An open letter to Yum! Brands
An open letter to Yum! Brands
The Issue
An open letter to Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell UK
I was an employee for T Bello Group, covering multiple stores for a period of 2022. I have a good chunk of management experience but none in hospitality so when I entered this industry, I was weary – after 6 months with the company as a general manager, here was my experience.
Staffing. This is where I want to start. On the most part, the people I worked with were lovely hard-working people who were just trying to make money during a cost-of-living crisis, but Taco Bell was not a good place. I had one Area Manager above me, several Shift Leaders below me and a hard-working team of employees below them.
My first store was a small one, in a particularly white, middle-class area and the majority of staff had born or raised in the local area. They were a close-knit team, and as cliché as it is, a family. The store in question was referred to internally as a “training store”, although not making loads of money it did break even. I very quickly discovered there was a running theme though, the store had been through a lot of General Managers – with only one progressing up the company ladder. This was something I should’ve questioned when I joined but didn’t.
My team were great, the majority were students – either at school, sixth form or college so they had very strict legal working rules and conditions, but this didn’t change anything like it would at some companies. They all gave good availability and remained loyal to the company despite earning only £8-£8.50 an hour, very little. No one liked the area manager, and this to me was a red flag – either my new team were in the wrong or my new boss was. From the onset, I found that they had been inconsistently managed by different people with different ideas over only a seven-month period and because of their age they were on the receiving end of whatever criticism the shop or area received.
The company treated them awfully, like cheap labour. The area manager, and his assistant treated them poorly too. They were expected to bend over backwards for the store, come in early or stay late and work to unrealistic times or cleaning targets. The staff would be expected to use cleaning chemicals although they were not taught how to properly dilute them, they were expected to use deep fat fryers and heat cabinets although not properly trained in how to use or act safely around them – resulting in regular burns. No accident book was ever kept and first aid kits were not readily available or full. There were no safety signage and procedures were not followed.
When I got to working with them, the staff were not reminded to wear PPE around chemicals or hot appliances but only around food. In fact, there were three weeks with no access to gloves whatsoever as the store had run out and the only person authorized to order them was the area manager. I conducted an audit within my first week, finding no staff contracts or training documents and when I questioned the area management, I was told to create and fake the documents myself in case of an inspection. I once even found a team members passport which hadn’t been returned to them for over two months – it was sat in a draw for anyone to take. The store itself was “surface clean”, you wouldn’t notice any dirt unless you knew where to look – but throughout the hidden areas there was old food, grease and even mould. The shop also had faults to the fire alarm system, resulting in it being almost permanently silenced.
On the whole, food safety procedures were followed but there were exceptions, for example all food had dated stickers on, and the procedure meant that when that when the sticker expired so did the food. Taco Bell decided this was often too expensive so instead, staff were instructed to just change the sticker not the food or container. This would happen until either that item ran out, or the food was visibly mouldy – at this point half that packet may have already been used. Often, food carried over night was not done so correctly due to staff error because they hadn’t been trained correctly. This food would usually still be used the next morning. While I was with this store, I even found mould in the components of the fountain machine (the drinks machine used for soda).
I do not fault the staff; they were expected to work in such a way that made this acceptable. The team would often ask relevant questions and be told ‘don’t worry, it is none of your business’. Every night, two or three members of staff were given one hour to clean down everything, do all the washing up, scrub the floors clean the preparation areas, and a multitude of other things – I did this myself many times and I can tell you it was massively unrealistic. When everything wasn’t done to the area managers rigorous standards, he would take it out on the staff working at the time – with not a care in the world about the fact they had usually been at school from 8am and would be working until 11pm.
When employing staff, I do feel they were being taken advantage of, for example none of them were issued copies of their contract when they started and if someone requested their contract they would simply be told they would get it later. If a member of staff had an issue, they were often told it is what it is. When signing contracts, the younger staff were often told to just sign the paperwork and don’t question it – although to most adults we would read our contract, for a 16-year-old being told if they sign the paperwork they get a job, reading a document isn’t a priority.
Throughout my time at the company, I saw a lack of communication from managers to both shift leaders and staff as well as a twisted hierarchy. Promotions for staff who were of Asian descent were fast-tracked compared to those who weren’t, and in general I felt that anyone who was an immigrant to Britain was treated significantly better. The area manager and his assistant personally managed everything, from rotas to staff behaviours and even staff absences – this meant as a restaurant manager nothing was mine.
