LaToya Lee is the Senior Director of safety, security, and loss prevention for one of the fastest-growing restaurant concepts, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers®. Unbeknownst to her safety and loss prevention peers, LaToya has a robust background in risk management, insurance, and claims. Prior to taking on her current role, LaToya spent seven years building Raising Cane's claims team. Under her current leadership, she is responsible for supporting Raising Cane's mission, vision, and core values while implementing strategic safety & security programs for the restaurants and support offices. Additionally, LaToya and her team build, maintain, and enhance relationships across the country to provide effective cross-restaurant information exchange. This ensures ongoing awareness and training on key issues (e.g., safety, security, and loss prevention).
Much like other quick-service restaurants at the start of the pandemic, Raising Cane focused its energy on figuring out how to remain open to serve its communities while also keeping the health and safety of crewmembers and customers a top priority. The Covid support team, led by LaToya and other key stakeholders of the business, was established to ensure end-to-end communication, touchpoints, and processes with all crew within the organization.LaToya and the risk team utilized their risk management incident process to collect details from the impacted crew regarding symptoms, exposures, and diagnosis so they could then communicate with the crew on the next steps, including return-to-work guidelines.
As the Covid numbers increased, it became apparent that the risk team needed more resources to address cases
As the Covid numbers increased, it became apparent that the risk team needed more resources to address cases.The restaurants closed their lobbies, and the support offices transitioned into a work-from-home model. The Covid support team expanded into an organizational cross-functioning team, with crewmembers from various departments and restaurants assisting with Covid support needs. Health surveys and temperature checks were conducted at the restaurants and support offices, which allowed for real-time notification of symptoms. From there, the team would manage exposures, quarantines, compensation, return-to-work processes, and, in the most unfortunate circumstances, crewmember deaths.
Raising Cane launched two company-wide campaigns geared at keeping crewmembers employed while assuring a safe and healthy place for customers to eat and crew to work. In 2020, the ‘No Crew Left Behind ’ campaign focused on retaining all crewmembers, eliminating the fear of furloughs, layoffs, or pay cuts. The co-CEO announced a system-wide relief bonus totaling $2M to all restaurant crew and managers in an effort to recognize their hard work and sacrifices. The ‘50 in 50’ campaign launched in 2021 and was created to help combat the industry-wide labor shortage. The support office crewmembers were sent to restaurants across the country to show support and honor their fry cook & cashier title by working shifts alongside their fellow restaurant crewmembers to support day-to-day needs and help recruit new talent.
In August of 2021, Raising Cane received the prestigious Gartner Marketing and Communications Award for Excellence in Crisis Communications. Raising Cane’s was voted #1 out of 400 international entries in this category. This was a direct result of all the hard work LaToya and the Covid support team accomplished by establishing processes and procedures that were proven to be successful, which aligns with their core value of working with a sense of purpose at Raising Cane’s.
