Evette Gardner

I credit my success to the lessons from my foster mom and my dedication to my children. She taught me that “the sky’s the limit” but a high school diploma is essential—advice I took to heart and fulfilled. Everything I do is to pass those lessons on to my kids, showing them that with education and hard work, they can achieve anything.

Tone and approach - the way you talk to people - can go a long way. Everything is not as easy as you think. You have to understand that how you communicate and present yourself matters in every interaction, whether it's with your team, your customers, or in any professional setting. It's about recognizing that challenges will come, but your approach to handling them makes all the difference.

I advise young women entering this industry to stay focused while at work, always prioritize our customers and the quality of the product, and communicate clearly with their team. It’s important to avoid distractions, like social media or trends, during your shift, and to take every opportunity for hands-on learning. Seeking mentorship and learning from experience are key ways to grow and advance in this field.

The biggest challenge is communication amongst everyone on the team. In the food industry, every position counts and everything needs to be communicated from the bottom to the top. major challenge is the minimum wage situation. Madison, Wisconsin is still sitting at $7.25 for minimum wage, and you can't live comfortably with $7.25. The price of living is crazy, taxes are crazy, food is going up. I still don't understand why we're still at $7.25 when surrounding states are at $15 or even $18. There's a bill in the Capitol that we've been trying to pass to raise the minimum wage to $15, but the politicians, Democrats and Republicans, can't agree. Some say if we raise minimum wage, we'll have to raise the price of food and living, but that doesn't make sense because the price of living is already up and the price of food is already up.

Communication - it'll go a long way on both ends. Whether it's at work or in your personal life, communication is essential. If I'm supposed to be a manager, restaurant manager, or shift leader, having a meeting, I feel like whatever you guys learned from that meeting, you should piggyback that information onto your shift leaders, managers, and assistant managers. You can't just keep it to yourself and then act surprised when we don't know about something. At work, you have to communicate about everything - if we're out of items, if something should have been on the truck, what's going on. You ask questions, and people don't want to say something, then you get frustrated and they wonder why you're frustrated. It's because of lack of communication. I also believe in treating people the way you want to be treated. That's fundamental to everything I do.