As a managing partner of an Egg & I restaurant here, Zachary Malham pretty much works from open to close, but for the first time in his 39-year career in the restaurant industry, he gets home in time for dinner with his wife.

"It does not get much better than this," said Malham, who became an Egg & I franchisee four years ago with partner Richard Yolk, who already owned a branch of the chain in Centennial, Colo. Malham manages their second unit in neighboring Highlands Ranch, a suburban community south of Denver.

Founded in Fort Collins, Colo., and now based in Denver, the 18-unit Egg & I is among a minority of full-service chains across the country serving only breakfast and lunch. Despite the lower sales volume and check averages than those of casual dinnerhouses, the breakfast-lunch segment outperforms the lunch-dinner group when it comes to retaining and recruiting workers.

The hours and the nonalcoholic environment of breakfast-lunch operations attract not only housewives, college students and moonlighting cooks, but also management veterans concerned about their quality of life.

Kevin Hall joined the Bradenton, Fla.-based First Watch chain to learn how to become a restaurant manager, but over the past 14 years he has been able to have dinner with his wife and children, coach his children"s sports team and attend their school functions.

"From a retention standpoint, the quality of life is a big deal," said Hall, who is now vice president of brand, marketing, restaurant and menu development for 55-unit First Watch. "We have managers who have been here longer than 12 years. We have five and 10-year cooks. We have no difficulty finding great employees."

The average hourly turnover rate at the Egg & I restaurants hovers around 15 percent to 18 percent, said president Bill Baumhauer, the veteran foodservice leader who bought the franchise rights for the chain last fall. At first he thought the turnover figures were a mistake, considering that industry averages for hourly turnover typically run between 100 percent and 200 percent.

"I'd been in the business 25 years and I had never heard of such a thing," said Baumhauer, who resigned in 2005 as chief executive of Littleton, Colo.-based Champps Entertainment Inc., parent of the sports bar restaurant chain Champps Americana.

Baumhauer and Don Lamb, former chief operating officer for Champps, purchased Egg & I from founder Rayno Seaser. Seaser became a franchisee of two units in Fort Collins.

"As we did our due diligence, and the more we dug into this, the more excited we got," Baumhauer said.

The low turnover was an additional benefit to entering into the underpenetrated morning-lunch segment, he said. First Watch and the 72-unit Le Peep restaurant chain, based in Littleton, Colo., are the Egg & I's largest competitors.

Breakfast-lunch places open around 6 a.m. and close by 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. Operators point out that their employees then have time to pick up their children from school, attend afternoon college classes or go home and, if they hold a second job in the evening, get a few hours of sleep before work.

Le Peep has servers and cooks who have been with the chain for 10 to 15 years, said Amanda Rhoads, a vice president of the chain.

"In the restaurant industry, people are pretty transient," Rhoads said. "For us to keep them that long is incredible."

While individual restaurants in the breakfast-lunch segment may do only $1 million or less in annual sales, servers can still make good money in tips, even though checks average only about $7 to $8, employers said.

Obviously, breakfast and lunch restaurants are not earning the higher profit margins that dinnerhouses achieve with alcohol sales, Rhoads said, but there is a tradeoff.

"Your employees do not have to deal with drunken people and that type of thing," she said. "You may bring in more sales with alcohol, but we do have lower overhead. You might make less in exchange for having the lifestyle you want."

Carmen Rundell, an Egg & I server in Boulder, Colo., stepped down from a general manager position to spend more time with her family. She had left a full-service family restaurant to free up her evenings when she came to the Egg & I. But after a while, she decided she wanted even more time at home with her three teenage children.

Rundell said she is still making good money as a server. "I haven't made less than $100 a shift," she said.

"I do well. The tables turn over faster with breakfast and lunch."

Hiring people is fairly easy, said Egg & I franchisee Malham. Since he and partner Yolk opened their second location in Highlands Ranch two years ago, its original kitchen staff has remained intact and only about 10 percent of the entire staff has changed.

"Because of the fact that our working conditions are great, the hours are great, turnover is absolutely minimal,"Malham said. "I have a full drawer of applications, but no need for them."

The stress level is lower in the breakfast-lunch segment as well, Baumhauer said. "There's a lot of uncertainty having a big bar business as compared to flipping eggs," he said.


Good Neighbor Award
Fort Collins, CO
Project/Area of Focus: General Giving-

For the 17-plus years that The Egg & I restaurants have been in business, founder Rayno Seaser has participated in most everything that happens in and around Fort Collins. Rather than commit to one project or cause, The Egg & I is continuously active in its local communities.

The Egg & I traces its oldest tradition of community involvement to the 1987 opening of the College Avenue store in Fort Collins. That year, Seaser and his staff organized a Thanksgiving Food Drive. Everyone brought in enough food to give two deserving families a Thanksgiving they could remember. That tradition continues to this day, with each of the company’s five stores providing food and supplies for four families. The Egg & I restaurants also support Project Self-Sufficiency, a program that helps low-income, single parents achieve economic independence.

The restaurant company also enriches its community through college scholarships for hospitality students at Colorado State University, Front Range Community College and the Art Institute of Colorado.

In addition, The Egg & I supports children’s activities. Every year on Dr. Seuss’s birthday, in conjunction with the National Education Association’s Read Across America program, The Egg & I serves a breakfast of green eggs and ham to a preschool class. A community icon reads the tale. Readers have included Fort Collins and Loveland mayors, police officers, firefighters, Colorado State University football and volleyball players, and doctors.