For a franchise store to capture a national award is a great achievement. Last week local family owners of Arby’s of Alaska Mike and Ted Navarre presented Tamara Johns, Soldotna Arby’s store manager with her seventh Triple Ace Award. “The Ace award is given to a store for recognition in three categories: Standard in food safety, guest experience and overall standard of operation. This is a benchmark that stores across the nation strive to reach, but few achieve and for Tamara to have reached it seven times is truly amazing and makes us all extremely proud,” said Ted Navarre.

Tamara has been at the Soldotna Arby’s store since it first opened seventeen years ago and attributes her success to those she works for, “I work for good people and have good people who work for me. I have a great crew that understands team work and how to work well together and good results happen,” said Johns. Over the last 17 years the Arby’s menu has made many changes and additions, “Our menu complexity has gone up but so have the choices for the quality foods we offer. So when a new promotion sandwich like the hot loaded Italian comes up Tamara has to start two to three weeks ahead of time to get the crew trained and their skills honed before we come to the sales date for the new sandwich so she can really focus on customer service and she does a fantastic job at accomplishing that,” explained Navarre. “It’s easy to train new people who come on when you have a crew that has been with you for years, it’s really a good job. It can get overwhelming at times but that’s where the team work kicks in and we all pull together. I’ve been doing food for over 25 years and I enjoy working with high school kids and teaching them work ethic and customer service, that’s why I’ve stuck with this business for so long, ” said Tamara. “Tamara has created a culture of friends and family so when you walk in the door often times you’re greeted by name and the fun is handed down from Tamara and the way she treats our employees like friends and family and that comes across to the customers and is obviously why this store continues to reach national honors. This award was only started 8 year ago and for Soldotna to have achieved it all but one of those years makes us very proud,” said Navarre.