In Fast Food, Some See Fast Track

Juan Guerrero takes orders at Burger King in Santa Ana. Higher education to him means management training at the fast-food chain, and Guerrero, a slight man of 19 with an explosive smile, has his sights set on “big money.”

“My teachers used to say, ‘What are you going to do? Go flip burgers for a living?’ ” Guerrero says, pausing to wipe down the condiment bar. He stoops to pick up a wadded napkin on the floor and wipes the side of the trash can on his way back up. “I say, ‘Yeah, and I’m going to make more money than you.’ ”

Such an attitude typifies the opportunities that growing numbers of Latinos, many of them recent immigrants, see as they fill openings behind fast-food counters, in the kitchens and, increasingly, in management.

In an unlikely industry now often shunned by middle-class teens, many have found stability and careers, and fast-food jobs have helped push unemployment among Latinos to record lows in California and elsewhere. Although jobs in manufacturing and hotel service industries also have helped pave the way into the middle class, it is restaurant work, they say, that offers steadier work and more opportunities for advancement.

And over time, they have learned, fast-food jobs can carry them further, make them more financially secure and employ their family and friends. New immigrants see the work as a way to hone their English skills, and some crave the stability often found in the industry’s structured workplace.

“The ceilings are lower in other jobs in terms of growth potential,” said Tarun Kapoor, a professor at the Collins School of Hospitality Management at Cal Poly Pomona. “In fast food, Latinos are finally finding real opportunities.”

Since the mid-1990s, the number of Latinos has swelled to 45% of all employees in fast-food restaurants nationwide--and to more than 60% in Southern California, according to the California Restaurant Assn. and the Hispanic Employee Network. As suburban youths leave fast-food jobs for what they deem to be “cooler” jobs, many Latinos have been hired and flourished in their wake.

“It’s no secret that Hispanics basically make up the entire labor pool now,” said McDonald’s franchisee Alex Mestas, who is national chairman of the chain’s Hispanic Owner Operators Assn. McDonald’s has become one of the nation’s largest employers of Latinos. “They’re latching on to jobs that a lot of other people have turned their backs on, and they’re beginning to reap the rewards.”

It’s not just a way into the middle class, either, he said. Culture and demographics play big roles. As their numbers grow in the general population, Latinos bring their attitudes about work to bear on the labor force. Latino workers tend to value steady work over what others may see as low-status jobs, Mestas said, and they tend to stay in their jobs longer.

“The more of themselves that they see in the higher ranks, the more it motivates them to keep working hard,” Mestas said.

At Jack in the Box’s 150 outlets in Southern California, Latinos account for more than 80% of the workers, and they hold half of all management positions, said Delia Coburn, the company’s regional human resources manager.

For the first time in the fast-food industry, she said, Latinos are moving more quickly into supervisory positions and finding themselves managing staffs that are largely Latino, especially in California.

Take Ed Tapia of Jack in the Box, who went from mopping floors to assembling burgers to supervising a half-dozen restaurants in Riverside County. Or Ofelia Melendrez, who started working at McDonald’s as a college student seven years ago, became a restaurant manager and is now the chairwoman of the company’s Hispanic Employee Network in Los Angeles.

Or Jose Hernandez, a father of three who was hired for $3.35 an hour in 1990 to help clean the McDonald’s at John Wayne Airport. In four years, he moved up into management.

Hernandez, 32, earns about $50,000 a year. He wears a company-issued uniform with golden arches stitched on it and keeps sporadic hours: early mornings, late nights, weekends. He supervises 55 employees in Cypress. And he boasts that he is the luckiest man in the world.

“Look at what I am doing and how far I’ve come,” said the former landscaper, who owns a home in Norwalk and drives his family around in a minivan. “I have a career, a real career, and I am supporting my family. My children can be proud of me.”

Not everyone talks in such glowing terms. Like others, many Latinos quit after a short while, finding the work tedious and the pay low, the advancement slow.

But turnover is generally lower at fast-food places today because the average age of Latino workers tends to be higher. They are more likely to tough out the first few months and the usual minimum-wage starting pay for a shot at management and even the dream of owning their own restaurant someday.

“These are workers who aren’t afraid to work, know the value of a continuous paycheck and couldn’t care less about social hierarchy when it comes to jobs,” said Janet Lawder, a consultant for Restaurant Management Services in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Latinos own about 650 McDonald’s nationwide. That’s still just a fraction of the overall number of restaurants, and the strides Latinos are making in fast-food management also haven’t spread to the corporate level. Just 17 of McDonald’s 117 corporate officers, or 15%, are Latino, a figure experts say is typical industrywide.

