do my best to, share what he has shared with me. [00:13:00] Uh, which is in, there were three partners, right? And they all had their different motivations and things that they needed for a successful transition. They’d worked together very successfully for many years at that point.
[00:13:13] Jasmine Donovan: And my grandfather especially really wanted to do right by his partners. we, Had a number of buildings that had been maintained really well, but needed investment. And that was also a challenge. And that was one of the motivators for the other partners who were interested in retiring to, to want to get out of the business.
[00:13:33] Jasmine Donovan: They didn’t want to have to put money back in the business at this point in their lives. They were ready, to sell it and exit the business. My grandfather just passed away. It was his name on the building, he thought what we were doing was very good and he wanted it to continue. So, um, and that was when, my dad and my grandfather introduced the concept of the family business and brought the other sibling partners into, the mix.
[00:13:58] Jasmine Donovan: So my dad’s siblings [00:14:00] and, As with any big negotiation, there’s all sorts of moving parts. There’s the legal part. There’s the personalities part. There’s, the financing part. We had to borrow quite a lot of money to, buy out the other two partners. There was additional financing.
[00:14:13] Jasmine Donovan: One of the partners was willing to take subordinated notes so that we could get everyone the price that they wanted, and basically self finance the sale, which was very kind of him to do. So it took a while. but we got there and, uh, it was a multi year process and I’m very happy that we did because then the family business was here, for me to be a part of, and, we’ll be here for my children and my cousins and their children to be part of as well.
[00:14:39] Mark Wright: So your father’s legal training, as a lawyer came into play there. And then the family moves from the East side to Ballard and, uh, and it was a whole new chapter in, in your lives. And I remember you, you telling me, Jasmine, that when you were a kid and you realized your dad worked at Dick’s, but he didn’t actually make the hamburgers.
[00:14:58] Mark Wright: It was kind of a bummer.[00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Jasmine Donovan: It was. It was definitely a bummer. We see that play out with, many children in the family when they realize, Oh, you don’t actually cook the food? Uh, that’s disappointing. Although I do still get out in the restaurants, at least once a month. I was just over at Lake City the other day. So, um, if you were over at Lake City, I might’ve served you your milkshake, burger, and
[00:15:22] Mark Wright: that’s fantastic. Jasmine, I’d love to talk more about your work background. You were a math and chemistry major in college, is that right?
[00:15:30] Jasmine Donovan: That’s correct. I graduated with a math and chemistry major and ended up, being on the pre medicine track. I was very interested in joining the military after college. I went to a very small college, so we did not have an ROTC program, other as I would have joined ROTC in college. I worked as an athletic trainer in college, uh, which was a very, fun and exciting thing to do.
[00:15:55] Jasmine Donovan:, very much enjoyed it and kind of sent me down the path of, okay, maybe I would be interested in [00:16:00] medicine. So I joined the military and medicine pieces together. I was recruited by the health professional scholarship program for the Navy. And, after I graduated, my first official job for the Navy was to go to medical school.
[00:16:11] Jasmine Donovan: So, did that for a couple years, realized I really didn’t want to be a doctor. And ended up finding another path in the Navy that used my science background and math background. So, I ended up teaching at the Navy Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, South Carolina. And I got to learn a lot about nuclear power and how it operates on Navy ships.
[00:16:35] Jasmine Donovan: And As with many, Navy careers or military careers, it’s an option expanding choice. So I had the opportunity to be a public affairs officer. I got to lead a teaching division, rewrite a physics curriculum. it was a really fun and exciting four years, of active duty.
[00:16:52] Mark Wright: And didn’t you get your MBA during that time too? As if life was not busy enough. Yeah.
[00:16:56] Jasmine Donovan: I did. Yes, I had the opportunity to get my MBA at night. [00:17:00] My husband and I got married right before I was stationed in Charleston and my husband and I moved out there right after our wedding and during our time there we both got our MBAs at night and we graduated right before my first son was born.
[00:17:16] Mark Wright: Oh my gosh.
