Disappointed in my experience with Native Foods. I was a GM for a little over 18 months and recently left. - General Manager Native Foods Employee Review

2.0
23 Jul 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Vegan, delicious (mostly), good hourly staff. Management is also generally good. The bulk of the menu is scratch made. Typically the guests are super excited to eat there, so service can be friendly and fun. Cult like following.

Cons

Taken over by the board (venture capitalists) 12/2014. Since has become a clean up for future sale. Operations level managers are forced to drive labor down, production up and basically it is destroying what was once a great thing. The morale in every store is so low...turnover is crazy now. In the words of the new CEO, Craig Grimes, what needs to happen is for all of the "old managers to be replaced by new ones. We need people that don't know how it used to be and are instead focused on what it will become". Well, what it is becoming is fast food. With fast food comes higher turnover, a lesser experience for the guest and the diminishing of the product. We once had a shining star with a future. What we now have is a pit of negativity, mistrust and disappointed guests.

Explore other reviews about Native Foods

5.0
12 Jul 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I liked working there, good people.

Cons

Not much for gluten free options.

3.0
22 Jul 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It's a very easy job and the customers are usually pretty friendly. The menu is easy to learn and the food is pretty good. Great if you are a vegan/vegetarian because you always have access to cheap (and sometimes free) veggie food. This job was a nice resume builder and it gave me experience with customer service, management, and working in a restaurant. Tips were pretty good since we made minimum wage base pay.

Cons

Upper management needs improvement. I was lucky to have one of the best managers in the whole company but I would often visit other locations and it was clear that there is little continuity between locations and there is little structure as far as training, raising up leaders, and executing pay increases. The atmosphere was often cliquey. I saw shift leads step down to be regular employees because being a lead didn't pay enough to deal with that amount of stress. My GM was also severely underpaid. The company is growing and getting better but it's also focusing on changing PR rather than dealing with internal structural issues. Day to day work was usually monotonous and not usually rewarding.

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