“We’re not satisfied with the progress Hispanics have made above the manager level,” said Mestas, whose franchise group represents 178 Latino owners nationally. Even so, he sees those numbers improving as companies continue mentoring programs and provide training and assistance. And people like Mestas--who owns six McDonald’s in Riverside County and is a strong advocate of Latino advancement--serve as role models for other workers.

Many industries, from fast-food to janitorial companies, are taking note of the country’s changing demographics and recruiting minority franchisees and employees. The shift makes simple demographic sense at a time when more and more of the nation’s consumers are nonwhite, industry officials say. And in the fast-food industry, Mestas said, it just makes good business sense.

“We are experiencing double-digit Hispanic growth in this country,” he said. “And so our companies have an obligation to represent their customer base. It’s as simple as that.”

For Victor Ramirez, a kitchen worker at McDonald’s in Murrieta, Calif., the job is about stability and a chance to attain a middle-class life. For years, the 28-year-old strung together jobs--from landscaping to janitorial work to a part-time cook at a Jewish deli--until a relative suggested fast food. You can move up there, relatives and friends said. There is a future.

Now Ramirez makes about $30,000 and is on track to become an assistant manager, which will bump up his salary an additional $10,000.

“And that’s only working one job,” the father of two said. “In a few more years, I could be a supervisor. My wife and I could buy a house.”

Nine of the 12 supervisors at Ramirez’s restaurant are Latinos--a far cry from when Norma Arevalo started working the counter at Carl’s Jr. as a teenager in 1980. Back then, she said, there were no Latino bosses.

“It just didn’t happen,” she said. “Our managers were white, usually male, and many didn’t even speak Spanish very well.”

Now Arevalo is 38, a general manager in Anaheim and boss to a staff of 40--nearly all of whom are Latino. Over the years, she’s seen white teenagers swap restaurant jobs for the more peer-approved retail ones. And in this super-tight job market, flipping burgers and scooping fries can no longer compete with selling surf wear or making double lattes.

“For middle-class high school students, fast food is now at the bottom of the barrel,” said Eric Schlosser, a consultant and author of “Fast Food Nation” (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Unemployment among Latinos in California has dropped sharply, to 6.5% from nearly double that five years ago. But that’s still higher than the overall rate, and a steady flow of new Latino immigrants adds to the pool of labor for the fast-food industry.

“You look around the restaurants these days and think, ‘Who’s left?’ ” Arevalo said. “Latinos are left. It seems like we’re the only ones who appreciate what this industry has to offer anymore.”

And the industry is reciprocating, with many chains offering hiring incentives or special training sessions aimed at helping Latino workers polish their English skills.

At Jack in the Box, a referral program that gives workers cash bonuses for bringing in new hires has proved popular among Latino workers. Employees receive $50 for referring a new crew member and $1,000 if the new worker is hired at the management level.

“Word of mouth is our best recruiting tool, and our Hispanic workers are the best at it,” Coburn said.

At other restaurant corporations, executives are reconsidering their Latino workers, without whom many say they couldn’t open their doors each morning. To address the language issue, for example, some chains have made adjustments in training, insisting on bilingual manuals and classes.

Others have required shift leaders at each restaurant to be able to speak both English and Spanish. Most have made it a priority to attend Latino job fairs, hoping to sustain recruitment and tout long-term career opportunities.

“We’ve always disputed the idea that fast-food jobs are dead-end jobs, and our Hispanic workers are evidence of that,” said Walt Riker, a corporate spokesman for McDonald’s. “We value their work, and we’re continuing to encourage their advancement through training and other programs.”

Hernandez, the 32-year-old McDonald’s manager in Cypress, is an example of how such attention can pay off. When he started mopping floors at the airport McDonald’s a decade ago, he had a warm smile and solid work ethic but little command of the English language.

The restaurant’s owner, Isabelle Villasenor, encouraged Hernandez to improve his English beyond “the McDonald’s lingo.” He read training manuals and insisted that other co-workers speak to him only in English. Villasenor quizzed him on his vocabulary and kept the radio on in the back of the restaurant so Hernandez could listen to the words.

“I told him he had to understand more than just how to say ‘cheeseburger and fries,’ ” said Villasenor, who is Latina and owns seven McDonald’s in Orange County. “He wanted so desperately to succeed.”

Said Hernandez: “I started moving up and realized for the first time in my life I was going to have a career.”

He said he still feels surprised at times when he hears himself motivating other young Latino workers by passing on the same message he was given as a member of the cleaning crew a few years ago.

“I can’t believe how far I’ve come,” said Hernandez, who with incentives can boost his salary this year to as much as $60,000. “Next stop, supervisor. After that, who knows? I feel like nothing’s out of reach anymore.”