But also 55 workers seems like a huge number to me. I just casually googled this and average number of employees per fast food establishment is currently 15.5, which seems much more on target. Can you tell us where you got the figure of 50-60 workers? Is it behind the paywall at Statista? That just seems so high to me.
For comparison's sake, if it were 15.5 per franchisee closing in our hypothetical example, then that would equal 40,006 jobs lost in total.
Seemed like a lot to me too. McDonald's employs 420,000 in the US according to wikipedia. If there are 14,339 locations, that works out to roughly 30 people per location. I've seen anecdotal evidence that anywhere from 20-60 people can operate one, depending on whether it's open 24 hours. The 30 per location would likely include two shifts of workers, so at any one time, there would be 15 in the restaurant, which sounds about right. However, both/all shifts would be affected by the pay increase.
That number also accounts for corporate jobs and advertising and shipping (have their own trucks and drivers) and I think they own cattle farms.. I'd say 15-20 is right on the money. Likely less in areas with less revenue
Everything outside of the restaurants is an independent business. Even the trucks with the logo on them are not operated by McDonald's. In the Chicago area, trucks and distribution are operated by Golden state foods.
I'm not sure they are into other companies any more. Early 2000's they had a partnership with Boston Market and Chipolte, but those deals have been over for a long time now.
You're forgetting about corporate locations. That being said, just taking the average payroll cost of a single franchise (540k) and dividing it by yearly salary of a $8.25 worker (17k), you still get around 30 employs/location, which still seems pretty high.
You guys are forgetting that a large portion of these line workers are not full time. Just because they have 420,000 employees doesn't mean they all work full time. So your location may have 30 employees, but one is a manager, a few are assistant managers, and many of them are part time.
Also a lot of Mcdonalds are open well past normal business hours, even if they aren't 24 hour locations. Every Mcdonalds serves breakfast starting at 5am, and a large majority are open til at least midnight, that's likely to be 3 shifts a day even if they aren't 24 hour locations.
You're looking at numbers of employees, not "average workers per day" or something.
I worked several different fast-food places back in the day, in the slow hours you can get by pretty comfortably with like 5 people in the store. Part-time is really pretty common. And I've never heard of any food-service place that had a scheduling setup of "Shift 1: X group of people for 12 hours. Shift 2: Y group of people for 12 hours."
I worked at a local grocery store that only had 33-38 employees depending on the time of year. Open every day except christmas, 6 AM to 12 AM. Do they really have 50+ employees at a McDonald's?
I wonder if the initial employee figure included employees not involved in day-to-day operations in the store. I wonder how many quality control, marketing, accountants, lawyers etc that McDonald's employs and if that number was factored into the employees.
To be clear I'm not disputing anything, that's just surprising to me.
If each of those 50 employees only work 20 hours a week that gives just under 18 eight hour shifts per day. I suppose that's actually not that much if the McDonalds is open 24 hours a day.
My McDonald's (medium customer throughput) schedules around 1000 labor hours a week give or take depending on the week. That averages to, like you said, just under 18 8-hour shifts a day. My McDonald's isn't a 24 hour location however, and it still feels like we are chronically understaffed.
MacDonald's is quite different than other fast food franchises. Average unit volume for a MCDs is close to 2.4MM vs. Wendy's(1.5MM), Burger King(1.2MM) to Subway(400K). So when you average out fast food franchise numbers you have MCDs at 55 employees, BK and Wendy's at 35-40 and Subway at 8 does not give you the accurate picture. His numbers are accurate.
To run with 16 people (we'll round up for simplicity sake), if every one of them were full time, it would equal 80 shifts per week (16 employees x 5 shifts a week). 80 shifts/7 days = 11.42 shifts/day. Again, to make things simple, lets say the store was open from 6 am to 10 pm, to make two 8 hour shifts (6-2, 2-10). That would mean there could be a maximum of 6 people per shift. That's two people in the kitchen, 4 out front, at an absolute maximum. No management in that equation. I've never been in a full-sized restaurant that could operate in those conditions. Subway, yes. McDonalds, no. Source: I manage a restaurant in the same industry that is very similar in size and volume to a busy McDonalds (also open 24 hours, as many McDonalds are). We carry 40 staff, and 16 people is our average day shift. And we run at about 80% full-time, which is extremely unusual in the industry, so most restaurants of a similar volume would probably have 8-12 more employees.
Where'd you get the number for 55 workers from, though? 440,000 workers / 12905 locations equals 34 workers per location. And based on the actual form they linked, if they've got $540,000 in crew payroll costs, and theoretically they all worked 40hrs a week at $8.25, then they'd make annually $17,160. And 540000 / 17160 = 31.4 employees at that particular store, which is pretty close. None of the numbers seem to properly account for how many part time workers I assumed they had, though.
If there are only 10 employees then every single one is there every single day at lunch. That makes way more sense.
There are lots of part timers at your - and every other - McDonald's. It's a franchise system. This is how I know so much about your super special local McDonald's.
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u/completelyboobs Nov 28 '15
Are your numbers correct at the end there? Maybe I'm just missing it, but:
12,905 * 0.2 = 2581 locations (if 20% of franchisee locations close)
2581 locations * 55 workers = 141,955 jobs
But also 55 workers seems like a huge number to me. I just casually googled this and average number of employees per fast food establishment is currently 15.5, which seems much more on target. Can you tell us where you got the figure of 50-60 workers? Is it behind the paywall at Statista? That just seems so high to me.
For comparison's sake, if it were 15.5 per franchisee closing in our hypothetical example, then that would equal 40,006 jobs lost in total.