By Daniel Nash | The Courier-Herald
Drive-in restaurant Sonic will continue its expansion into western Washington with a site in Bonney Lake at the intersection of South Prairie Road and state Route 410.
It is the second Sonic location in the region to open since Northwestern Drive-Thru Inc., a subsidiary of Northwestern Restaurants Inc., acquired the franchise. The first opening was in the South Hill neighborhood of Puyallup in the spring.
The Bonney Lake location will have its opening ceremony Monday. Mayor Neil Johnson will cut the ribbon at 9:45 a.m. and service will begin at 10.
Work on the restaurant is near completion with the pouring of sidewalks and staff training, Area Franchise Manager Jacob Nelson said.
Nelson joined Northwestern Restaurants, owned by David Orem, in 2000 after spending nine years employed with Taco Bell’s corporate office. As the new Sonic franchise expands, his job duties include overseeing restaurant completion, equipment orders, food orders and hiring the staff who will open new locations.
The hiring process was completed Oct. 7. More than 800 applicants submitted resumes in response to a Craigslist ad, local classified ads and the sign on-location. The restaurant will open with 120 employees, including carhops, food order takers and kitchen staff filling food, drink and ice cream orders. The highly specialized roles contribute to faster service fulfilling multiple simultaneous orders, Nelson said.
“At our Puyallup location (which has 156 employees) it’s just bodies on top of bodies,” he said.
Rigorous staff training begins Thursday. South Hill employees and six out-of-state Sonic employees will train the new staff.
Out-of-state trainers were coordinated through Sonic corporate offices, and are compensated with a free flight, food and laundry allowance and the promise of big earnings from a series of 12- to 15-hour days.
Each employee will learn the ins and outs of their role, and carhops will learn how to roller skate with trays of food in “dry runs” with trays of ice water. Training will culminate Sunday evening when employees’ friends and family arrive with coupons for free meals and the restaurant goes through its first live food rush.
South Hill and Bonney Lake are just the beginning of Northwestern Drive-Thru’s expansion of Sonic franchises into western Washington.
Other franchise holders have established restaurants in the eastern region of the state. Including the current locations, the company plans to open 15 restaurants during the next five years.
“In a depressed economic environment, as we are today, people have to find ways to conserve their income, but no matter what they still have to eat,” Nelson said. “What you find is that people tend to trade down with their food dollar. The people who were going to Applebee’s or Red Robin on a regular basis can’t afford to do that anymore, but they still want to go out and eat and so they trade down to a quick service establishment.”
Northwestern Drive-Thru already has experience running 38 Taco Bell franchises.
“We’ve been trying to expand the Northwestern brand for a while now, and we determined we couldn’t grow Taco Bell more than we had,” Nelson said. “We considered franchises like Long John Silver’s and Coldstone. When we talked to other Taco Bell franchise owners, they told us they had had success with Sonic restaurants.”
