Applebee’s exec says high gas prices could help them cut wages. Now the restaurant faces a backlash.

For Applebee franchise executive Wayne Pankratz, rising gas prices are an opportunity for his business, rather than a drawback. This is because, as he told executives in an email note, the group of people working on Applebee live “from pay to check” and will be forced to “return to the workforce.” to earn more.

Pankratz also saw another positive aspect: high gas prices will increase costs for competitors, who will not be able to raise wages as much as they had been. “We all competed to hire out of the limited group of applicants and there was a wage war,” he wrote in the March 9 note. “They can no longer afford to do that.”

The result, Pankratz predicted, is “hiring lower – paid employees to reduce our work [costs]. “

The note, which was shared on social media, is provoking a backlash against Applebee’s, with some consumers vowing never to dine on the network again. And at an Applebee location in Lawrence, Kansas, three of its six executives resigned, according to the Lawrence World-Journal.

“I was stunned and upset,” Jake Holcomb, one of Lawrence’s executives who resigned from the note, told the publication.

Pankratz was not in the phone book of his employer, the owner of Applebee’s Apple Central franchise, when CBS MoneyWatch tried to contact him on Friday morning. Scott Fischer, Apple Central’s chief communications officer, sent questions about the note to Applebee’s corporate office.

The company distanced itself from the note. “That’s an individual’s opinion, not Applebee’s,” Kevin Carroll, Applebee’s chief operating officer, said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch. “This issue is being addressed internally by the franchisee who employs this person and who owns and manages the restaurants in this market.”

Carroll said his employees “are the soul of our restaurants, and our franchisees are always looking to reward and encourage new and existing team members to stay within the Applebee family.”

Applebee’s corporate owner is Dine Brands Global of Glendale, California, perhaps best known as the founder of the IHOP pancake restaurant chain. Its more than 1,700 Applebee franchises in the United States generated about $ 3 billion in total sales by 2020, according to the latest estimates from Restaurant Business magazine.

“Get a second job”

Pankratz’s note also sought to offer some advice to managers to “make sure you have a pulse on the morale of your employees” and suggested that many workers “will have to work longer hours or get a second job.”

Pankratz’s advice to executives: “Be aware of this” and provide schedules in advance so workers can organize their second job around the work of their Applebee.

Applebee employees earn an average hourly wage of $ 11.76 an hour, according to Payscale. That’s well below the average hourly wage of $ 17.22 an hour earned by people working in the leisure and hospitality industry in February, according to the latest government data. Wages in the sector have increased by 14% over the previous year.

• Target raises its minimum wage to $ 24 an hour
• Rising inflation is devouring the wage increases of many Americans
• The big resignation: why more Americans are quitting their jobs than ever before

Not surprisingly, the tone of the note drew criticism, with some customers promising to stop eating at Applebee’s.

“So they acknowledge that they are not paying their employees a decent salary and their solution is to … make the schedules earlier so that their employees can plan their second job around them? What a joke,” wrote a user of Twitter.

Another said, “I think so @Applebees you no longer need my money. Employees are not pawns that you can use to get cheap labor in difficult times. I’m going to spend my money somewhere else. “