[00:17:17] Jasmine Donovan: I was very pregnant in my last semester.
[00:17:20] Mark Wright: Busy, busy time. wow. What, what an interesting career path, but you had been working for Dick’s off and on since you were 16. You joined the executive team in 2013. full time and took over for your dad as president in 2019. when did you know that that was going to be your career path?
[00:17:41] Mark Wright:, when did you know you were going to be coming home and joining the family business?
[00:17:45] Jasmine Donovan: About halfway through my active duty time in Charleston, a couple of things happened simultaneously. The job that I had, you could only do for four years. And because of my [00:18:00] unusual recruitment path through medical school. I was somewhat limited in my options for other active duty service after that job.
[00:18:11] Jasmine Donovan: Uh, so that was starting to become clear at that point. And at a similar time, my dad had a major health crisis. And Started, after we made it through that, uh, started asking if I would be willing to come back and work with him at the family business. I was in, in the third generation. I was one of the oldest that the only individual who’s older than me, is a paramedic and lives in Portland, Oregon.
[00:18:42] Jasmine Donovan: So just kind of on a very different career path. so I was really the only one who had. You know, the MBA and kind of the work experience, and was that the right time in my career and was it coming up on a career change where it might make sense? to come back and start learning the family [00:19:00] business.
[00:19:00] Jasmine Donovan:, my grandfather was still alive and involved in the business at the time. And so, and then my first son was born and we made the decision, my husband and I made the decision that we would move back to Seattle and I would join the family business. So we would give that a try for a little while. So, it was, it was a difficult first year.
[00:19:18] Jasmine Donovan: My husband, uh, stayed working for his employer in Charleston and was commuting back regularly to Charleston. I had a brand new baby, a brand new job, a brand new house. Thankfully I had family in the area, but I was on my own with him a lot, but it was, it was a fun
[00:19:38] Mark Wright: I don’t know how you got that done, but
[00:19:40] Jasmine Donovan: see a similar
[00:19:41] Mark Wright: You know, Jasmine, every business leader that I know in Seattle, and I know dozens and dozens, Who has had military experience to a person is an exceptional human being, and I don’t think that’s a mistake, and I’d love your perspective on this because, having gone through military training, what is it about being trained in the [00:20:00] military that leads to such success?
[00:20:02] Mark Wright: Success when people get out of the military. I’ve never seen someone who’s served in the military and then gone on, to a business career who’s, failed or been bad at it. I just see these exemplary people, all around Seattle who spent time in the military.
[00:20:18] Jasmine Donovan: I was surrounded by truly amazing people with, who were so smart and so dedicated and so hardworking, and there’s something about being unified in a mission of service and protection and self sacrifice, that influences your perspective. the military also uniquely, will. Put individuals in leadership positions and expect them to be leaders without worrying about how old they are.[00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Jasmine Donovan: Um, and so there’s just an expectation of behaving as a leader. There’s a lot of structure, there’s a lot of training, there’s a deep culture, all of that is something that’s a really great introduction to your professional career and allows you to understand who you are in that framework and can be very quite successful.
[00:21:26] Jasmine Donovan: So it really helped me and in particular coming back to a culture that was founded by A bunch of veterans, and in particular, Navy veterans. Uh, there was some, cultural elements and things that felt quite familiar here, uh, at the drive in that I think I, because of my Navy service, maybe inherently understood better than, uh, my dad or even some of the employees who worked here a long time.
[00:21:51] Jasmine Donovan: Oh, I know exactly where that comes from because I was just hearing those same words or those same phrases, in my active duty.
[00:21:59] Mark Wright: [00:22:00] That’s really cool. and you are continuing your grandfather’s mission of being involved in the community. You’re on the board of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Mary’s Place, Rainier Club. Evergreen Real Estate Companies. You were recognized by Puget Sound Business Journal as a woman of influence in 2019.
[00:22:17] Mark Wright: So, and we know each other from being members of the Community Development Roundtable, a leadership group sponsored by the Chamber. That’s sounds like a very deliberate decision on your part to be. That involved in the community. Well, what’s behind that from your perspective?
