"Most people think that the only ones who end up getting 'stuck' working in a restaurant are kids who were poor at schoolwork or come from tough family backgrounds. I'm of the former type, and now I've been in this business for 15 years, from a young girl to a mature woman!" says regional manager Niko Fung, who is in charge of seven Tasty steak houses from Miaoli north, smiling as she remembers the old days.

After graduating from a technical school 19 years ago, Niko took her first job as a clerk in a convenience store. By dint of hard work, in her fourth year she was named assistant store manager. She was nearly enticed to stay in the convenience-store line by a company campaign to encourage senior employees to invest in franchises, but she decided to seek her fortune elsewhere.

After leaving her position, Niko went back to a cram school to take the exam to enter a restaurant institute in Kaohsiung, but she failed to get in. Not knowing where to go from there, she was advised by a former teacher to give Wowprime a try. "The teacher said that they had good benefits, you could learn a lot, and there was room for advancement."

Last year Wowprime had such a great year that the company gave out NT$400 million in bonuses, equal to 3.45 months of pay per employee. The photo shows the company's year-end party, held at the Taipei Arena.

In only two years, Niko went from clearing tables as a part-timer to branch manager. "I finally got a sense of perspective about my disappointment at having failed that entrance exam."

Niko says that there are many reasons why she has been willing to work so hard for this company. Besides the fact that she enjoys rubbing elbows with people of all different backgrounds and types, she finds that the restaurant industry is a platform "where you can bring your creativity into play." Naturally, it is also important that the pay, benefits, and learning environment are better at Wowprime than at most of its competitors.

"Most owners in the restaurant business just want employees to devote all their energy to work, even sacrificing annual leave. But Chairman Day emphasizes the importance of continuing education, and he even encourages us to use our vacations to do things like travel abroad, run a marathon, or go mountain climbing."

The year Niko became a store manager was the same year that Wowprime Group founded the Tasty brand, and she took on major new responsibilities. Although she was so busy her head was spinning, what she remembers most about that time was joining in a company-sponsored five-day bicycle trip from Taipei to Kending at the southern tip of Taiwan.

She never expected that the trip would be a learning experience that would push her to the limit. As she describes it, "For the last couple of days, I was just a soulless shell of a body pushing down on the pedals." Yet from this she discovered how to control her breathing and the meaning of the expression "when there's no going back, you can only go forward." She also discovered, "Things that I used to think were really tough at work, compared to that trip, became trivial."

Steve Day, chairman of the Wowprime Group, aims to win the loyalty of his employees, and strives to give them maximum opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment.

Wowprime chairman Steve Day was born in 1953 and graduated from the Department of Chinese at National Taiwan University. In the eyes of the parents of one employee, he is "a very straightforward guy, someone from the old school." To colleagues he is "affable, always approachable, always telling stories at meetings and making jokes in private conversation." He sees himself as an integrated combination of the sentimental and the rational. He loves hiking in the mountains, swimming, walking, music, and reading, living a very full life, but he has also been ambitious about making a success of himself in business.

Day has said, "Not taking any risks is itself taking a risk." The term "risk" certainly applies to his decision, in middle age, to leave his family's enterprise, San Sun Hat and Cap Company, one of the leading firms in this field in Taiwan. After nine failed attempts on his own in various lines of business, during which he piled up mountains of debt, he finally hit the jackpot with restaurant chains. Today the Wowprime Group includes ten different brand names, and is one of the top ten restaurant groups in the greater Chinese market.

Day says straight out that generally speaking, the service sector in Taiwan pays poorly and workers get lousy benefits. "Part-time employees or hourly-wage employees say wryly that they have to have superhuman endurance: able to hang in there despite being treated like dirt, able to survive despite being twisted this way and that, and fearless in the face of poverty." While the main reason for this situation may be that firms are moving their investments to other countries, thereby creating an excess of labor supply over demand in Taiwan, Day says that "an even more important factor is the mindset of those who run the companies."

Because Day believes that people are the most important asset in the service sector, and that "however the boss treats his workers, that's how the workers will treat the customers," ever since going into business he has insisted on implementing what he calls his "20/20 Program" of pay and benefits. The first 20 means that his firm will offer 20% more in pay and benefits than his competitors in the same industry. The second 20 means that his firm will spend 20% less on personnel than competitors yet still attain the same profit levels. How did he arrive at this seemingly magical formula?

Day explains by describing a "virtuous circle": Because Wowprime offers better pay and benefits than its competitors, its employees take their jobs seriously and treasure the chance to work there. Intangibly, they develop the desire to stay in the company and work hard to make it a success in the long haul, and they treat customers with sincerity and thoughtfulness. As customer flow increases, the company earns more, and naturally can continue to improve pay and benefits.

Steve Day, chairman of the Wowprime Group, aims to win the loyalty of his employees, and strives to give them maximum opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment.

