Casa Bonita management responds to employees’ complaints

DENVER (KDVR) — Casa Bonita’s management team responded to a demand letter from a group of 50 employees that was submitted last week.

The group, which named itself #WeAreTeamCasa, constructed the letter with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. It focused on things they were allegedly promised when hired that weren’t being carried out now that the restaurant has opened, including wages, hours, benefits and schedules.

The group gave management a deadline of a week, which expired Thursday, to respond. The management team provided FOX31 with the memo it shared with its employees:

• One-of-a-kind establishment. Casa Bonita has always been a place for families to enjoy both dining and entertainment in a unique environment. We have worked hard to maintain what has made Casa Bonita special while at the same time improving the experience for both customers and staff.
• Opening well, not fast. We have been intentional about opening gradually in order to refine the many complex aspects of the Casa Bonita experience – entertainment, food prep, security, dive and puppet shows, live music, bar service, cleaning, technology, animatronics, etc. While we understand this may be frustrating for some fans and staff, we have been transparent about the intention and reasons behind the pacing. We do not want to make promises to customers or staff that we cannot fulfill.
• Key accomplishments. Just since the beginning of June, with our limited schedule, we have doubled our service from 1,148 customers a week to over 2,300 last week, and we are expecting to expand to over 2,600 next week. While this is still a long way from the around 20,000 customers a week we hope to serve, it is a major achievement, as all of our staff have now been given the opportunity to work sufficient hours to have full-time benefits. Similarly, we have hired over 130 employees since May, well on our way to the over 350 staff we expect to need to serve that many guests.   
• Non-traditional customer experience. One of the more significant updates to Casa Bonita is to allow guests to pre-pay for their experiences, order at a ticketing window, and carry their entrees to their tables.  This has been instrumental in providing high quality food and eliminating the long wait times customers faced when coming to Casa Bonita in the past. As such, while our servers manage serving drinks, chips and salsa, and sopaipillas that are included in the ticketed price, only specialty desserts, alcohol, and additional a la carte food purchases are added to the bill customers receive at the restaurant. 
• Guests weren’t tipping. As a result of our unique customer experience, we found during our soft openings that guests were leaving tips that were much lower than we expected, resulting in much lower total compensation for our staff. Accordingly, in an effort to ensure fair compensation for our staff, we increased the hourly wage for all of our service staff. As we continue to develop the Casa Bonita experience, we remain focused on providing our staff with a fair compensation and benefits package. 
• Pooled tips. To be clear, Casa Bonita initially developed a policy for a tip pool in which all non-managerial service staff working on a given shift participated in tips received in that pool. With the unanticipated shortfalls in customer tipping during the soft openings, all staff were experiencing lower income than expected. That is why we moved to substantially enhanced hourly rates. 
• Open-door policy. From the start we established open meetings and dialogue options with employees. Staff members are encouraged to share concerns directly with management and have multiple venues to express opinions, both individually and collectively. 
• Continuing evolution. We intend to continue to experiment with changes, alterations, and improvements as dictated by our evolving business and the lessons we learn. One thing that’s certain is that Casa Bonita will keep evolving to continue providing a great place to work and the best guest experience for generations to come.

“Casa Bonita strives to create the best working environment for its employees. This includes implementing the best compensation structure for all employees—not just a few. To the extent some employees have concerns about our policies, we will continue to make ourselves available to discuss their concerns, individually or as a group,” the Casa Bonita management team emailed FOX31.

The team said it is excited about what its employees have accomplished thus far and is excited about the future moving forward.