[00:22:33] Jasmine Donovan: Again, it goes back to, my grandfather’s, operating manual, if you will, for a successful business, which Step one, you have to make a profit, right? You have to sell something that’s of value to your customers. They have to be willing to pay the price it costs you to make that, plus a little more so you can make more of it.
[00:22:51] Jasmine Donovan:, Taking care of your employees, they’ll take better care of your customers, and then, make sure or, Help your community thrive and so being [00:23:00] very involved in our community is 1 way in which I am filling up, fulfilling our mission of having a thriving community around the restaurants that we operate.
[00:23:11] Jasmine Donovan: So there’s other ways that we do that too, but my time investment in. Community organizations is one of those ways.
[00:23:19] Mark Wright: I’d love to know Jasmine, what a typical day is like for you. what you’re the president now, um, there are nine restaurants, right now. I think we need to also explore the rumor. I, uh, is it true that you’re coming to Everett in 2025?
[00:23:34] Jasmine Donovan: Yes, it’s not a rumor anymore. It’s well, I with the caveat that we have not closed on the property, but we’re very publicly in due diligence and we made a public announcement several months ago. Things are going well. I think we’ll get there. We build very unique buildings and a lot of modern zoning doesn’t necessarily align with.
[00:23:56] Jasmine Donovan: what our buildings look like anymore, but we’ve been [00:24:00] successful everywhere. We built a restaurant to working with the local jurisdictions and finding ways to, for us to kind of meet in the middle and, make it possible for us to open a restaurant that we can operate successfully. Um, but a typical day for me, one of the things that’s amazing about my job is I get to do all sorts of things.
[00:24:18] Jasmine Donovan: So, It could be meeting with my operations leaders, it could be meeting with our IHR team, going over financials. I still wear the title of CFO, you know, as we’re growing and expanding. For a long time, we had really three Key leaders in the company on the support side, as we have more restaurants, we’re more geographically diverse.
[00:24:41] Jasmine Donovan: We need to grow that group of people. So we’re growing our support team. We have some amazing, talented people who’ve joined us from outside the company and are helping us develop those skillsets so that we can have operational excellence and continue to grow. So it’s my year of people. We’re onboarding people.
[00:24:59] Jasmine Donovan: We’re [00:25:00] getting people in the right jobs, getting their rights. So, I’m, I’m meeting with a lot of people doing one on ones, check ins, project mapping, long term planning. We have an amazing board of directors now with 4 independent directors and our board chair is an independent director. and that’s very exciting.
[00:25:19] Jasmine Donovan: So we’re going through some of those family business transition pieces. As I mentioned, I still get out into the restaurants when I can and I meet with employees across the restaurants. I’m driving down to 1 of our restaurants down in the South Sound today to meet 1 of our store managers there. The favorite, favorite thing I get to do in my job is promote new store managers.
[00:25:41] Jasmine Donovan: So all of our store managers are promoted from within. They all started as crew members, worked their way up through shift management, and eventually are ready for promotion to store management. And that’s one of the really cool things about continuing to build more stores, is we create more opportunity for new, Talented and dedicated individuals [00:26:00] to become store managers.
[00:26:02] Jasmine Donovan: So, um, and all of our store managers make six figures and have opportunity to grow that over time. And, we’re really proud of those jobs that we can offer. And, it’s super exciting when we get to promote a new store manager. I
[00:26:16] Mark Wright: Yeah. Jasmine, I’ve talked to a number of business leaders who say it’s getting more and more challenging to run businesses that are very people centric. Like you have to have a lot of employees to do what you guys do. well, what’s been the challenge? I mean, first it was, I know that you guys always paid more than minimum wage, but, as the labor market gets more challenging, how do you deal with that as a business owner?
[00:26:39] Mark Wright: How
[00:26:39] Jasmine Donovan: have the answer to that yet. We’re still figuring that out. Uh, every day is a new adventure. You know, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, and so there’s sometimes things that we’ve experienced in the past that we can pull out, previous playbooks, and sometimes we get things that are totally brand new, and we have to come up with something new to meet [00:27:00] it.
