America’s Most Loved Company ‘Makes Days Brighter’ for Employees, Customers

At First Watch restaurants, things are simple. From the classic breakfast and lunch menu items to the crux of their internal culture: “You First.”
This not only means holding open the door for customers and greeting them with a friendly “good morning,” but it is felt in how the company treats and values each employee across the company.
First Watch is a daytime dining restaurant founded in 1983 serving made-to-order breakfast, brunch and lunch in 535 locations across 29 states.
“Everything’s just kind of rooted in the golden rule—just treat people how you want to be treated,” CEO and President Chris Tomasso told Newsweek. “We have this saying internally [that] our job is to make days brighter. We try to make days brighter for our employees and our employees know that they have a big responsibility to try to make days brighter for our customers.”
First Watch was recently ranked as the No. 1 company on Newsweek’s America’s Most Loved Workplaces 2024 list. The ranking was compiled in partnership with the Best Practice Institute using data from BPI’s Love of Workplace Index, which surveys employees on factors like collaboration, innovation, leadership trust and belonging.
BPI’s founder and CEO Louis Carter told Newsweek that First Watch landed the top spot due to its “exceptional commitment to fostering an emotionally connected environment.”
The company made a big leap from last year’s list, where it ranked at 51. Carter said this improvement is “deeply connected to internal programs, cultural alignment and a strong legacy of leadership that continues to inspire their people.”
First Watch has a robust set of employee benefits, including education assistance through a free high school diploma program and reduced tuition rates for online degrees, health insurance and backup child care and eldercare. But what really makes First Watch stand out to potential employees is the culture.
“My career with First Watch began in 2019 when I visited one of our restaurants for the first time,” Jenna Riahi, an operations manager at a restaurant in Perrysburg, Ohio, told Newsweek. “I didn’t even know what I was signing up for when I came into the building. It’s just the culture and the feeling that you get from being around these people that I was like, ‘I want to be a part of this.'”
Riahi started as a busser but went on to be a server and a head waitress. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company needed help in the kitchen, so she became a cook and a certified trainer. She then moved into management in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before returning to her home restaurant in Ohio.
The “You First” culture is an integral part of every operation at First Watch and is what makes the company unique, Riahi said. It means that company leadership puts its employees first, so that they, in turn, can put the customer first. It also enables employees to live the three core values of the company: Be kind, roll up your sleeves and stand shoulder to shoulder.
At any time, employees are helping co-workers by doing tasks outside their typical job description: The bussers help servers run food, and servers wash dishes and mop the floor. Everybody being involved in every position in the restaurant, Riahi said, is the number one thing that makes First Watch so successful.
While the essence of the culture can be felt the moment a customer walks through the front door, Chief People Officer Laura Sorensen realized that the company really needed to define what “You First” meant.
“This is who we’ve always been, now we just have the words behind them,” she told Newsweek. “So much of what we do is making sure that we’re creating the right systems and tools to support our leaders and all of our employees feeling like they can live those values every day in our restaurants.”
The First Watch Academy of Restaurant Management, or FARM, is a multiweek training program for new managers that not only teaches them the basic skills of running a restaurant but how to establish the company culture locally.
“First Watch has just done a really good job of creating tools and development paths and making sure that people feel really supported in whatever role it is they want to achieve,” Angela Mitchell, a regional vice president of operations based in Virginia, told Newsweek.
According to BPI, First Watch’s 2024 Come Grow With Us event engaged over 3,200 team members, with the goal of reaching 60 percent internal promotion. This not only ensures employees are seen as partners in the company’s growth, but fosters loyalty and engagement, BPI said.
As First Watch continues to grow as a business, leadership is focused on keeping up their values and commitment to “You First.”
“I think we’ve all seen high-growth companies kind of lose their way, at least in the restaurant industry,” CEO Tomasso said. “The culture gets diluted rather than strengthened during that growth.”
Despite having more than 500 locations, Tomasso said First Watch is “kind of scrappy” and agile in its ability to make decisions quickly.
“We have this philosophy: If we can do it in one [restaurant], we can do it in 100 restaurants. If we can do it in 100, we can do it in 1,000,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how big we are, we can still be entrepreneurial. And I think that’s been a key component of our success and our growth.”
Tomasso, along with other leadership, also hosts virtual town halls called the “We Hear You,” or WHY, Tour. Hourly employees and their managers are able to share feedback and ideas for improvement. Several real actions have come from these discussions, including new technology systems in restaurants and new trays to accommodate larger plates.
Having a strong internal culture allows companies to be resilient—especially in an industry as tumultuous as food service.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, First Watch closed its restaurants and furloughed over 8,000 employees. When operations started up again and people came back to work, leadership was conscious that this unprecedented time may have taken a mental, emotional and financial toll on employees.
In addition to getting everyone access to the Calm app to help with mental health concerns, First Watch was adamant about “making everyone whole” on whatever compensation they lost during that time. And that impact, Tomasso said, went beyond the checks First Watch wrote.
“We had talked the talk about culture, and now it was being tested,” he said. “I’m very proud of the way the team stepped up and did that. And I think that has created even stronger loyalty and stronger commitment.”
As the company grows, Chief People Officer Laura Sorensen said First Watch is primarily concerned with how it makes people feel.
The challenge comes with keeping a local, individual feel to each restaurant while still maintaining the overall company culture. Sorensen likens that balance to juggling a glass ball among rubber balls.
“If we’re working on a program to maybe innovate and try something new, and it doesn’t work out, we drop it. And that’s okay, because we can try again and maybe come up with a better program,” she said. “But the culture, how we treat people, that’s the glass ball and we cannot drop that one.”