Rewarding Employment Opportunities Equals Expanded Business Opportunities

 

Rewarding Employment Opportunities

Equals

Expanded Business Opportunities

Carlos Pimentel, MBA has been with Madrigal Electromotive since starting his career as a part time cook at our Los Pollos Hermanos subsidiary in 1990 while in high school He is currently working in our Houston headquarters as the Director of Human Resources and Development.

Mr. Pimentel received his BA in Human Resources from the University of New Mexico and and MBA from Wake Forest University. We our delighted that he can share the full depth of his experience from our new employees to seasoned managers.

A multinational corporation such as Madrigal Electromotive takes on a life of its own, looked upon as a single monolithic entity. However internally we look upon ourselves as a good citizen of each country we do business in. In reality though, we're an amalgamation of citizens from those countries. It's internalized into our corporate culture that we not only serve our varied customers but also our wide network of employees, consultants, and agents. Our “corporate citizens.”

We don't have any great or proprietary concepts in personal management. We treat our customers as priority one. We believe they should receive the highest value products and services for their money while treating them with the utmost of respect. This same philosophy then flows to our treatment of employees. We recognize that their time, efforts and labor should return the greatest rewards possible. Consistently applying these two approaches, our company reaches an optimal delivery of products and services to our customers, while assuring premium rewards and benefits for our employees with minimal energy input to maintain this state. (Minimal Entropy)

Training, leadership, imprinting, corrections, recognition, and rewards can best be performed by management spending direct time with the new employees, employees at the various levels of the organization allows for enhanced communications and ability to reward excellent performance. This is why you'll often see managers throughout the entire chain of command on the front line of retail customer support. While high level tasks need to be performed as part of management's main task, working with their front line employees and customers is required for a complete on constant understanding of the business.

Example of Employee Rewards:

While I could use myself as someone who started out making chicken that was “METHodically Made, for METHodical Tastes(tm)” and currently holds an international corporate position, I'd like to address a fellow not much younger them myself who started working for me when I was a freshly minted manager at the first US Los Pollos Hermanos. I took over from an MBA student named Ted, who had a little “accident” with one of the cashiers and elected to leave suddenly without notice to join the family business, some type of parts fabricators.

Mr. Fring recognized my work and gave me the chance to grow and succeed even though I was still a college undergrad. My first hire was a very nice fellow named Gale who had a desire to serve the public with the finest quality products. He had his own line which I've plagiarized many times in my own lecture material: "Customers want what they want. With me cooking they’re getting exactly what they pay for."

Gale was a model employee. Besides the most perfect chicken, he aimed for the worlds most perfect cup of coffee. He would tweek and tweek the mixture, the timing, the drip rate, the rate of water flow, the holding temperature. Every possible variable was massaged until he was able to produce the ultimate cup of coffee every time. His method is followed to the letter even to this day as part of the LPH operations manual. But Gale's true success came with his use of the Operations Manual.

The Operations Manual is the Bible of running a standardized restaurant such as LPH. By the time I came aboard, the manual has been fine tuned over 5 years. The original Spanish version was built in Mexico, the birth place of LPH. Mr. Fring and his original partner put countless sweat and toil to that guidebook having every operational facet covered in detail. The problem with any Operations Manual, as the actual Bible, is that it's only good if someone opens it, reads it, and follows the teaching. Most employees, despite encouraging the use, do not wish to put in the time and effort. They rely on word of mouth to do their job. Gale was the opposite. He read and could quote the guide book from cover to cover. Except for coffee production, he followed every instruction to the letter. This was his style. It was simple, it was easy, and wildly successful. He just simply followed the recipe.

By taking advantage of the method sand training the LPH offered, Gale quickly climbed that latter moving into my position when I went off to pursue my MBA. (After graduation, I returned to Madrigal Electromotive in Richmond, Virginia. They never officially told me, but I believe my reward for loyalty consisted of my student loans one day disappearing ). Gale developed a loyal following of customers and employees and freed up Mr. Fring to open up several more stores. Mr. Fring, who often worked side by side with Gale in store operations recognized his talents and gave him a management position at the new chicken processing plant. The plant was one of LPH's many steps to assure a consistent quality product from the Chicken pen to the store.

This story might have ended here. However Gale truly hated the processing plant. About a week into the position he advised upper management that he has elected to become a vegan and could no longer work there. Needless to say, any other chicken restaurant would find that a vegan wouldn't exactly fit with the corporate image, but that's not how Madrigal Electromotive works. Mr. Fring after speaking with Gale realized he had a true talent for the scientific method (as demonstrated by his coffee experiments) and the keen mind to become a great chemist. Instead of dismissing him, for essentially insubordination, or allowing him to go elsewhere. He rewarded all of Gale's past efforts and future promise by creating a scholarship in chemistry. He made Gale the first recipient. The scholarship was named after Maximino Arciniega the original partner in LPH who died during a hunting accident before the expansion into the United States.

 

Gale went on to travel the globe as a Chemical Engineering consultant for Madrigal Electromotive. He developed chemical plants of various types in almost every market served by ME. While becoming quite well off in his own right, he helped develop large swaths of business of for ME in multiple countries. Overall he received ample rewards for his hard work and dedication to Los Pollos Hermanos and Madrigal Electromotive. While Madrigal Electromotive was rewarded for its loyalty to Gale:

Editors Note: After this paper was written, Gale Boetticher was murdered in an apparent robbery attempt. Our prayers are with his family and friends. Madrigal Electromotive will be offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.