[00:27:00] Jasmine Donovan: there’s all sorts of things that are impacting the labor force. In our market, there’s all sorts of disruptions and, you know, some of them are what I’m sure you hear a lot of, which is how COVID has changed things and how the digital revolution has changed things and employees expectations of work.
[00:27:18] Jasmine Donovan: And the gig economy has changed some things, right? In particular, in our workforce on what employees consider to be flexible work schedules. We used to be considered flexible because we have a wide variety of shifts that we have to offer being open from 10 30 a. m. to 2 a. m. every day. however, we do need people to commit to a recurring schedule.
[00:27:45] Jasmine Donovan:, and that used to be something that we offered that was. unique and special in that we are very committed to the schedule that we offer to employees. So we’ve offered secure scheduling before that was a named [00:28:00] thing. we schedule on a quarterly system. we commit to those hours to you for the entire quarter.
[00:28:06] Jasmine Donovan: but in, Very recently that started to not be as valuable to employees who want to have more flexibility and say, I want to drop my Monday shift and pick up a Thursday and not have that be a problem. Our core, our kitchens are quite choreographed, right? And there’s various people with different skill sets, throughout the kitchen.
[00:28:26] Jasmine Donovan: And it’s very difficult for us right now to accommodate that. new desire of employees to be able to pick up and drop shifts with limited notice. it’s something I hope we’re able to figure out how to do well and still serve customers well, and still maintain employee training development and all of that.
[00:28:46] Jasmine Donovan: We haven’t figured it out yet. and it makes it challenging for us to
[00:28:50] Jasmine Donovan: hire.
[00:28:51] Mark Wright: yeah. What is the employee experience like? I mean, right now, if I apply for a job at Dix Drive In, take me through that process. there’s a [00:29:00] lot of training that, that I think people aren’t aware of, right?
[00:29:03] Jasmine Donovan: There is a lot of training. our kitchens are complex. Our procedures are extremely specific. Again, it’s choreographed. So think of being part of a dance production. You don’t just step in on day one and take the lead role. Um, it takes a while to, to build up, your knowledge base and your stamina. Our jobs are very physical and it’s rare and more.
[00:29:25] Jasmine Donovan: for jobs to have such physical requirements. And that’s also a thing that’s impacting our ability to hire, frankly. and I just had the most interesting conversation the other day with our HR team about what are some things that we could do to help employees be ready for this really physical job. If they haven’t done a really physical job and one of our senior employees had an idea of like, Oh, we should share a set of stretches people should do at the end of the day during their first week, just to help them, you know, not be sore or stiff after working on their feet all day.
[00:29:57] Jasmine Donovan: If that’s not something I used to, which I loved loved that [00:30:00] idea so much. so you would apply, through online form, uh, you’d hear back and be invited in for an interview. Uh, you’d meet with the store manager. Often you’ll be invited in for a second interview, meet again, and then, uh, you find out you were hired, you come in for an orientation, and then you get your kind of first week schedule, which we typically don’t have anyone work more than four hours on a single day in their first week.
[00:30:27] Jasmine Donovan: Again, because it is quite physical, and it’s unusual for, folks to be coming from a very physical experience in their previous work. if they have worked before, we have a lot of first time jobs for people. Uh, and then eventually you would ramp into what your regular schedule would be.
[00:30:43] Jasmine Donovan: Your first three days, you’d have a trainer with you the full time, until you’re able to run a window yourself, uh, without help. And then Depending on the number of hours that you work on your regular schedule in any given week, we will continuously be training you in new skills. Three times a [00:31:00] year, you’d be evaluated for what skills you’ve demonstrated and you earn different milestones, as we call them, and then get pay associated with the number of skills that you have along the way.
[00:31:11] Jasmine Donovan: So that’s very transparent. At the very end, you’re eligible to become a certified trainer. And then once you have that, you can make even more money. and then ultimately, uh, if you decide to stay with us, we hope that you enter our shift management program and go through that training pipeline as well.
