general manager

crew member

assistant manager

restaurant staff

benefits administrator

Inspire Brands

I worked for one of the companies that Inspire Brands acquired back in 2018. Prior to the acquisition, our company had amazing benefits, work/life balance, culture, and people. Most of that changed as soon as we fell under Inspire Brands umbrella. My first 15 years with the company were amazing, but my last two under Inspire Brands were horrible.

The salary and bonuses were great. They were by far the best thing about the company. But if you allocate your salary based on the number of hours you work, it doesn't seem quite as impressive. Regardless of your department and title, you will be expected to work a lot. 70-80 hour weeks were a lot more common than 40-50. 

Directors and above get unlimited vacation, but there isn't any time to use it. Even if you do manage to sneak away for a couple of days, you will get meeting requests, phone calls, and be expected to answer emails with urgent issues. It's a necessary evil because of the rate at which they are growing and the amount of things they try to accomplish in such a short amount of time. Their unrealistic deadlines lead to a lot of mistakes and subpar results.

I love working at Inspire Brands because it is a company that is looking to improve all aspects of our company for the employees and the guests in our restaurants. 

Culture - there was already a great culture before I joined and now they are putting even more effort to keeping the great, fun and welcoming culture and making sure it is spread through the entire company.

People - Inspire puts a lot of resources towards hiring not only talented people but people that are energetic, enthusiastic and overall great people. I am surrounded by fun hard-working in every

Balance - there is a huge emphasis on employees being happy and well balanced. There is increasingly more flexibility on hours and team leaders are constantly checking in to make sure each team member has the right amount work.

Opportunities - Inspire Brands is full of opportunities both personally and professionally. Each team is playing a large part in the success of the company while trying to make large changes and improve each brand.

Overall the Company is an exciting place to be with a good culture.  However, within the Finance/Accounting organization, the culture is quite toxic.  Certain executive members are quick to take credit for success and deflect struggles/issues to their team members. At the Staff/Senior/Manager everyone is scared for their jobs. If anything goes wrong the culture is to backstab and pass blame.  The work is exciting but very intense and complicated as the company is highly acquisitive, undergoing an ERP implementation, applying new GAAP accounting standards (which requires its own system conversions) and expectations at the top are unreasonable.  In this group, you need to play the politics game to get ahead and protect your job.  There is a significant lack of leadership at the top. At times it also seems that the loudest person in the room rises to the top and there are not enough individuals willing to challenge in fear for their job. This does not appear pervasive throughout the organization but if you are looking to join the Finance/Accounting group be warned.

The workers for inspire brands are phenomenal, there’s a lot of people who truly care and want to see not just themselves, but everyone to succeed. Unfortunately the company on the other hand is just getting worse, “competitively” low wages, reduced labor to save costs, lower quality training - due to profit margins and unrealistic goals set by higher ups who have never set foot in a restaurant. There’s an increasing disconnect between corporate and their restaurants. They want to increase drive thru #s and lane times while at the same time cutting back on the employees on the floor at any given time and shelling out increasingly “good” but ridiculous deals that the teams cannot simply keep up with, in return drives up lane time, decreases efficiency and accuracy and hurts overall numbers. It’s really sad to see what has become of the company and I hope changes are made soon, but considering we just went “public” on the stock exchange, I’m going to assume that profits are going to take priority. 

Lots of money to acquire companies.  No leadership ability to blend those companies.  Outsource everything possible.
Lost a ton of much needed talent.  

They outsourced their layoffs after acquiring Dunkin/Baskin.  They basically took to lists and compared titles.  They never communicated with the actual people doing the work.  If it existed in two places, then one of them got axed.  That left a ton of support holes and and knowledge lost and dumped on those that were deemed 'essential' and not let go.  This caused a major dip in morale and doubled and in some case tripled the workloads of people that now had to take on these other responsibilites.  Total disregard for talent and knowledge.   VP's quitting left and right.  No support or direction.  Flat out lied to existing employees during the acquisitions which cause those employees that made it through all of the layoffs to basically lose money due to the cutting of benefits, increasing hours without compensation.   Totall s**t show.

Great Potential, investment in technology and stakeholders engaged and show clear desire to improve applications.
What holds the company back is how they pat themselves on the back with pride saying they completed work by struggling with primitive workflows and practises and are unwilling, or too busy to look at ways to make Technology and Product push ahead by adopting some proven ways of working.  HSC team are on the whole good and supportive.  A couple of members with longevity are the bed seeds, trying to flex and control newer team members, as opposed to supporting and helping grow.  Line Managers (back in US) dont seem experienced with managing team members and more importantly engaging with them, no matter how new the team members are.  So much potential but needs a strong hand and commitment to be able to show true development from an OK team to a great and proven winning culture

Just generally clueless upper  and mid management. IT/HR is a disaster and the pay scale from entry level to management is atrocious for the 21st century but they're convinced they're paying more than everyone else, yet are confused about being understaffed and can't understand why tenured employees being denied raises of more than a few cents doesn't improve efficiency. Zero work life balance; if you have to work for over 6 months without an off day, complaining about it can get you fired. Very poor culture and simply no ability to run the business properly. Company is the very image of what one imagines when picturing an exaggerated "post-capitalism corporate" sort of company from fiction. 

I was hired as an Point of Sales Data Analyst (contractor) for Buffalo Wild Wing's IT department as they were working on a project. It was good initial position to start, the job responsibilities were pretty repetitive as I did the same thing from start to finish. The responsibilities were super specific to the job so I couldn't really apply the skill set elsewhere. 

My contract was only for 3 months but was extended to a year. The team I worked with was super cool down to earth people, the manager was a good manager as well. Unfortunately near the project's completion the manager kind of dropped the ball because I was told that I would be transferred to a different position in the department, unfortunately that was not the case as I was just let go. 

If I have another opportunity to join the team again, be it contractor or employee (preferably) I would.

They pay extremely well don't short change yourself on the pay your looking for they will pay your asking price! The flip side is they have almost a 52% turnover rate in management. Most the DM are unreasonable in their ask. It's not their fault because the people above the have unreasonable ask so it trickles down. They'll ask your opinion if you say something that is not line with what they want to hear they'll give you a write up saying you're not a team player for giving honest feedback. So keep your thoughts to yourself if they're not ones of praise. High turnover rate in kitchen means you'll find yourself working alot on the line or managers getting pulled from your location to fill in at another location upping the amount of time you're there.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working with and developing a team in a growth centric organization. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Not having needed resources to accomplish corporate goal and standards.  Constant changes within upper management.  Poor communication corporately.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Depends on location and leadership.  Can range from excellent to terrible.  Corporately, they say the right things, but very little shows up in day to day life and store culture.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Arriving early, do the work of three people, figure how to meet the demands of customer service with too few people, stay late to ensure business is running properly.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
General manager 6 salaries reported	$56,167 per year
Crew member 1 salary reported	$15.10 per hour
Assistant manager 5 salaries reported	$17.25 per hour
Restaurant staff 101 salaries reported	$13.20 per hour
Benefits administrator 7 salaries reported	$42,143 per year

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