Hire the American Dream: How to Build Your Minimum Wage Workforce Into A High-Performance, Customer-Focused Team [Hardcover]

Dave Melton (Author), Tim McIntyre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2009

Praise for Hire the American Dream

"I learned early on that Dave Melton had cracked the code(about hiring and retaining great people) in his Manhattan franchise.His employees, who are all immigrants to the United States, areextremely loyal and are committed to customer service."
—From the Foreword by David A. Brandon, Chairman and CEO, Domino's Pizza, Inc.

"This is a must-read book for anyone managing or interested in starting a business, especially in the role of a franchisee. It's loaded with keen insights and best practices for interviewing, hiring, and motivating employees in a very challenging business environment. Dave Melton's story is truly inspirational."
—Jack Whipple, President, National Council of Chain Restaurants

"Hire the American Dream provides valuable lessons from the trenches. The school of hard knocks has taught Dave Melton a lot. You'll benefit fromhis experiences—you'll learn about creating incentives, enhancing customerservice, connecting on a personal level, giving feedback, and building world-class teams. Take his ideas and run with them. You'll build more successful teams."
—Robert D. Reid, Dean, College of Business, James Madison University

"Dave Melton shares his time-tested approach to creatingrestaurants that are brimming with energy. And it all begins withDave's amazing passion for developing the future owners ofDomino's Pizza stores. If you care this much about developing leaders,you and your business will be richly rewarded for years to come."
—Cheryl Bachelder, CEO, AFC Enterprises, Inc.

"Hire the American Dream really gets to the heart of selecting,training, motivating, and ultimately retaining a world-class team whowill care as much about your business as you do and deliver exceptionalcustomer service that can help any business grow."
—Stuart Mathis, President, Mail Boxes Etc., Inc.

"This book is filled with great commonsense approaches to customer service and leadership training with an easily understood message thatevery organization needs to hear. In these days when management thoughtis presented in complicated models, there is something refreshing about leadership principles taught by a guy who simply loves to make pizza. This book is for everyone who wants to be a better leader."
—Marshall Cook, Executive Producer, Multi Image Group

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Learn how to get the best from yourminimum-wage workers—from one of America's top fast-food managers

Managing minimum-wage workers can be a frustrating job. Employees quit with no notice, they can be rude to customers, and sometimes they steal from you. Often, they just don't care. If you have trouble finding and motivating high-performing frontline workers, you need to meet Dave Melton—the celebrated operator of four Domino's Pizza franchises in New York City—and learn his secrets. In an industry in which high turnover is the rule, Dave has a waiting list of prospective candidates eager to start working for him at minimum wage—and a frontline supervisory staff that has had zero turnover for years at a time.

Melton's Domino's stores have thrived in the world's toughest pizza market because of the inspiring way he manages his workforce. His employees, many of whom are recent immigrants in their very first job, have learned how to be part of a team, make customers happy, and achieve the American Dream by working hard and being rewarded for it. In fact, some of Melton's workers who started delivering pizzas by bicycle for minimum wage are now millionaire owners of their own successful Domino's franchises. Many others have worked their way up to middle-class manager positions with $70,000 incomes.

The key to Melton's success lies in his infectious enthusiasm and encouragement of employees, his willingness to help them succeed and grow professionally, and his eagerness to reward them for hard work. One grateful employee even named his son after Melton! His commitment to employees and inspiring vision leads to workers who are devoted to him, to his business, and to his customers—and that leads to astounding success.

Hire the American Dream explains Melton's principles for inspiring, motivating, and promoting employees—because the best way a leader can develop and retain great employees is to help them become leaders, too. This is more than just a book on supervising or teaching business fundamentals to frontline employees. Melton shows you how to use his proven tactics to develop enthusiasm, excitement, and eagerness in your own workforce. And the inspiring stories of his employees serve as proof that the American Dream is alive and well.

About the Author

Dave Melton is the owner of four successful Domino's Pizza franchises in New York City, the toughest, most competitive pizza market in the world. An award-winning franchisee, he is past chairman of the Domino's Franchisee Association and a frequent speaker at Domino's Pizza franchise events.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470438282
• ISBN-13: 978-0470438282
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #590,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hi! I'm a Domino's Pizza franchisee, and I own 4 stores in Manhattan, the toughest pizza market in the world. This past summer, Tim McIntyre and I wrote "Hire the American Dream." It's a story about hiring entry-level and minimum wage employees, and how to build them in a high-performance, customer-focused team of experts that will treat your business like it was theirs. It's about how everybody in your business will make more money once they realize the customers' experience will keep them coming back, and more sales mean more money for everybody... And after all, people don't come to Domino's for the cool uniforms, they want money! Check out www.hiretheamericandream.com and read the reviews on www.amazon.com to see what other people have thought about the book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Motivational... Educational... and Inspirational..., April 28, 2009

By 

Gary G. Chomko - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hire the American Dream: How to Build Your Minimum Wage Workforce Into A High-Performance, Customer-Focused Team (Hardcover)

My sincere appreciation goes to Dave Melton for reminding me of so many of the basic principals which I first learned from and later passed on to the multitude of Dominoids that I was associated with in my 15 years with Domino's Pizza.

This book is an excellent resource to any business owner on what it takes to hire, motivate, educate, inspire, evaluate, recognize, reward, and ultimately build a successful team. Especially when the majority of that team comes from those willing to start at minimum wage.

As an extremely successful Domino's franchisee, Dave shares with you an inside look at a culture, a mindset, and a system of values that exists within many of the top owners of Domino's Pizza stores.

He takes credit for his incredible success, at the same time Dave shares how much he gained from other successful franchisees. He shows how sharing and learning best practices from others who are/were also the best operators of Domino's stores increased his success, but only because he also shares with and learns from his Managers and staff as well.

Throughout the book, you can tell that he truly loves the business he is in and is therefore a testament to the saying "Do what you love and the money will follow."

Definitely highly recommended for small business owners and managers dependent on hiring minimum wage employees. Also recommended for aspiring entrepreneurs before you hire your first employee. Contains a lot of great ideas to help you get it right the first time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, April 26, 2009

By 

Daniel G. Benefiel "Dan Benefiel" (Orange Park Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hire the American Dream: How to Build Your Minimum Wage Workforce Into A High-Performance, Customer-Focused Team (Hardcover)

I loved this book!!!!

Dave does a great job on describing how to succeed in the business world. Inspiring your work force is a must today and he gives a very easy to understand outline on how he succeeded. He describes in his book how he motivated minimum wage newly arrived to this Country work force who for the most part did not even have a full understanding of our language. Not only were they excellent workers, he helped them move on to management positions as well.

This book should be mandatory reading for all Business Schools in this Country.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Customer Focused Team, May 4, 2010

By 

Ruthelena Donahue "Elena" (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hire the American Dream: How to Build Your Minimum Wage Workforce Into A High-Performance, Customer-Focused Team (Hardcover)

Recommended to me by a Dominos franchisee I took this book on the plane with me to pass time. I ended up wanting the flight to take a little longer so I wouldn't have to stop reading. Very inspirational but more important, useable. This is a must read for anyone in the Pizza or really any business that wants a high performing self driven team focused on doing the right thing for the customers.