[00:31:28] Jasmine Donovan:, most employees don’t even touch the grill in the first year. and it usually takes someone two years to become fully trained, not entering management, just fully trained as a crew.
[00:31:40] Mark Wright: Wow. That’s wild. That is really cool. for a long time, Jasmine, Dick’s Drive In was a cash only business. And then you guys decided, to take cards. What, was it to avoid the credit card fees or what was the rationale in the early days about cash only?
[00:31:55] Jasmine Donovan: So. Accepting credit cards or convincing my grandfather and our [00:32:00] operation team to start accepting credit cards was one of my first projects here at Dix. And it was, very interesting experience to go through and learn what’s working really well about offering cash only and what isn’t. What we’re not offering for customers, the value proposition impact if we’re not accepting credit cards.
[00:32:21] Jasmine Donovan: So part of the rationale was yes, the trying to avoid the credit card fees. That’s one. There were infrastructure needs that we had to invest in to be able to accept credit cards in the way of reliable internet. Our point of sale system was extremely old and was not in a position to start accepting credit cards, so we had to upgrade our point of sale.
[00:32:44] Jasmine Donovan: There Was a concern about the speed of service in that if we were to introduce cards and this technology that it would slow down our service, since we were really good at accepting cash, and even when we got to the point of like, maybe credit cards would [00:33:00] be faster with the modern technology that we have, you know, maybe the early day credit card processors, yes, it’d be slow.
[00:33:05] Jasmine Donovan: You have to wait, you have to wait. And then it says it’s good to go. Modern day ones might be faster, but then when we received cash, employees wouldn’t remember how to handle cash. And so that would slow it down. there was a concern that it would impact the experience at Dix. So, there was a belief that’s part of what made, employees, customers experience at Dix enjoyable was that they had to pay with cash and that made it feel nostalgic.
[00:33:30] Jasmine Donovan:, but of course, if we accepted credit cards, we can still do that for customers. We just. For those that didn’t have cash, we could accept, their card. So, eventually I was able to convince my grandfather to greenlight the project and, uh, move forward. It was the last major project he personally greenlit, and unfortunately he passed away before we were actually able to start accepting credit cards.
[00:33:55] Jasmine Donovan: Uh, but it, it worked out. It really helped our customers [00:34:00] and the way that I convinced my grandfather was to share that, you know, we serve quality food fast and inexpensively and if a customer has to stop at an ATM and pay an ATM fee to get the cash out to then go to Dick’s, it’s not fast and it’s not inexpensive anymore.
[00:34:16] Jasmine Donovan: So, that was really the, key and, customers really appreciated being able to pay with cards. The timing worked out really well also because we started accepting cards right as the whole PCI compliant, revolution was hitting credit card processing. So we started accepting cards at the And so from day one with credit card processing for us, we’ve always been PCI compliant.
[00:34:41] Jasmine Donovan: We have accepted Apple Pay from the very beginning at those transactions are now about 80 percent of our transactions are card or Apple Pay transactions or other mobile payment transactions. And it’s. It’s actually quite fast.
[00:34:56] Mark Wright: And what is PCI for the uninitiated?
[00:34:59] Jasmine Donovan: my [00:35:00] goodness. it was, it’s private confidential information as I believe what the acronym stands for.
[00:35:05] Jasmine Donovan: I’d honestly have to look it up now. I’ve said it so many times, I forgot what it stands for. But prior to that, a lot of restaurants that were processing credit cards or businesses that were processing credit cards actually had that credit card information and customer information with every card transaction.
[00:35:20] Mark Wright: okay.
[00:35:21] Jasmine Donovan: We don’t ever see any of that. So we don’t know any of that information about our customers. It’s all handled through a third party. None of it’s in our system. So it also made us much more secure from a data processing perspective and a risk perspective. So we were able to just start right in that. In that moment, which worked out pretty well for us.
[00:35:43] Jasmine Donovan: A lot of other places had to upgrade all their stuff to meet the new regulations anyway.
