Fast Food strikes - Round 2 - Dec 2013

Post by **Leisher** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 11:00 am

Protests across the nation.

Interesting how Obamacare has actually made their fight tougher.

Post by **TPRJones** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 10:24 am

The industry competes aggressively on value offerings and companies have warned that they would need to raise prices if wages were hiked.

Well, no shit. Payroll is the biggest expense in fast food. If you double the payroll, you double the menu prices. It will be the $2 value menu, and combo meals will run around $8 to $12. This is simple and easy to understand, why are so many people confused on this point?

Post by **GORDON** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:24 pm

TPRJones wrote:
The industry competes aggressively on value offerings and companies have warned that they would need to raise prices if wages were hiked.
Well, no shit. Payroll is the biggest expense in fast food. If you double the payroll, you double the menu prices. It will be the $2 value menu, and combo meals will run around $8 to $12. This is simple and easy to understand, why are so many people confused on this point?

Wellll..... obviously true cost of food were 100% of their expenses. But I see what you're getting at.

Post by **TPRJones** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:42 pm

Well, okay, so more accurately if you doubled payroll it would become the $1.78 menu (given typical profits of 10% and payroll being roughly 70% of costs, and payroll being the only element changed).

Except that it would creep up a bit later on due to increased other costs from suppliers rising to meet this new surge of inflation in the market and eventually plateau at being the $2 menu. So there.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:54 pm

I want them to raise it so I can watch BK employees bitch about how the value menu at McD's has gone up in price.

Post by **GORDON** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:14 pm

TPRJones wrote:Well, okay, so more accurately if you doubled payroll it would become the $1.78 menu (given typical profits of 10% and payroll being roughly 70% of costs, and payroll being the only element changed).

Except that it would creep up a bit later on due to increased other costs from suppliers rising to meet this new surge of inflation in the market and eventually plateau at being the $2 menu. So there.

I'm reaching waaaaay back in memory here, when I took some business classes...

I want to say that payroll shouldn't be more than 25% of costs, in a restaurant.

I could very much be wrong.

Post by **TPRJones** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:29 am

Fast food is a different beast from a regular restaurant.

My experience is limited, but at the two chains I worked at while younger I remember labor being about 70% at each.

Post by **GORDON** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 8:30 am

This from ask.com:

Average labor cost for restaurants vary on the different types of restaurant. For example, a fine dining restaurant will have a higher labor cost compared to a fast food restaurant. It is estimated that at least 31.9 percent of a restaurant's sales goes to labor expenses.

70% labor costs seems exorbitant for fast food. My wife used to be some sort of manager at Fazolis 12 years ago and she said they were shooting for 20% labor costs.

However, to undermine my original point and reinforce yours, if labor cost in a fast food restaurant is 25% and the workers are trying to legislate that their time is worth $15 an hour, which is an approximate (and I think I am being conservative, here, here) 60% increase of what I estimate is average (I have never seen a fast food joint that was able to get employees while paying minimum wage), then the dollar menu would indeed end up being the buck sixty menu, which I think is pretty close to what you originally said.

Post by **TheCatt** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 9:05 am

National Restaurant Association
As of July 2010, the National Restaurant Association reported that labor expenses represented about 1/3 of the total sales of most U.S. full-service restaurants. According to the report, full-service restaurants with an average guest check of $15 or less spent about 32.2 percent of their gross sales on salaries and wages. Restaurants with guest checks totaling between $15 and $25 spent about 31.8 percent and restaurants with guest spending more than $25, as well as limited-service eateries, contributed 31.9 percent of their sales to labor expenses.

Restaurant Report
Online restaurant management, marketing and operational resource website, Restaurant Report, offers slightly varying statistics in an article titled, "Restaurant Accounting: For Profit's Sake, Inventory Your Food Cost!" written by Ron Gorodesky and Kate Lange. According to the authors, at the time of publication, the food and labor costs to operate a restaurant accounted for anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of the establishment's total sales. The article states that of that 50 to 75 percent, 28 to 35 percent represented the cost of foods. Ultimately, according to Restaurant Report, the cost of labor would consume 22 to 40 percent of the restaurant's gross profits.

