So they are invested in the company? Very much. Whatever I know, that’s exactly what my unit managers know. We don’t keep anything from them. If we make money they know how much. We tell them how things are going. Every three months I meet with every single manager under one roof and explain what happened—how much money we made and where did that money go. I keep them absolutely engaged in the process.

And most of your managers were once hourly workers? That is a big thing, big, big. People have a home. They know if they do well one day they will end up in that position.

Are you doing anything unique on the training end? It’s hardly unique. We follow Church’s guidelines. We just execute better. If someone else is doing a quarterly update, we’re doing every period updates with our managers. We have constant communication with our field managers, with our training managers, our restaurant managers so they can develop people within our restaurants. We constantly keep people engaged.

There is the perception that franchisees are reluctant to invest in new technology, but you seem to embrace it. Information flows very rapidly. You need to be ahead of your competition. The only way you can is by using an information system.

If I have banner up or a POP up on the window that says,“10 Piece $5.99,” and it’s not working and I have no way to track it then I’m behind my competition. I need to know what’s happening: what we sold yesterday, what we bought yesterday.

The important thing is you buy what you sell. If you don’t have up-to-date information, you’re shooting in the dark—buying 50 percent white meat, which is three times as expensive as dark meat, when you’re selling 80 percent dark meat. That’s why technology is a very key component of our business.

The other thing is we rank our managers every day. They know how they did compared to their peer two miles down the street. That provides indirect pressure on managers to produce.

Have you looked at a call-center drive-thru model? No, we’re not looking at that. We have challenges at the drive-thru, but most of the challenges come from people, people dragging their feet and slowing down the service. That’s what causes problems. It’s not the machines; it’s the humans.

What are some of your other challenges? The minimum wage increase, and it’s hard to find people.

How are you tackling the people part? We constantly recruit whether we need them or not because you never know if you’ll need them tomorrow morning. And we continue to train. We help other franchisees within the company train and develop management material. That’s our thing. We constantly recruit and train to keep the inventory fresh.

We let other people have our managers.

Why? Because it helps the brand. If they do well, we do well.