[00:35:49] Mark Wright: some good timing. and you guys have had a program for many, many years where people can round up their purchase to donate to charity, and that’s still going with cards right now.
[00:35:58] Jasmine Donovan: Yes, that was another [00:36:00] concern about switching to cards is we had a very successful, change for charity program. And when people paid with cash, especially when they didn’t use cash regularly, and they’d get physical change back, they. Weren’t really interested in keeping that. We had little boxes at the window.
[00:36:15] Jasmine Donovan: They could leave the change in and that raised millions of dollars for charity. It was a very successful program. the Roundup for Charity program is also very successful, but it was a fear that by switching to credit cards, that we would, customers would discontinue donating, because of if the convenience factor would be missing.
[00:36:39] Jasmine Donovan: So. But it’s still, it’s still very successful and we still raise and match quite a lot of money for our charity partners.
[00:36:47] Mark Wright: Jasmine, did your grandfather ever have the desire? I mean, he, they started out at the same time at McDonald’s and I would argue the product is as good or better than McDonald’s. Did he ever have a desire to take the [00:37:00] company national or to franchise?
[00:37:02] Jasmine Donovan: They never wanted to franchise, is my understanding, because they would lose control of what’s happening in the restaurants. We stopped growing after the original five Seattle locations Because that’s about when the other two partners were ready to retire. And that’s when we started kind of the buyout process.
[00:37:24] Jasmine Donovan: They, my grandfather’s job with their, with the restaurants was. ultimately after they opened the first one, right? Who was an operator for the first few. And then eventually as they changed focuses and we trained our store managers and Warren was overseeing the operations of existing locations. My grandfather’s job was to find new real estate and build new restaurants.
[00:37:44] Jasmine Donovan: So he was kind of in that mode. And, after Queen Anne, which was a different model, it was expensive building, the construction was difficult. they started having some aging locations that needed, you know, Additional investment and so, they kind of pause [00:38:00] development and then the whole buyout thing happened and we had no capital to invest in building new restaurants or repairing others.
[00:38:07] Jasmine Donovan: They just kind of stopped there for a while. But eventually we started growing again with admins in 2011, and that was very successful. And we’re continuing on this path of operational excellence and growth and building capacity to be able to do that. And we think what we do is good. We think we serve a great product to customers that customers love and, .
[00:38:28] Jasmine Donovan: We think we, offer really great jobs that are good for our employees. And, we are proud of the work we do to invest in our communities so that our communities can be thriving. We think that’s all good. And we think that to the extent we can say who we are as we’re growing, we want to do more of it.
[00:38:44] Jasmine Donovan: Absolutely.
[00:38:46] Mark Wright: are seeing an expansion, a slow expansion of some of these burger chains. You know, everybody raves about In N Out Burger and all these other burger companies. Do you guys keep an eye on the, competition? Is that part of, is that part of the job description for [00:39:00] president of Dick’s Drive In?
[00:39:02] Jasmine Donovan: Uh, we, we do keep an eye on them. You know, an In N Out burger is coming to Washington. they’ll be opening our first location in Washington relatively soon. They’re similar to us in the sense they were started in the same time. They have some of the same nostalgic elements. Um, their value proposition is a little bit different.
[00:39:21] Jasmine Donovan: So yes, it’s a burger or fry and shake, but, uh, it’s at a different price point. The speed of service isn’t the same. but, they’re good. They’re, a strong competitor. I’m not, Seeing that they’re bad. They just offer something a little bit different. They’re still family owned, which makes them a little bit unique amongst our Strictly Burger competitors.
[00:39:39] Jasmine Donovan: Uh, and that, that makes them different. so we do watch them. They’re much, much larger than us. They’re in many States and they did not stop growing at five for any meaningful period of time. So, they’re much bigger and they will soon be here. Seattle has proven many times, you know, when Shake Shack came to town and [00:40:00] Five Guys came to town, I, we don’t really feel that threatened by new burger places coming to town.
