How Paris Baguette’s Human Resources Approach Exceeds Expectations

As many restaurants experience labor-related challenges, Paris Baguette, the bakery café franchise with over 4,000 units globally, has managed to mitigate the harm by encouraging a strong, people-first culture that draws employees in and communicates their value, encouraging them to stay.

“We’ve really focused on creating a high-performing, high-growth culture that is aligned to people,” explained Michelle Jagroop, vice president of human resources at Paris Baguette. As Jagroop has worked to shift the Paris Baguette culture, one of the main factors she has used is what she calls the PB Toolbox, created to support multiple aspects of a franchisee’s success within the organization. Within this set of resources, there are tools franchisees can use to hire, train, engage and support their employees while having the key information they need to build a strong workplace culture.

This support starts as soon as a franchisee signs their agreement. “We start with helping our franchisees understand how important it is to recruit the right people. Once they sign their agreement, we have calls starting at 16 weeks out from the opening date where our teams help focus the franchise owners on the importance of recruiting and hiring the right candidate who is committed and passionate about the brand and what they do,” Jagroop added. “If you don’t take enough time to make sure you’re hiring the right people, you’re not capitalizing on your investment.” The toolkit items to support recruitment include job descriptions, interview guides, suggestions about where to recruit, and dos and don’ts of the recruitment process.

Paris Baguette has a rich training program for its store-level employees. Because its goods are made fresh daily, employees are trained on the process of baking and creating rather than simply unloading a truck or defrosting baked goods. With this level of quality comes a more involved, relatively more expensive training process.

 “We also noticed a trend of our franchise owners at times losing their trained teams early on, so we shifted our focus from just training to really hone in on the idea of engagement and retention,” Jagroop added. Another key aspect of this portion of the toolbox is the discussions the corporate team has with franchisees about things like retention bonuses, competitive pay and trends in the labor market, to name a few. For example, if a prospective employee goes through training only for a store’s opening to be delayed, the franchise owner can ultimately save money by providing a retention bonus to that employee to compensate them for the time they cannot work due to construction delays rather than losing that employee altogether. 

The next bucket of tools comes into play when franchisees officially open their stores. While there are some policy-related items that are not mandatory, franchisees are made aware of their options and provided models that will simplify the implementation process should they choose to enact a given policy. “For example, we share our Employee Handbook with them so they have the resources they need to support their people. Owners can create their own version if they’d like, or they can certainly use ours,” Jagroop shared. “We highlight some policies that will come up in everyday conversations — dress code, time and attendance, guest standards — so owners know how to set expectations and hold people accountable.”  

Throughout this process, Jagroop says the value of employees is made clear to owners and the employees themselves. “We emphasize as an organization how important our teams are to our success, and know that our bakers, cakers and production teams have some of the most important jobs in the company,” she said. “They’re the masters of our product, and without a strong product, the Paris Baguette brand cannot live up to its name.”

“By encouraging our teams, both corporate and franchise, to live by our Paris Baguette Values, which are Spread Joy, Have Heart, Rise to the Occasion and Nourish Community, we know the culture we are striving for will be emulated daily,” Jagroop shared.

The total investment to franchise with Paris Baguette ranges from $635,765 and $1,693,600, including a $50,000 franchise fee. For more information, please visit https://parisbaguette.com/franchising/.