Half a Century at the Drive-In

Jasmine Donovan

My grandfather served in the navy as a Seabee during WWII and as a commissary officer for the air force in Japan during the Korean War. Shortly after he returned home to Oregon, he was at a small cafe getting lunch. The man behind the counter opened the door to a fridge and my grandfather saw that it was full of hamburger patties. He asked the server how long it took him to go through that many patties. The server laughed and said, “We go through this one and two more like it every day!” Doing some quick mental math, Grandpa realized there could be a good business in that.

He called one of his old navy buddies and they put together a business plan. They decided Seattle was the best place to start this new business. Through family, they found a partner with some capital who would sign on as long as they modeled the new restaurant after the fast food concepts becoming so popular in California. They even went to California and paid one of these early burger concepts to work there for a day to learn the ropes.

Back in Seattle, they were having trouble raising the rest of the capital they needed to get the concept going. Banks were laughing at the idea of people standing in line outside to get food in a city where it rains all the time. Eventually, Grandpa asked the contractor to build our first building in exchange for profits earned once the restaurant opened. His response after consideration was, “My banker thinks it’s a crazy idea, my accountant says absolutely not, my financial advisers say it’s ridiculous to even consider, but if I did what they told me to all of the time, they’d be running this place, not me.” And the rest is history. The first Dick’s Drive-In opened in Wallingford on 45th St. on January 28th, 1954.

Jasmine Donovan

In high school and college, I worked as a crew member, like most members of the family. It’s important for us in the family to understand the ins and outs of the day-to-day business, even if we are just owners someday.

In fall of 2013, I joined the executive team after leaving the U.S. Navy. My function for most the first year was to learn as much as I could about the business and how it operates at all levels. I did a crash course in the stores, relearning all the crew stations; I shadowed all of our managers at all locations, I shadowed all of our support staff, and so on. Eventually, I began taking over regular tasks at the executive level, starting new programs where needed and helping with strategic planning. Although my title is VP and Director of Communications, I’m doing a little bit of everything as I prepare to take over for my dad when he retires.

Jasmine Donovan

There are several VPs, actually; I am just one of them. My uncle Walt is our current VP and CFO, and my second cousin, Ron, is VP of Community Affairs. Working in a family business is wonderful in many ways. As a mother of two young boys (ages 1 and 3 1/2) it is great to have the flexibility that allows me to be with them as needed and have a great job and career potential. I look forward to the day that I can proudly hand over the business to my children and their cousins as our family business grows and prospers.

Working with family is both a blessing and a challenge. A friend of mine, who also works in a family business once said, “No one pushes your buttons like family. After all, they installed them.”

I had the unique good fortune to be born into an amazing family business that provides not only sustenance but helps our customers and employees make amazing memories. Anyone who is committing himself or herself to a family business has to understand the concept of stewardship. You are dedicating your life to a group of assets that you didn’t create and you need to leave it better than you found it for the sake of your family’s financial future as well as the legacy of your predecessors.

Jasmine Donovan

Our sixth location, built in Edmonds, was the first new location we had built in 37 years. It will be celebrating it’s fifth anniversary this month. Luckily my grandfather was still around to transfer some of the knowledge from building our previous locations.

Our back-of-house systems for our entire history have been exclusively pencil-and-paper-based. That includes schedules and timesheets, not to mention inventory, customer counts, temperature recordings, etc. All the paperwork was picked up and hand-delivered back and forth between our locations and our main office, and manually entered into various spreadsheets. This was still working fine for five locations relatively close together. When we added a sixth location, the strain on our systems was immediately apparent. One of our major goals as we look to continue to add more restaurants is bring our back-of-house systems up to the modern era to add efficiency and more actionable data.

Jasmine Donovan

Grandpa developed a specific business philosophy made up of three main steps:

• Step 1: Make a profit. Businesses that don’t make a profit aren’t worth anything to anyone.
• Step 2: Invest in your employees. It’s the best investment you’ll make.
• Step 3: Invest in your community. If your community thrives, you will thrive.

We take these steps seriously. We offer our employees the highest combination of pay and benefits in the industry. Right now we start our Seattle-based employees at $13/hour with a raise to $13.25 if they pass their basic proficiency tests at 12 weeks. We offer our employees working 20 hours a week 100% employer paid health insurance and 75% coverage of their children. We offer our employees working 25 hours a week a $25,000 scholarship over four years. They can use that to pursue any educational topic they’d like at almost any learning institution. If they are not interested in going to school or can get other scholarships, they can use that money for childcare assistance. Our employees who are at least 21 years old have access to a 401(k) with a 50% employer match. We also reimburse employees for four hours of community service hours a month.

All of our managers are promoted from within, even our store managers. This benefit package has been very important to hiring and retaining the best talent. However, we take our responsibility as a gateway or first-time employer very seriously. We don’t actually want most of our employees to stay with us forever. Ideally, an employee works with us long enough to get their degree and leaves us to pursue what they are passionate about. We have a number of employees who stay with us longer because working for us works well for their lifestyle and their priorities.

Jasmine Donovan

Our model was very common in the beginning of fast food, but is somewhat of a relic today. We are an instant service-based fast food restaurant. That means that our food is made ideally seconds before you order it. The crewmember serving you can quickly grab your food, place it in a bag, and hand it to you immediately after you order. We have a limited menu and an efficient and very specific layout of our restaurants that allows this very high turnover. At peak times, we want to service 42 customers in a half hour window. This high turnover allows us to keep prices low while still serving quality food and investing in our employees and community.

It does make it very difficult to accommodate special orders or modifications. For the most part, our customers are okay with this and like our burgers the way we make them. However, there are a vocal minority who are frustrated that they cannot get our cheeseburger without ketchup, for example. In a world of custom everything, it’s sometimes hard to explain to customers that we simply can’t do that without changing our business model completely. We’re still working on a potential solution for customers with legitimate allergies. However, our fresh food kitchen will make it very difficult to provide a meal that is 100% free of all potential allergens.

Jasmine Donovan

We are blessed to be a place where our customers and employees make memories. Your mother drove her first car here, your parents met here, your uncle got his first job here, it was your grandfather’s favorite place to take you after church, etc. Because things haven’t changed much from a customer’s perspective, getting a burger at Dick’s takes you back to a time when you were happy, innocent, celebrating, exhilarated, and so many other possible emotions. Taste and smell are two senses uniquely tied to memory and our customers love that coming to Dick’s isn’t just about the great food.

Jasmine Donovan

Grandpa was always focused on the making decisions for the long term. Investing in our real estate was one of those decisions. We own all of our property except the property on Broadway, which is owned by the daughter of the man who built our building there. We hope to continue this practice in the future as much as possible.

Jasmine Donovan

Increased regulation is taking a lot of our time and energy, especially at the local level. Investing in our community includes being engaged at the civic level as much as possible and there’s been a lot to engage on lately.

Continuing to strike the balance between being nostalgic and appealing to a modern customer, especially those outside our core market, is a unique challenge for us.