Read more: ]http://www.ehow.com/info_84....]

Post by **TPRJones** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:25 am

Again, I can only go by personal experience (because my Google searches have failed me), but I'm certain that fast food and full-service restaurants are very very different beasts. After all, you don't actually pay your servers there, you let tips take care of it. So that would bring labor costs down a lot, I would think.

KFC is where I had the most inside information, and 70% labor costs were the case at the one I worked at. Food costs was less than 10%. The rest was franchise fees, utilities, and maintenance (although the owner did most of the maintenance, which he charged as labor). There was no rent to be paid, so perhaps that makes that particular case unusual.

My other experience was at a Hardee's, and I recall labor costs being high there as well (specifically that the labor costs were "4 times" the food costs) but I didn't get to look at the financials there to be properly informed.

Has anyone here actually ever managed a fast food restaurant? That's the opinion I'd like to hear. And no, full-service or even casual dining doesn't count; I suspect they are too different to be comparable.

Edited By TPRJones on 1386603038

Paul · Post by **Paul** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:17 pm

Post by **GORDON** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:29 pm

Paul wrote:

I would prefer that. Any mistakes during order entry are then my own fault.

I'd also love for fast food places to have a website to make an order, get a code, then you drive to the fast food place, enter your code at the DRIVE THROUGH kiosk, and then they make the order for you. Again, you skip erroneous order entry.

Post by **TPRJones** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:47 pm

I'd also love for fast food places to have a website to make an order, get a code, then you drive to the fast food place, enter your code at the DRIVE THROUGH kiosk, and then they make the order for you. Again, you skip erroneous order entry.

Or there should be an app for that that turns your order into a QR code that you hold up to the scanner at the drive-thru.

Post by **GORDON** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:48 pm

Good idea, isn't it. I invented it right before I wrote it down.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:13 pm

TPRJones wrote:
I'd also love for fast food places to have a website to make an order, get a code, then you drive to the fast food place, enter your code at the DRIVE THROUGH kiosk, and then they make the order for you. Again, you skip erroneous order entry.
Or there should be an app for that that turns your order into a QR code that you hold up to the scanner at the drive-thru.

That would do it. Would take all the annoyance out of operating those things.

Post by **GORDON** » Thu May 08, 2014 8:43 am

Round 3: May 2014

http://money.cnn.com/2014....t=hp_t3

I have had a lot of screwed up orders lately. I wonder if I could start a movement to get their pay reduced, because $9/hour is too much for a retard who can't make a sandwich correctly.

Post by **Leisher** » Thu May 08, 2014 8:46 am

I'd like to ask the guy in the picture for that article, "What rights do you think you have?"

This isn't a civil rights movement, it's a debate about pay. "Rights" don't enter into it.

Post by **TheCatt** » Thu May 08, 2014 8:54 am

The guy with the picture is Frankie Tisdale:

Frankie Tisdale, a 26-year-old worker from a KFC in Brooklyn said he will join the strike with fellow workers next week.
Tisdale lives in his father's house in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and two young children. He earns $8 an hour and works between 14 and 23 hours a week.
With less than $200 a week, he sometimes has to choose between buying food for the family and taking his kids' clothes for a wash to the laundromat. He said it's too expensive to eat at the KFC where he works so he never does. "Everything costs more. Why can't my pay go up?" Tisdale says.

Because you're not qualified to earn more?

I'm someone who supports a higher minimum wage (I'd rather have that than more welfare, etc). But damn... where's the logic there?

And yes, I'd like to know what rights he think he has that are being violated?

Edited By TheCatt on 1399553705

Post by **GORDON** » Thu May 08, 2014 8:56 am

I wonder how much a washboard costs.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu May 08, 2014 10:18 am

Organizers see these actions as a testimonial to the success of their campaigns. The latest protests are backed by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations, a federation composed of 396 trade unions in 126 countries representing a combined 12 million workers.

The IUFAHRCTAWA?