Ashley Christensen is looking forward.

On the verge of opening a new restaurant chain, BB’s Crispy Chicken, and navigating what one hopes is the tail end of a brutal year for the restaurant industry, the nationally lauded, James Beard-award winning chef took her share of lumps in 2020.

But she’s implementing changes to her company, AC Restaurants, that she owns with Kaitlyn Goalen, her wife and ACR’s executive director, that she hopes will help her forge a new, more equitable, more sustainable path forward.

“This pandemic has exposed the extreme vulnerability of this industry,” Christensen says in an April phone interview with the INDY. “It’s time for restaurants to really step up and do what it takes to be less vulnerable to moments like this. And with that we end up with a lot more security for our people, for all the people. Just thinking about how many restaurant dollars go back into our economy and to our supply chain, it’s a big deal.”

It is a big deal, and it has been an unimaginable year of loss for restaurants and their workers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 1.8 million restaurant and bar workers have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic. And, per the National Restaurant Association, more than 110,000 restaurants have closed. It’s also been one of difficult lessons, as national social justice reckonings further exposed the systemic fault lines endemic to the service industry.

As many restaurant owners pick up the pieces and try to move on, there are pressing questions: What might a safer, more secure future look like? And who will it protect?

Christensen has been spared neither conflict nor loss in 2020. Last spring, she and Goalen faced the devastating task of furloughing and laying off most of ACR’s nearly 300 employees while trying to pivot and keep the operation afloat; ultimately, they closed Chuck’s, their downtown Raleigh burger joint. And, at the height of the fallout that consumed downtown Raleigh restaurants Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana, ACR also came under scrutiny last summer when a former Poole’s Diner employee brought forward accounts of sexual assault that she alleged happened during her employment at ACR in 2017.

In response, Christensen and Goalen wrote an open letter of apology to the employee, who said she felt that her experience had been mishandled. Christensen said she was unaware of the extent of the problems that existed at Poole’s Diner.

But she’s been doing the work to make the work experience at her restaurants better.

In 2016, ACR hired a human resources director. A new organizational infrastructure helped to create what Christensen and Goalen refer to as “the feedback loop,” which has facilitated communication between managers and employees. ACR also utilizes OPUS, a multilingual text-based app, so that non-native English speaking employees can access paid training on human resources guidelines.

And while a divide between restaurants’ front-of-house and back-of-house staff, marked by a wage disparity in which servers typically make much more than their kitchen counterparts, is standard, Christensen piloted a tip pooling model at her downtown pizza restaurant, Poole’side Pies, in 2019 to help address the disparity. Instead of the $2.13 servers are normally paid and expected to subsidize with tips, they start out paid the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Tips are  shared among all employees—a model that Christensen will bring to BB’s as well.

But compensation is only one piece of creating a better workplace. According to Mental Health America’s annual workplace reports, the food and beverage industry consistently ranks as one of the unhealthiest work environments due to the long hours, difficulty in taking time off, and high rates of substance and alcohol abuse.

When Death & Taxes opened in 2015, ACR did so without its shift drink policy—a common practice (and perceived job perk) offering employees a free alcoholic beverage post-shift. Since then, ACR has implemented this policy across the board at the rest of its restaurants. This reflects a growing  trend among Raleigh restaurateurs, including chef Scott Crawford, who eliminated staff consumption of alcohol in the workplace in 2019. And, at the start of 2020, ACR enrolled all its employees in an Emergency Assistance Program, which provides free services, such as counseling sessions and financial education services, anonymously.

ACR has also re-tooled its paid time off policies which were previously in place only for company managers. Now, all ACR hourly employees receive three days of paid sick leave plus bereavement time. Additionally, the company will close for a full week in August.

“For a company of our size it takes a lot to fully close,” Goalen says. “But we knew coming into reopening and after everything our team has been through together, that we’d need that time.”

Opening BB’s gave Christensen and Goalen a chance to rethink aspects of ACR’s model, too, they say, and build a different kind of outpost. Restaurants operate on notoriously thin margins, and in the case of higher-end, sit-down service restaurants—such as Poole’s Diner and Death & Taxes—the business model is based on maximizing diners in seats. The fast-food model is built on volume, and Christensen sees BB’s, a fast-service concept with an inviting dining room and a product that lends itself to both dine-in and take-out, as an additional revenue stream that will help create financial sustainability and an opportunity to reinvest in the company.

“Part of the appeal was taking an idea and concept and creating more accessibility,” Christensen says. “It’s an interesting way to reach more communities with what I view as a very accessible product, and to not tax the focus of the company we grew in service to downtown Raleigh.”

Although BB’s menu pricing isn’t finalized yet, the basic chicken sandwich will sell for approximately $6. The first BB’s location, in Raleigh’s Midtown East, will open in June, followed by Durham’s University Hill and Cary’s Parkside Town Commons locations.

But the notion of accessibility doesn’t apply only to the consumer.

“[Our] downtown [restaurants] had so many [employees] coming from communities that, now, we’re popping BB’s up in,” Christensen says. “That was one of the barriers of entry to working downtown. Much like bringing that food to the communities who have asked for years, ‘When will you open something out here?,’ we’re also bringing those jobs to those places.”

When Christensen began developing the BB’s menu, creating a fried chicken sandwich that was delicious, fresh, and crispy, was paramount. But she wanted to simplify the cooking process to broaden employment prospects for workers who may lack formal training in cooking.

“The concept of BB’s is, by design, built to withstand a pandemic,” Christensen says. “[And there’s] much more opportunity [at BB’s] than in the majority of concepts we have in downtown.”

Streamlining the cooking process also facilitates BB’s cross-training structure, in which a cashier will know how to make a chicken sandwich and a line cook can learn customer service skills. Christensen says cross-training is a way to bridge the front- and back-of-house divide.

“The goal [at BB’s] is for every person in that building to know how to do all the jobs considered hourly jobs, and the tip pool will be shared with all hourly people,” Christensen explains. “[Employees] will achieve a much higher hourly rate than what is maybe considered standard in fast food, and in restaurants in general.”

This also helps create sustainability—and stability—for hourly food service employees who often work multiple jobs to earn a living wage.

“I have always loved the access to entry that this industry provides. We are at a pivotal moment where we can provide a path to a healthy, balanced, sustainable, financially equitable, and fulfilling career experience,” Christensen says. “BB’s was designed parallel to everything we desired to tune-up at ACR, so it benefits from nearly 14 years of hard-earned experience. I am beyond excited to open the doors of these buildings, old and new. They represent so much more than the physical gesture.”

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