GON
$100 Site Donor 2024
I read it as it is hard getting help, don't be a dupa to the servers. Treat them with respect, or there may not be help here to serve you in the future.
Steakhouse Boss Becomes Chef, Cooks 200 Steaks a Day
- Thread starter Dave Hess
- Start date
Owen Lucas
$100 Site Donor 2023
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2021
- Messages
- 2,555
He should be able to afford decent wages for employees if he's plating 200 stakes a day.
Personally I've increased my tips because I feel bad for these servers and what they are going through the past few 2 years, and kudos for them actually working.
Personally I've increased my tips because I feel bad for these servers and what they are going through the past few 2 years, and kudos for them actually working.
Needs both hands! Lol
You don't need 140 foot pounds of torque to flip fries. You don't even need to flip burgers these days, they cook them both sides at the same time now.
GON
$100 Site Donor 2024
I believe Pew lives in Illinois.
Sorry to hear. Our area is quite the opposite. My 14 year is starting her first job today zero experience stocking grocery store shelves for $13.50/hr. My 16 year old seems to clear about $20/hr between tips and pay rate working at smoothie place.
Our state min wage is $7.75/hr but I don’t believe anyone pays that except for the imported J visas for seasonal help possibly.
Are you still in New England? New Hampshire has a $7.25 minimum wage but it's surrounded by states which have a $12-$14.25 minimum wage so you get the spillover effect where if wages were really $7.25, people would just cross the border for more money.
That's awesome. IL is actually not too bad but Chicago controls the entire state. Serving jobs are now ~$7/hour + tips but since minimum wage here got moved up to $12/hour and most fast food places starting now at $15/hour, there's little incentive to work as a server unless you're at a higher end restaurant.
Min wage is $7.25 however no one pays that I am aware of in coastal NH. It’s on par with the $12-$15 starting.
Well lots of states have worked on making $15 the new minimum and that will kick in over the next several years. I think it's 11 states over the next 4 years will be $15 or higher.
Minimum wage is about to rise in 21 states, 35 localities as more embrace $15 an hour
The minimum wage is set to rise in 21 states, 35 cities and counties as movement toward $15 an hour continues to grow.
www.usatoday.com
To those who suggest a restaurant simply pay more:
Do you how the cost of labor, food, and other expenses work? Its percentage of sales based.
$10 an hour guy has to sell $40 of food.
$20 an hour guy has to sell $80 of food.
Everyone at the restaurant has to generate a multiple of the sales that come in. 20-30% labor is typically the profitable range for the average restaurant.
Raise prices is a risky move because it is so easy to lose business if your too expensive.
I went to a restaurant today, a rare thing for me these days as i want to maximize investments over expensive food. I got $1.99 famous star burgers at Carls Jr. they are losing money on these. They had at least 5 employees and 3 total customers. AC was super cold in there, all kinds of expenses, and here i am spending $12 for my entire family. If it wasn’t so cheap they would have had only 2 customers as i would have made something at home. I also occasionally buy the still $9.95 pizza at Costco but stopped going to the $30 fancier pizza places.
A restaurant is a very risky venture and simply paying people more and expecting your customers to literally eat that expense often fails.
Do you how the cost of labor, food, and other expenses work? Its percentage of sales based.
$10 an hour guy has to sell $40 of food.
$20 an hour guy has to sell $80 of food.
Everyone at the restaurant has to generate a multiple of the sales that come in. 20-30% labor is typically the profitable range for the average restaurant.
Raise prices is a risky move because it is so easy to lose business if your too expensive.
I went to a restaurant today, a rare thing for me these days as i want to maximize investments over expensive food. I got $1.99 famous star burgers at Carls Jr. they are losing money on these. They had at least 5 employees and 3 total customers. AC was super cold in there, all kinds of expenses, and here i am spending $12 for my entire family. If it wasn’t so cheap they would have had only 2 customers as i would have made something at home. I also occasionally buy the still $9.95 pizza at Costco but stopped going to the $30 fancier pizza places.
A restaurant is a very risky venture and simply paying people more and expecting your customers to literally eat that expense often fails.
Yes, this happens in all sorts of industries not just restaurants. This IMO is at least one of the major reason why a boss has to know how to do the lowest level work him/herself just in case there's a shortage.
