Pros
PF Changs used to be a great place to work prior to 2020 but as of 2024 it has lost its identity: as of February 2024, it no longer aspires to be elevated and seems to want to be an Asian version of Panera or Red Robin instead of being more upscale (like it was up until 2023). The recent hiring of Eduardo Luz as CEO was a disaster. His changes have brought in people who want cheap food instead of an elevated experience, meaning servers have gone from making $300 a shift to barely making $100 a shift. This used to be a great place to work but Eduardo Luz has turned it into Asian Panera so you can't survive on only working for Changs and you need a second job now if you want to work here.
Cons
Management and marketing is terrible. Here's a specific example from February 2024: for Valentine's Day, we are running the promotion "Take a Dump on Valentine's Day," where the Changs Instagram account asked people to send in stories about being dumped and then they'd get 6 free pork or shrimp dumplings. We are an absolute laughingstock over this. The entire marketing department should be fired for this, but this the kind of thing that Eduardo Luz as CEO implements. The focus now is to market Changs as a cheap place to eat which means that guest checks go down and servers make less money. Eduardo Luz wants to increase volume but the people being brought in drink only water, want only the $8 happy hour offerings or the cheap $2 add-ons to dishes, and do not want to spend more than $30. Simultaneously, corporate keeps cutting hours and removing kitchen staff to the point where there will only one cook on wok and one on pantry and no one doing any prep so now we run out of everything all the time. The kitchen crashes because there are not enough people and often we are forced to run without a host or server assistant too, so it will just be two servers working the floor and having to do the job of four people and in the kitchen two guys have to do the job of four people. All the while managers are micromanaging and pinching pennies and berating you over ridiculous things. It really is watching a company implode and self-destruct in real time while fools rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. My favorite thing to ever watch is when one of the Market Partners or corporate bigwigs rolls into town and all of our managers jump like little toadies while these corporate guys tour the restaurant, The corporate guys are so clueless and it's clear that they have not actually worked in a restaurant in years and they have no practical knowledge of anything. They will complain that they don't like seeing a stapler or roll of tape at the hostess stand or complain that they don't like seeing too many pens in a cup by a computer terminal and then all the managers will jump like trained dogs to race around and move the offending tape dispenser. This is the kind of nonsense these fools focus on instead of fixing major structural problems in the buildings or doing anything to improve the food or ability to serve the guests. It is like watching a Saturday Night Live sketch seeing what absolute clowns are Market Partner and corporate VPs are. If Eduardo Luz had any sense he would fire all of these people or make them work in an actual restaurant for two weeks each year and see how ridiculous they are when they focus on things like pens or staplers instead of solving actual problems.
