Supporting our Communities:
Our restaurants are all part of local communities, and we want to play a positive and active role in community life. Each year, we serve hundreds of nonprofits and community groups with in-kind food donations and Team Member volunteering, as well as hosting fundraisers within our restaurants. In 2023, we launched record-breaking national partnerships with Make-A-Wish and Blessings in a Backpack. Since February of 2023, we donate $0.10 per kids’ meal purchased at all corporate-owned and participating franchise Red Robin locations across the U.S. and Canada to help Make-A-Wish grant life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. Through our collaboration with Blessings in a Backpack, we are working to help combat childhood hunger through restaurant-based fundraising campaigns and food donation drives to provide children with backpacks full of nutritious, easy-to-prepare food on the weekends.
Supporting our Team Members:
We’ve always believed in giving back to our Team Members and the communities in which we work and do business. But something quite remarkable happened when our Team Members themselves decided to get involved. In 2006, they established the Red Robin Foundation as a way of sharing the Unbridled Culture of our company with each other, and with the communities where we operate restaurants. The Red Robin Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity. The tax-exempt status of the Foundation provides donors the opportunity to be kind to their neighbors and share in our Unbridled Spirit through our Giving Fund and Community Outreach Program.
THE GIVING FUND
MISSION
To provide assistance to Red Robin Team Members who have a financial emergency due to a catastrophic event or emergency hardship.
WHO DOES THE FUND SUPPORT?
Red Robin Team Members and their immediate family (defined as spouse and children).
Since it was established, the Giving Fund has provided more than $14.7 million in emergency assistance to Red Robin Team Members since 2006.
PEOPLE
We strive to ensure our Team Members live out and benefit from our core values: Integrity, Fun, Unbridled Hospitality, and High Performance. We believe that when we live out these values, we win together! Winning together is our core objective. We nurture this culture by ensuring that our people are front and center, that they have a clear understanding of what is expected, and that people love working for our brand. We strive to provide our people with a great place to work, opportunities for growth, and competitive compensation for their contributions. Our values employer and motivate our Team Members and create a Company culture that we collectively take pride in every day. We also provide our Team Members the opportunity to grow and develop, we promote health and safety, and we value inclusion, diversity, and engagement. 2023 highlights include:
HEALTH & SAFETY
We operate with the health, safety, and well-being of Red Robin’s Team Members, Guests, and communities in mind. We strive to comply with applicable federal, state and local regulatory requirements for health and safety. Our restaurants are regularly inspected by independent food safety auditors.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
At Red Robin, our Guests and Team Members reflect the communities we serve and can come as they are. We champion a culture of inclusion, diversity of thought, perspective and experience, all vital ingredients of a winning recipe. We have a successful Women’s Excellence program, a Company-wide resource group to support and inspire Team Members through development, networking, leadership, and other resources while fueling a culture of opportunity and diversity. Our 10-member Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council was created to develop a long-term strategy and plan for our Company. This group meets on a recurring basis to assess opportunities for the Company to improve its efforts to create a best-in-class work environment that thrives on inclusion and diversity of thought. This council is composed of cross-functional leaders and has executive sponsorship.
LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
We strive to maintain quality and consistency in each of our restaurants through the training and development of Team Members and the establishment of, and adherence to, high standards relating to Team Member performance, Guest satisfaction, food and beverage preparation, and the maintenance of our restaurants. Each restaurant maintains a group of certified learning coaches, including a head learning coach, who collectively are tasked with preparing new Team Members for success by providing on-the-job training leading up to a final skills certification for their position. Team Members seeking advancement have the opportunity to join our management development program as a Shift Supervisor. We continue to focus on hiring, training, and retaining our Team Members as we believe this is key to maintaining quality and consistency in each of our restaurants. Shift Supervisors complete an in-depth training curriculum that develops their ability to supervise all aspects of shift execution, including, but not limited to, food safety, food production, Team Member coaching, creating memorable moments of connection with our Guests, ensuring Guest satisfaction, and financial aspects of the business. The Shift Supervisor program is an important steppingstone for hourly Team Members who desire a career in restaurant management. New restaurant managers participate in our eight-week Management Foundations training program. This program hones each manager's skills, specifically in two areas: flawless shift execution and effective coaching of Team Members. Through these learning and development practices at the restaurants, the majority of current restaurant management Team Members have been promoted from within.
TEAM MEMBER ENGAGEMENT
We regularly collect feedback to better understand and improve the Team Member experience and identify opportunities to strengthen our culture. In 2023, we began implementing the first of a number of initiatives designed to gather feedback from our Team Members across all parts of the organization. This included launching a new employee engagement survey to solicit feedback on a regular basis and give us the insights we need to help us retain our Team Members and better understand how we can motivate them. In addition, our Leadership Advisory Panel (LAP), comprising field leaders and franchise representatives at all levels of our organization, was created to empower our frontline restaurant teams to have a voice in long- and short-term business decisions and contribute to Red Robin’s success through open discussion and actionable feedback. The LAP meets quarterly with the entire senior leadership team and department heads to provide crucial insight into the needs of our operators and how we can best provide the support and solutions to improve their lives.
Please see our 2023 annual report on Form 10-K for a full discussion of our approach to human capital management.