[00:40:06] Jasmine Donovan: We, we think that, there’s enough, enough, desire for burgers in this town, for lots of different options, and we will continue to provide timeless value to our customers in the future. they can help us navigate when that, and how that might need to adapt and change like with offering credit cards to continue to provide, that timeless value.
[00:40:26] Jasmine Donovan: But, we’re proud of what we do. And, it’s, you know, you watch it, you keep an eye on it, you learn from it. Good things that they’re doing, but, it’s not going to change, what we’re doing. I
[00:40:35] Mark Wright: Jasmine, what I think is really interesting about Dick’s Drive In is you have multi generational, leaders. And multi generational ownership. And, how do you get that to work?
[00:40:47] Mark Wright: Because it just seems like there could be so many things that could just blow up the model. But what’s been the key to keeping this thing structured that way, and also running successfully that [00:41:00] way, because we’ve all seen companies that get turned over to a relative and they just go into the, get driven into the ground.
[00:41:06] Mark Wright: But what’s been the secret? I mean, this is so rare to see. Management and ownership within a family like this.
[00:41:15] Jasmine Donovan: don’t know what the secret is yet, but at some point, I hope I can, I can let you know, um, we’ve done a lot of learning from other family businesses that have been successful. So family businesses, generally speaking, the rule is you lose a third of them at every generational transition. So you lose a third after the first generation, a third after the second and a third after the third, you know, it’s, always the, can you make it past the third generation?
[00:41:41] Jasmine Donovan: Take that very seriously. I’m really passionate about this business, remaining in the family and, and being successful, thriving in the third generation and beyond. we have to invest resources and time in, and, in learning how to do this well. Every family business is unique, and yet [00:42:00] there are some things that are consistent across family businesses, regardless of industry.
[00:42:05] Jasmine Donovan: There’s things that we can learn from other family businesses and we have that have been really helpful. in family businesses have to ask for help, right? So we’ve worked with advisors and counselors. And had many, many, many conversations, facilitated conversations. We put in place some best practices, like having independent board of directors.
[00:42:28] Jasmine Donovan:, we’ve started what’s called a family council and a family assembly. So we put some structure and intention around bringing the family together, the descendants of my grandfather together, at least once a year to learn together, to build relationships with each other, to help each other. Cultivate good stewards of the next generation in the next generation, whether they will ever work in the business or not, we need them to be good stewards as owners in the future.
[00:42:56] Jasmine Donovan: And then, of course, if they want to work in the business, there’s all sorts of [00:43:00] cultivating that we can do to make sure that the right people are coming into the business with the right skills at the right time and figuring out how to do that. So it’s something that in the third generation, we’re.
[00:43:11] Jasmine Donovan: Exploring a lot more. I talked to folks a lot about this and I asked him, do you have a sibling? Can you imagine making big business decisions with your siblings? You and our family Our second generation is five siblings. So they’ve had to learn how to make business decisions together. And that’s Uniquely challenging when you get to the cousin generation, uh, we have more than five and our age ranges from 50 years old to six years old right now.
[00:43:36] Jasmine Donovan: And we live in various states in the country. So, the youngest member of my generation is actually younger than my youngest child. So, uh, we will have some unique complications, but we’re learning and, growing and innovating and figuring out what works best. And. Each generation, this is gardening, not engineering, each generation is going to have to learn what works best [00:44:00] for them.
[00:44:00] Jasmine Donovan:, but hopefully we are all united in our desire to maintain the good in what we do.
[00:44:07] Mark Wright: Yeah. It sounds like you guys have been very, very intentional about maintaining the relationships that are necessary to sustain the business. Jasmine, I’d love, as we wrap things up, to talk about redeeming work. Our mission on this podcast is to redeem work, and that is to show people that you can make money and treat human beings with honor and respect at the same time. And it sounds like Dick’s driving from the very beginning in 1954. And I just love your perspective on, on work as a way to become fulfilled as a human being.
[00:44:39] Mark Wright: And maybe we don’t work at Dick’s for our whole lives, but maybe we do for two or three years and it’s a great experience. But what is your perspective on work and the value in our lives?
