National File by Cullen McCue
According to leaked emails, Applebee’s franchise executive Wayne Pankratz was enthusiastic about skyrocketing gas prices and encouraged his locations to lower their wages. Everyone has heard that gas prices continue to rise,” read an email that came from the account of Wayne Pankratz, executive director of operations for Applebee’s franchisee Apple Central LLC. “The advantage this has for us is that it will increase application flow and has the potential to lower our average wage. How you ask?”
Pankratz told managers that the pool of people who work at Applebee’s “live paycheck to paycheck” and will be “forced back into the workforce” out of necessity. Pankratz also seemed pleased that skyrocketing gas prices would sting for competitors, and that if Applebee’s could cut wage costs, they would be better positioned. “We all competed to hire out of the limited applicant pool and there was a wage war,” he wrote in the March 9 memo. “They will no longer be able to afford to do this.”…
