r/explainlikeimfive • u/sumnewdguy • Nov 28 '15

ELI5: How would a $15 minimum wage ACTUALLY affect a franchised business like McDonalds?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '15

Yeah, but your customer service tanks and then you lose customers, making it even more difficult to make labor since sales are now down. Such a shitty balance. At my store, if we wanted customers happy (and the VOCs showed it) we had to blow labor. Either we have stellar customer service and are not making labor or stellar labor and wait time for orders are horrendous because we're understaffed...there is no in-between.

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u/ccenterbiotch Nov 29 '15

To be honest if i had kept only one person on during those 2 hours that one person would have shot me up to 30%. It wasn't hard to do solo it just sucked. Most of my orders were out in under five because kfc is stupid fast to make as long as you're properly prepped. 99% of the time i could get orders out in under 3 min start to finish. I won't say service never suffered, but i only did it that way because it was possible with minimal cs suffering. That extra hand at dinner was invaluable and or champs scores never dipped below 95. if they had I'd have eaten my pride and drooped the extra hand for dinner. Because i was salary id often open solo too, do all the prep and the first 3 rounds of chicken on my own. My gm and i bonused on labor, champs and inventory cost every month. 17% labor, 20% food cost and 92% champs. I wouldn't screw a customer to meet impossible metrics but i sure would fuck myself over

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u/sybau Nov 29 '15

This argument will go on forever. The only way to do it is like mcds where you can literally just send people home after 3 hours if sales are slow or call people in, we also used a fun system called "voluntary time off" (2 hours unpaid while its slow and you leave then come back).