Sat Nov 21 2009
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Frankfort Face: Azavic Williams
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Like the servers at most restaurants, Sonic carhop Azavic Williams wears a uniform.
Her lime green polo shirt, visor and ponytail are pretty standard, but the rest - bright purple fingernails, roller skates, coin changer - those are uniquely Azavic.
“It’s different, it’s really different,” she said, sitting at a patio table between pouring drinks and stocking supplies for the lunchtime rush. “You get to skate all day at work.”
Azavic, 18, has worked as a skating carhop at Sonic on Louisville Road for the last six months.
The Lawrenceburg native got her first job at her hometown Sonic, before she and her family moved to Frankfort two years ago.
“I was only 15, and that was like the only place you can work at 15,” she said. “And my mom used to work here when she was a teenager, at the one in Lawrenceburg.”
But her mom didn’t skate, and neither did Azavic for more than a year. It wasn’t until she started working at the Frankfort restaurant that she decided to lace up.
“One day I just decided that I wanted to do it,” she said. “I’ve been skating ever since.”
Her manager ordered her a pair of black roller skates, and she hit the pavement. Azavic says she went to the skating rink a few times as a kid, but was too scared to join in and mostly hung out with her friends.
But learning to skate was easy – after practicing at home on the driveway twice, she was ready to roll. The hard part is carrying trays of food while skating, especially the restaurant’s signature 44-ounce fountain drinks and 99-cent bags of ice.
Has she taken any big spills?
“Oh yeah,” she says, laughing.
One day, she skated out to a stall with six Route 44 drinks on a tray. She hit a bump in the pavement, and the sodas went flying - all over the customer’s car.
“I think that was probably the worst one.”
But customers don’t usually get mad when carhops fall on their skates, she said. Most get worried and check to make sure they’re OK.
Azavic works hard. While she was a student at Franklin County High School last year, she put in 30 hours a week at the restaurant.
She started working the 5:30 a.m. opening shift after graduating in June, logging up to 55 hours a week.
In the morning, she stocks supplies for lunchtime and helps her coworker make breakfast burritos. She runs the drive-through and chats up the customers as they reach for their meals.
It’s difficult to skate inside the kitchen, she says, because they spray the floors clean with water.
“I don’t put them on until lunchtime,” she said of her skates. “Most people just come through the drive-through in the morning.”
Traffic started picking up around 10:30 a.m. on a recent day in July. Azavic headed inside the kitchen to take orders from the customers parked at Sonic’s more than 20 stalls.
She packed a red tray with burger-filled paper sacks and sodas in plastic foam cups. Gliding out the door onto the sidewalk, she effortlessly stepped off the curb, laid her right foot to the side and came to a smooth stop, right at the door of a navy blue minivan.
She handed the food to a woman in the driver’s seat and headed back to the kitchen to do it again.
“When you skate, you get in and out quicker, and customers are satisfied more when it’s quicker,” she said.
“I get more tips if I skate, rather than just walk it out.”
The choice between cruising through the drive through and parking at a stall depends on the weather, Azavic says.
If it’s hot, people sit in their cars and eat, but if the weather isn’t so great, they go through the drive-through. Older customers tend to eat on the patio, she says.
Azavic likes the food at Sonic too. The restaurant has more variety than other fast food places, she said – and you can order breakfast and lunch all day.
Her favorite is the mozzarella sticks, but most of her customers crave something else.
“Route 44 Diet Cokes,” she says without hesitation. “They really like those.”
In the fall, Azavic will head to Midway College to study nursing. She’s following in her mother’s career steps again - she works in the medical field as a phlebotomist, drawing blood for testing.
Azavic already has a job at Midway working as a front desk attendant, but she plans to return to Sonic on weekends, holidays and summer breaks. Her parents, Gwendolyn and Almario Williams, will still live in Frankfort.
Azavic says she decided to pursue nursing because she likes helping people - it’s one of the same reasons she works at Sonic.
“We have customers who come every day, and we know them by name, and I like that too,” she said. “They know us by name.”
She says the restaurant has about 30 regulars - and many of them order the same food each time.
“There’s one guy that comes here every morning, and I really like him,” she said. “He always talks about my nails, and he jokes around a lot.”
A few years from now, Azavic will trade in her skates for scrubs. But if her first career gives an indication of those to follow, she’ll make that new uniform her own too.
“Frankfort Faces” is a series that highlights people from within the Frankfort and Franklin County community. Each feature follows one of the city’s most unique personalities and includes a story, photos and video, which can be found by clicking the TV icon attached to the story online at state-journal.com.
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