Labor Control for Fast Food Restaurant Managers

By Jacob Thomas

I have spent the past 20 years of my working life in the fast-food industry in every position, from crew to General Manager. Over the course of those many years I have had the luxury of working with and working for some great managers, but they have all had a basic understanding of how to control their labor costs. This book is the result of many months spent taking notes and looking at controlling labor costs from many different perspectives. If you are one of the many managers out there who are having trouble controlling their labor costs then worry no more. It is time to actually make your bonus! Stop pulling your hair out and finally discover the secret to controlling your labor costs. After reading this book you will finally have a complete understanding of how to control your labor costs. The truth will allude you no more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312359420

Book preview

Labor Control for Fast Food Restaurant Managers

Labor Control for Fast-Food Restaurant Managers

Labor Control for Fast-Food Restaurant Managers

First Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Jacob Thomas

All rights reserved.

ISBN: XXX-X-XXX-XXXXX-X (Your ISBN Number Goes Here)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

One Step Publishing

7514 Dryer Rd.

Victor, NY 14564

Introduction

You might be wondering why you need another book that claims to hold the key to solving the problems that you are having with being able to control your labor (costs, percentage, etc.). To answer that question we need to first answer: What is wrong with your current labor control system?

I have spent most of my working life in the food industry. I have had the privilege of working for a number of different companies, learning any number of different systems to control any number of different costs. I have also had the privilege of working under managers (Store Managers, General Managers, District Managers, etc.) with many different levels of knowledge when it came to how to control this cost or that one.

One of the things that I always found interesting, no matter what company I was hired to work for, is that I always seemed to walk into a company that had problems controlling their labor. For years I thought that it was just me - that I was jinxed and only ended up working for companies that had this problem - but later I learned that it wasn’t just me, many companies and managers were having problems controlling their labor.

So one day I decided to actually sit down and think about this problem. I approached labor control from many different perspectives, and after a few months of taking notes I realized that the problem with the current system was actually really simple:

The current system looks at everyone the same!

If you have four Team Members who work Front Counter, and they are all making $8.00 per hour, your current labor system only cares that each Team Member is making $8.00 per hour. It does not take into account that this Team Member is faster than this one, or that this Team Member has a higher ticket average than this one. All your current labor system cares about is what each Team Member is making, and not how they contribute to the increase or decrease in your overall labor percentage and the overall success of your restaurant.

How did we get here?

If you are like most managers and you recently acquired a Degree in Hospitality - Restaurant Management then you know that what you were taught in college about controlling labor costs is essentially the same thing that you were taught when you first got into management:

Control your labor percentage - labor costs divided by total sales!

If it’s slow, send people home.

And that’s essentially everything that the managers above you thought you needed to know, because that’s all the managers who taught them thought they needed to know. It has been an endless cycle of the last guy knowing just a little bit less than the guy who trained them. And now, all we seem to need to know in order to control our costs is what is drilled into our heads: costs divided by sales!

Think of all of the ways that you are taught to help improve your labor percentage. What side of the equation are they on? How come most of what you know about improving your labor is located on the left side of the equation - the controlling costs side - and not on the controlling sales side? If you increase your sales while keeping your costs the same you can lower your labor percentage, so it only makes sense to try and focus on that side as well. But we don’t, because that’s not what we were taught to worry about.

In this book