Boston Market

The second official interview was conducted at Boston Market, where Lynette and Alex were also able to speak with an assistant manager. While this location has been open for 11 years, the man the students spoke with had only been working there for 3 months; the other manager has been there for two years. Most customers were identified as business people on lunch breaks, college students, and a lot of construction workers and police officers (those of civil service professions) as well. Students from the nearby high school also frequent this location and “…like to make a mess…”. The busiest hours at this business are 12–2 PM on weekdays; Sunday is the slowest day of the week. In terms of hiring new employees, managers look to hire people that can provide the best customer service, are willing to learn about multiple areas of the business, and are both friendly and courteous. Given the fact that this manager is not from the NYC area, he has not seen many changes in the neighborhood besides the fact that there are more homeless people, but he thinks that goes for all of NYC. To help the locale grow, new local businesses (that aren’t restaurants) could help by bringing more people to area, namely newly hired professionals who frequent the Midtown area – their main clientele. If someone were to move their HQ to the area, or a business that holds conferences and meetings were to establish itself in the neighborhood, this would also help especially because this Boston Market does catering, and the higher demand for this service would help them increase in revenue. More residential housing could also help bring in more people and businesses. The main outside factor that the manager stated would help an employee’s ability to function is less construction on the A train because most workers come from Uptown, therefore less troubles commuting would increase the likelihood that workers arrive to work ready to do their job.