[00:44:49] Jasmine Donovan: Work is good. Work is a good thing. And, we see the value of work in our crew members lives every [00:45:00] day. Our jobs are hard. They’re physical. They’re demanding. They’re fast paced. And we are very proud of The alumni who have, we call alumni, who move on from their jobs here at Dix and launch into other careers, and that they think back on their time at Dix as being important to their future success.
[00:45:24] Jasmine Donovan: They learn things here. From this job that regardless of industry, right? We have alumni who are avionics engineers, who are nurses and doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs and bakers and financial planners and politicians, the sociology professors, right? They all reflect back on Dix and in my conversations, pull things, foundational things from their time with us.
[00:45:51] Jasmine Donovan: that were important to their future success. And, it, it was important to me. I really appreciate it. I love my [00:46:00] time, working as a crew member when I was in high school and college. And I do think that, ability to work a physically demanding job and hustle and have the endurance and, uh, learn new things constantly and do it in a fast pace and work in a choreographed team and, Learn how to follow the rules, learn how to show up on time, learn, you know, just basic things.
[00:46:24] Jasmine Donovan:, those are all important skills, and our jobs. my dad used to refer to them as gateway jobs, right? We’re gateway employer. we’re someplace that someone can have their first job and learn school, uh, skills that help them in their future careers in any industry that they choose to go into.
[00:46:40] Jasmine Donovan: And We can be a, place where people who are changing careers find stability for a time while they’re learning something new. we see that as well in our employees. I didn’t realize work needed to be redeemed. I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many amazing business leaders, particularly in [00:47:00] this region.
[00:47:00] Jasmine Donovan: And, I think unfortunately, the perception that, business leaders think of. Workers and employees commodities. I think there’s just a handful of really bad actors who are that way. There’s some times that businesses unintentionally do that because they’re not adapting to new generational needs, or they don’t have the good, they don’t have good systems in place for really listening.
[00:47:24] Jasmine Donovan:, but I have never met an employer who doesn’t care deeply for the people who are working for them. So, think that there’s some really influential Potentially, negative stories that are out there, but I think they’re actually the exception and not the rule.
[00:47:42] Mark Wright: What do you hope for the future of Dick’s?
[00:47:44] Jasmine Donovan: I hope that we continue to grow and continue to serve customers and create new jobs and, Be a place where people can launch into careers in any industry that they want after enjoying their time serving [00:48:00] customers and making really amazing burgers, fries, and shakes. I hope that we continue to innovate and adapt to what timeless value looks like for our customers when change is needed, that we get better at doing what we do, that we continue to be focused on growing sustainably, and that We can do all that without losing our why.
[00:48:24] Jasmine Donovan: Um, so whether we’ll soon be 10 restaurants or, a hundred someday, you could go to any one of them and, our enduring purpose and core values would be apparent, whether you’re a customer or an employee, or just someone who lives in the neighborhood.
[00:48:40] Mark Wright: What do you think your grandfather would be most proud of?
[00:48:43] Jasmine Donovan: I don’t know. I don’t know what he would be most proud of. I think he’d be excited to see the continued growth of the business. And I know he’d be proud of the new folks who became, who become store managers, and that, we’re, we continue to be able to bring people who start with us [00:49:00] day one with no skills required other than we ask you to show up and be willing to learn, and that those people, can grow with us.
[00:49:08] Jasmine Donovan: Learn to run a restaurant and have a great, great career in life for themselves here at Dix.
[00:49:15] Mark Wright: Well, this has been such a treat to talk with you, Jasmine. And I should say the 10th restaurant is dangerously close to the right household in Mukilteo, so
[00:49:25] Jasmine Donovan: That’s wonderful.
[00:49:26] Mark Wright: going to be hanging out there, quite a bit, but this has been so much fun talking with you. thanks for the way that you show up in the world of work and for sharing your story with us here on the BEATS WORKING podcast.
[00:49:36] Jasmine Donovan: Thank you, Mark.