BATON ROUGE - Raising Cane's announced Monday it is looking to hire thousands of new workers and is giving additional pay to those who had to miss hours because of the coronavirus outbreak.

A news release from the Louisiana-based fast food chain says it is starting to hire 5,000 new employees at its restaurants worldwide. The company is also distributing $2 million in bonuses to its crewmembers who helped keep the restaurants open throughout the pandemic.

Raising Cane's says none of its workers have been laid off since the start of the outbreak.

AJ Kumaran, co-CEO of the nearly 500-unit Cane’s, said “When the crisis began, we created a mantra ‘NO CREW LEFT BEHIND,’ and I made a promise that we would all get through this together. Our Crew has continued to stay positive while working incredibly hard, and some even reduced their hours in order to keep everyone’s job safe. We are extremely grateful for their shared sacrifice and are blessed to have such an amazing Crew. Thanks to their hard work, Raising Cane’s will come out of this crisis even stronger than before. I couldn’t be prouder and more thankful for each and every one of our Restaurant Leaders and Crewmembers.”
 
The $2 million payout is intended to make up for the hours that each employee agreed to give up at the beginning of the pandemic in order to keep workers employed.

Founder & Co-CEO Todd Graves and Co-CEO Kumaran also announced last month they had decided to forgo their salaries during the outbreak.