Not long after, I was promoted to a larger store in the area. Due to its location, they made more money and had a larger team but unlike my previous store most of the staff were Asian immigrants. The staff were lovely, and again were like family but the difference here was clear. They were treated a hell of a lot better than my last team, they were respected, spoken to like humans and praised for their work. The boss was still stringent, and I watched him tear a few of them apart but him and the ‘assistant’ area manger still had more support for them. Throughout my time at the new restaurant the food safety and cleaning practices (and problems) mirrored that of my last restaurant, having the same issues but this is where I noticed practices getting a bit worse.
While there, I heard whispers of inappropriate behaviour, things like sexual comments towards my younger female staff – although nothing I could act on. This continued for several weeks, until one day a younger female member of staff resigned citing inappropriate comments as her primary reason, but this was just the beginning. I soon discovered that the restaurant had a culture of sexism with experienced staff – including the assistant area manager – involved in a TikTok account regularly filming the shop and its customers; the captions and comments that accompanied them were disgusting. Back in my previous store, a new manager had taken over and the way she was treating my old team was just a wrong; grabbing members of staff inappropriately or putting them down, making them feel like rubbish – remember they were mostly under 18.
Pay at Taco Bell is problematic too. Not only is it very little for what you do, but also never delivered correctly. Regularly, employees paid weekly (all shift leaders and regular staff members) would not get paid on time or would not receive pay slips at all. On top of that, if the company owes an employee expense, they will really drag their heels about paying them – despite it being in the contract. I was even told once that travel transport from my home store to another store should be paid out of my own money.
This is a letter to draw attention to the poor conditions for the staff at Taco Bell under T Bello Group, they are used and taken advantage of but it’s also to show flaws in the systems in place to aid food safety. Like Zenput, purely a box ticking activity – where we used to copy and paste the answers like what temperature the meat is or what areas of store had been cleaned; even the thermometers are not used, often the staff are not even showed how to use them. You may be wondering about CORE visits, well somehow the area manager knew exactly when CORE (a private environmental health team) was visiting and would make sure an experienced ‘super’ manager, sometimes himself would be there to conduct the visit - any staff wanting to work in that branch that day, would be sent home or to a different store. Also, it’s worth noting neither store has ever had a Food Standards Agency (Environmental Health) visit.
To summarise it all up, the way T Bello Group treats in employees is wrong and everything listed in this letter can be proved, in one way or another. I hope that you can use what’s in this letter as advice about what to change within your company and franchisee groups in the future.
Yours,
Past and Current Employees of T Bello Group LTD.
30
The Issue
An open letter to Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell UK
I was an employee for T Bello Group, covering multiple stores for a period of 2022. I have a good chunk of management experience but none in hospitality so when I entered this industry, I was weary – after 6 months with the company as a general manager, here was my experience.
Staffing. This is where I want to start. On the most part, the people I worked with were lovely hard-working people who were just trying to make money during a cost-of-living crisis, but Taco Bell was not a good place. I had one Area Manager above me, several Shift Leaders below me and a hard-working team of employees below them.
My first store was a small one, in a particularly white, middle-class area and the majority of staff had born or raised in the local area. They were a close-knit team, and as cliché as it is, a family. The store in question was referred to internally as a “training store”, although not making loads of money it did break even. I very quickly discovered there was a running theme though, the store had been through a lot of General Managers – with only one progressing up the company ladder. This was something I should’ve questioned when I joined but didn’t.
My team were great, the majority were students – either at school, sixth form or college so they had very strict legal working rules and conditions, but this didn’t change anything like it would at some companies. They all gave good availability and remained loyal to the company despite earning only £8-£8.50 an hour, very little. No one liked the area manager, and this to me was a red flag – either my new team were in the wrong or my new boss was. From the onset, I found that they had been inconsistently managed by different people with different ideas over only a seven-month period and because of their age they were on the receiving end of whatever criticism the shop or area received.
The company treated them awfully, like cheap labour. The area manager, and his assistant treated them poorly too. They were expected to bend over backwards for the store, come in early or stay late and work to unrealistic times or cleaning targets. The staff would be expected to use cleaning chemicals although they were not taught how to properly dilute them, they were expected to use deep fat fryers and heat cabinets although not properly trained in how to use or act safely around them – resulting in regular burns. No accident book was ever kept and first aid kits were not readily available or full. There were no safety signage and procedures were not followed.
When I got to working with them, the staff were not reminded to wear PPE around chemicals or hot appliances but only around food. In fact, there were three weeks with no access to gloves whatsoever as the store had run out and the only person authorized to order them was the area manager. I conducted an audit within my first week, finding no staff contracts or training documents and when I questioned the area management, I was told to create and fake the documents myself in case of an inspection. I once even found a team members passport which hadn’t been returned to them for over two months – it was sat in a draw for anyone to take. The store itself was “surface clean”, you wouldn’t notice any dirt unless you knew where to look – but throughout the hidden areas there was old food, grease and even mould. The shop also had faults to the fire alarm system, resulting in it being almost permanently silenced.
