LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Keeping good, quality employees is tough – ask any business owner and they'll tell you the same. At Damgoode Pies in Little Rock, the pandemic made that and every part of the job even harder.
"We haven't been fine," Owner and Founder Jeff Trine, said. "The staff shortage has been a very real thing. We don't even have the Kavanaugh restaurant open currently, because of the staff shortage."
Those issues have been front of mind for he and everyone at Damgoode Pies throughout the pandemic.
"Partly because of the pandemic and the struggles that it's brought, it's forced us to be a smaller, tighter, more focused crew," he said. "As we move forward, we don't want anybody but the best."
But Trine is doing his best to make sure those struggles don't become common after the pandemic.
"It goes for the owners too," he said. "Wrangling people and constantly fighting with product quality and punctuality and all of these things, they'll make a person crazy."
Now employees at Damgoode have a little less to worry about, and it starts at the tip jar.
"We essentially eliminated the tip credit," he said. "We're no longer paying our servers, our drivers, our bartenders less than minimum wage, which is a common practice in the industry."
That's not all – workers can also increase their pay as they learn more skills on the job. The more workers learn and experience they get, the more they can make, even upwards of $20 an hour.
The program has been in place about two months, and Trine says it's helped morale and hopefully keeps employees around.
"The bottom line is, I'm trying to create the best environment I can for the people that work here and the people who shop here," Trine said.
The pay change does take a bigger cut of their profits – roughly three percent to make this happen.
But at the end of the day, Trine says it's worth it. He'd rather take that loss and help out his employees.
"Everybody's just able to relax a little bit more, and enjoy more of their life," he said. "That really makes a place buzz, really makes a place an upbeat and lighthearted place to be."
Trine says the new system will be implemented in the Kavanaugh location as well. He says they're targeting January 4, 2022, as the reopen date there.
To learn more about the changes Damgoode is implementing, click here.