Avantages
I like this company, I really do, besides the opportunities at the restaurant level, there are many many corporate advancement channels available. The company has a great model, serves high quality food, I don't know any other similar company that hand slices all their vegetables
Inconvénients
The down side to all this, is managers, not employees are taken advantage of. Sure, the BOH and counter people work hard, and sure they have to stand on their feet, but so do teachers and beat cops. Managers are under tremendous, and I mean tremendous pressure to attend Landmark. If you research the history of Landmark, which used to be called EST, you may not be so enthralled about Landmark. You may also want to research news stories about Landmark as well. If Andrew Cherng finds Landmark useful in his life good for him, but he has to get past forcing it down the throats of his workers. He has said it is not required, but I have never met a Panda Manager who felt that it was not required, they all felt they had to attend landmark classes. I can tell you, and I have spoken to many many people from Panda who went to Landmark, that not one, and I am not exaggerating, found it to be of any benefit at all. Managers are under pressure to keep costs in line, and they should, but all Panda's training is Landmark and New Way of Being, and many managers are clueless and untrained about inventory management, To be honest, Peter is out of touch with his managers. His ACO's and RDO's are under the same pressure with Landmark and New Way of Being. There are endless meetings drawing three circles, nothing is ever accomplished, inventories are out of whack, overtime mounts up, or is avoided by understaffing, but everyone spends hours filling in three circles week after week. Managers all must have cell phones because that is how the ACO's communicate with them, but I have never heard of anyone being reimbursed for this. If the company insists on communicating in this fashion, they should be either supplying phones like other companies do or reimbursing their managers. The same goes with travel, managers should be reimbursed for the mileage they incur going to meetings, running errands to buy supplies for the store, etc, but to the best of my knowledge no manager is reimbursed for running errands for the benefit of the company. Overall, I feel Panda is a good place to work, their values of wanting to provide an outstanding dining experience and their emphasis on a clean environment is great but Landmark and New Way of Being have got to go.