The most-talked about aspects of Wow-prime's remuneration system are "employee stock ownership" and "monthly profit sharing."

Employee stakeholding works as follows: Each time a new outlet opens, all those of the rank of manager or head chef and above are entitled to acquire a certain number of shares in the company (which is not publicly listed), depending on their rank. While no one is compelled to buy shares, so far everyone has been delighted to get a piece of this expanding enterprise.

Meanwhile, Wowprime's monthly profit-sharing plan-a Day innovation-makes the firm very unusual, as most companies only pay out profit shares annually. Here's how it works: When any store in the current month, after paying out all obligations, has a surplus of a certain amount, 33% of that is extracted and paid out to employees in profit shares the following month. Each shareholder gets a cut that is proportionate to his or her shareholdings, but even more important is that lower-level full-timers and hourly-wage part-timers still get a profit share that is proportionate to their earnings.

Besides the bonus system, Wowprime Group is also very transparent about its staff finances. From the headquarters to the branches, any employee can check out the earnings of any other via the computer or bulletin board. This way there is a shared understanding that pay is calculated according to rank and level of contribution.

Through this innovative remuneration system, in the Wowprime Group a store manager can earn NT$90-100,000 in pay and profit sharing, while a full-time waiter can get as much as NT$30,000 a month in base pay and benefits. "This is why employees are willing to make a big commitment to the company over the long term," says Niko. "Everyone wants to become a manager one day. And because the chain is constantly expanding, demand for upper and mid-level managers is high, so promotion goes relatively quickly. This is also why hourly-wage people are so willing to stay on and become full-time employees."

Hourly-wage waiters and waitresses at Wowprime get plenty of training, and enjoy pay and benefits superior to those paid by the corporation's competitors.

At present, the Wowprime Group has 4500 full-time employees and 3500 hourly-wage workers. Although the ratio of hourly-wage workers is on the high side for the industry as a whole (part of this difference being accounted for by agreements with schools for their students to do work-study in the firm), the turnover-a mere 2% for full-time workers, and 4% for hourly-wage workers-is astonishingly low in the industry.

Incredibly, at the end of 2010, even the hourly-wage workers got a year-end bonus! This step, a sharp break with usual corporate practice, was based on a promise Day had made: So long as the average profit per share in the company reaches NT$10 in a given year, all additional surplus will be used for employee benefits. And since additional bonuses inspire workers to work harder, without infringing the rights or interests of stockholders, the company can count on more stable profits and growth in the future.

Steve Day emphasizes that most companies view hourly-wage employees as purely temporary manpower. Consequently they don't give them much training, assuming that they will leave before long, so that any investment in them would be a waste. But at Wowprime, such workers are "extremely important human assets, because they are the ones who interact directly with the customers."

Lately, in order to allow more hourly-wage workers to enjoy equal employment opportunities, Day ordered that as of July of this year branch shops change the ratio of full-time workers vs. hourly-wage workers from the existing 4:6 to 5:5. This means that more people will also enjoy the benefits of a new policy for full-timers: anyone who works at Wowprime for one year becomes eligible to acquire shares.

At Wowprime, responsible and dedicated employees can become store managers in about six years on average. It is also possible, through the company's internal entrepreneurial mechanism, to create a new brand with the company's backing.

Day explains that most franchise systems leave the franchisees to deal with any unforeseen risks on their own, and in practice the success rate is low. But Taiwanese seem to have some kind of genetic predisposition to want to be the boss: "Many people work very hard and by the time they are 30 or 40 have saved several million NT dollars, and then something inside starts to call out to them to start their own enterprise."

He calls his firm's model "an entrepreneurial platform," under which "more young people and co-workers in the company can have a chance to feel the sense of achievement that comes with entrepreneurship, while enjoying the company's systematic protection."

Day, who places a lot of emphasis on down time and quality of life, believes that "exhaustion from overwork will decrease the quality of customer service," and "without enough rest and recreation, employees will not grow as people." Therefore, from the very start he has personally taken mid- and high-level managers hiking, traveling, and dining out. As the corporate group has expanded, he has made it a rule that each chain must arrange regular overseas and domestic activities with the company picking up part of the tab.

Day says that most bosses think the definition of an employee "making a contribution" is for that person to put their job ahead of all else. But Wowprime tells all of its staff: "Besides contributing to the company, you should aim to realize your full personal potential." That is, outside of work, you should have dreams, goals, and ambitions, and cultivate interests in life.

However, the company also understands that many people, because of problems in the workplace that they need to handle, or an excessive sense of personal responsibility, will hesitate to take time off. Therefore Wowprime "takes the individual's needs and then provides a rational system and makes following it mandatory, so that employees can enjoy their down time without any psychological burdens, and can inspire each other." Steve Day's belief is that, ideally, enriching company-organized activities will intangibly strengthen employee loyalty to and identification with the corporation, and the ultimate gain will be a corporate culture that is imbued with passion and creativity.