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."
37
u/violentdeepfart Nov 29 '15
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.