On the whole, food safety procedures were followed but there were exceptions, for example all food had dated stickers on, and the procedure meant that when that when the sticker expired so did the food. Taco Bell decided this was often too expensive so instead, staff were instructed to just change the sticker not the food or container. This would happen until either that item ran out, or the food was visibly mouldy – at this point half that packet may have already been used. Often, food carried over night was not done so correctly due to staff error because they hadn’t been trained correctly. This food would usually still be used the next morning. While I was with this store, I even found mould in the components of the fountain machine (the drinks machine used for soda).
I do not fault the staff; they were expected to work in such a way that made this acceptable. The team would often ask relevant questions and be told ‘don’t worry, it is none of your business’. Every night, two or three members of staff were given one hour to clean down everything, do all the washing up, scrub the floors clean the preparation areas, and a multitude of other things – I did this myself many times and I can tell you it was massively unrealistic. When everything wasn’t done to the area managers rigorous standards, he would take it out on the staff working at the time – with not a care in the world about the fact they had usually been at school from 8am and would be working until 11pm.
When employing staff, I do feel they were being taken advantage of, for example none of them were issued copies of their contract when they started and if someone requested their contract they would simply be told they would get it later. If a member of staff had an issue, they were often told it is what it is. When signing contracts, the younger staff were often told to just sign the paperwork and don’t question it – although to most adults we would read our contract, for a 16-year-old being told if they sign the paperwork they get a job, reading a document isn’t a priority.
Throughout my time at the company, I saw a lack of communication from managers to both shift leaders and staff as well as a twisted hierarchy. Promotions for staff who were of Asian descent were fast-tracked compared to those who weren’t, and in general I felt that anyone who was an immigrant to Britain was treated significantly better. The area manager and his assistant personally managed everything, from rotas to staff behaviours and even staff absences – this meant as a restaurant manager nothing was mine.
Not long after, I was promoted to a larger store in the area. Due to its location, they made more money and had a larger team but unlike my previous store most of the staff were Asian immigrants. The staff were lovely, and again were like family but the difference here was clear. They were treated a hell of a lot better than my last team, they were respected, spoken to like humans and praised for their work. The boss was still stringent, and I watched him tear a few of them apart but him and the ‘assistant’ area manger still had more support for them. Throughout my time at the new restaurant the food safety and cleaning practices (and problems) mirrored that of my last restaurant, having the same issues but this is where I noticed practices getting a bit worse.
While there, I heard whispers of inappropriate behaviour, things like sexual comments towards my younger female staff – although nothing I could act on. This continued for several weeks, until one day a younger female member of staff resigned citing inappropriate comments as her primary reason, but this was just the beginning. I soon discovered that the restaurant had a culture of sexism with experienced staff – including the assistant area manager – involved in a TikTok account regularly filming the shop and its customers; the captions and comments that accompanied them were disgusting. Back in my previous store, a new manager had taken over and the way she was treating my old team was just a wrong; grabbing members of staff inappropriately or putting them down, making them feel like rubbish – remember they were mostly under 18.
Pay at Taco Bell is problematic too. Not only is it very little for what you do, but also never delivered correctly. Regularly, employees paid weekly (all shift leaders and regular staff members) would not get paid on time or would not receive pay slips at all. On top of that, if the company owes an employee expense, they will really drag their heels about paying them – despite it being in the contract. I was even told once that travel transport from my home store to another store should be paid out of my own money.
This is a letter to draw attention to the poor conditions for the staff at Taco Bell under T Bello Group, they are used and taken advantage of but it’s also to show flaws in the systems in place to aid food safety. Like Zenput, purely a box ticking activity – where we used to copy and paste the answers like what temperature the meat is or what areas of store had been cleaned; even the thermometers are not used, often the staff are not even showed how to use them. You may be wondering about CORE visits, well somehow the area manager knew exactly when CORE (a private environmental health team) was visiting and would make sure an experienced ‘super’ manager, sometimes himself would be there to conduct the visit - any staff wanting to work in that branch that day, would be sent home or to a different store. Also, it’s worth noting neither store has ever had a Food Standards Agency (Environmental Health) visit.
To summarise it all up, the way T Bello Group treats in employees is wrong and everything listed in this letter can be proved, in one way or another. I hope that you can use what’s in this letter as advice about what to change within your company and franchisee groups in the future.
Yours,
Past and Current Employees of T Bello Group LTD.
30
Petition created on 30 December 2022