Committing to Your Labor Ecosystem: Chick-fil-A’s Brake Room
Chick-fil-A may not always be on the right side of history, but they are always on the right side of a damn good chicken sandwich.
Most recently, the fast food chain has underscored its appreciation of food delivery workers by opening The Brake Room, a pop-up pit stop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for folks making deliveries through apps like DoorDash and UberEats.
At The Brake Room, delivery workers will find indoor bike docking, free coffee, device charging stations, and—oh, sweet relief—bathrooms.
Users don’t have to be actively on the job, either. The restaurant’s v chic microsite for the project says that anyone who can show “a delivery within the past week on your DoorDash, UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, Caviar, or Seamless driver profile” can come inside. It’s open from February 16 to April 13.
Looking out for the workers in your ecosystem
Delivery app drivers are a prime example of workers who don’t benefit from the usual corporate DEI strategies, like increased compensation, career development opportunities, and expanded benefits packages. Gig workers like these are (famously) underpaid and underprotected, with no access to healthcare, paid leave, benefits, and unemployment. Perhaps ESG is the answer to improving work conditions for gig workers and contractors.
Taking care of the workers in your ecosystem, not just those on your payroll, is an employer branding road less taken, but this is changing. As companies increasingly prioritize environmental and social governance, or ESG, strategies, they’re looking beyond their own walls to the “invisible” or tangential labor that makes their businesses work to evaluate the practices of suppliers and contracting companies.
Those that do are often proud to show their work. Apple, for instance, releases its annual People and Environment in Our Supply Chain report, which includes labor standards for their vendors and suppliers both domestically and abroad.
Still, it’s not uncommon for employers to take good care of their full-time employees and leave the rest S.O.L. The recent spate of stories on child labor violations are not about companies with household names like Tyson and Hyundai, but about relatively unknown entities that occupy points in their supply chains.
For example, Packer Sanitation Services has been fined $1.5 million by the Department of Labor for employing (at least) more than a hundred children under age thirteen in dangerous working conditions. Meat produced in those plants is sold by companies like Tyson and Cargill. In February, Tyson announced that it has expanded its parental leave for full-time employees in an effort to become “the most sought-after place to work.”
According to McKinsey, more than 90% of S&P 500 companies publish some form of ESG report. Still, for many, ESG strategies and their accompanying reports are more PR move than they are ethical principle, but further scrutiny of labor practices from the top of the supply chain to the bottom will only serve to move employers in the right direction: 90% participation confirms a new corporate standard.
Chick-fil-A’s Brake Room is certainly a PR boon, earning the company press on CNN, TODAY, and half a dozen local outlets, though it does provide real value to delivery app workers. The companies that make food delivery apps will be wise to pay attention to companies like this that are sending a clear message to workers: we know how to take care of you, they don’t.
Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter based in Richmond, VA, who covers the future of work and women’s experience in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, and Digiday’s Worklife.news, among others.
ABOUT UNCUBED STUDIOS
Launched in 2016, Uncubed Studios is a full-service creative agency with a client list representing the most influential employers on earth along with the high growth tech companies.
The team that brings the work of Uncubed Studios to life is made up of award-winning experts in cinematography, journalism, production, recruitment, employee engagement, employer branding and more.
Interested in speaking with Uncubed Studios? Email us at studios@uncubed.com