The other part is, there are lots of services that are not sustainable after an inflation in home price, labor cost, food cost, medical cost, etc etc. Sometimes those old industry gets automated (like McD using apps and drive through, or supermarket using self checkout), or just disappear completely, or has to raise price so much that they will finally find a balance (i.e. McD is charging dollar menu item at $3 in my area these days and they are paying "up to $17/hr" which is probably 15-17/hr), they still only have like 2 guys in the kitchen and 1 guy in the drive through counter, and the call center in some rural town take the drive through order.
I'm sure eventually McD will be automated into a vending machine for "build your own burger" if you want to save $1, and the vending machine will drop out a box with all the ingredients and pieces you stack together, and the kitchen is run by a giant robot.
The other part is, there are lots of services that are not sustainable after an inflation in home price, labor cost, food cost, medical cost, etc etc. Sometimes those old industry gets automated (like McD using apps and drive through, or supermarket using self checkout), or just disappear completely, or has to raise price so much that they will finally find a balance (i.e. McD is charging dollar menu item at $3 in my area these days and they are paying "up to $17/hr" which is probably 15-17/hr), they still only have like 2 guys in the kitchen and 1 guy in the drive through counter, and the call center in some rural town take the drive through order.
I'm sure eventually McD will be automated into a vending machine for "build your own burger" if you want to save $1, and the vending machine will drop out a box with all the ingredients and pieces you stack together, and the kitchen is run by a giant robot.
Let's ask this question in a different way:
If you are a new "investor" would you pay for a new franchise to Carl's Jr selling $2 famous star, $12 for a family of customers (3), with 5 employees, and full AC? I personally wouldn't.
What this means is, this is probably no longer sustainable and people who opened this years ago just didn't stop it because of sunk cost.
Newer fast / fast casual food are like Pinera Bread / Chipotle that cost $10 per customer on some cheap food that has less cost per customer than Carl's Jr. Look at Chipotle's burrito, probably about the same amount of meat in famous star, way more rice, some extra sauce and same amount of wheat flour in the tortila than the bun in famous star, and now instead of $2 they are selling for about $8-10. They have about 5 people in the store and their customers are probably 4x.
Panera bread doesn't even need as many people, sell bagel in the morning and sandwiches at lunch and dinner, chips are prepack instead of fresh fried fries, and their set of sandwich sell for like $8-10 instead of $6-8 with way lower cost.
The thing about profit is, you have to aim for the mid-high end instead of the bottom of the market where there's no money to be made.
Also, a high min wage just serves to delete jobs that don’t make sense beyond a certain amount. In my personal business i would create additional jobs for people if such minimums did not exist. For example $6 an hour, 2 hours a day, easy light cleaning or organizing work. Perfect for a kids 1st job, some spending money, that kind of thing. Since this would be illegal, this hypothetical starter job cannot exist. utah has a super low min wage vs actual market wages so its a non issue. If your state forces $15 or $18 or whatever an hour, many people just can’t be employed. Perhaps a job at $12 is better than no job at a very high min wage.
Keep in mind it costs a lot more than $15/hour to pay someone $15 an hour and if they don’t create the value to justify the wage the business will bust.
Keep in mind it costs a lot more than $15/hour to pay someone $15 an hour and if they don’t create the value to justify the wage the business will bust.
Doesnt matter what they sell or at what price point. My $1.99 burger afforded at best .50 of labor. Its a loss leader to drive traffic. Having a big fat margin on a Chipotle burrito is great if people keep buying. As times get tougher, and they will for most, that $16 burrito with double steak is easily deleted from the budget.
The formulas work at any level of restaurant quality. $100 a plate premium steak house is still only $25 for labor. This distills down to like $22 or less after taxes and payroll costs are paid.
Similar with mechanics too, $150 an hour and the guy doing the work gets like 1/4. Tons of people cannot fix their own car but they can cook basic foods at home. The ability to jack up prices at restaurants is limited.
I'm sick and tired of these signs and this sentiment. I am not sure I've seen more than 5 incidents in my entire life where customers were rude to restaurant employees. I'm sick and tired of hearing how bad working in the restaurant industry is. Most people under 40 today are flat out wimps and the US couldn't depend on them to save this country in a real time of need.
Working in the restaurant industry, other than skilled cooking, is an extremely low-skill job. Filling up someone's tea or water glass could be done by someone with a 1st grade education. Taking an order is probably the highest skill level at a sit-down restaurant other than running the kitchen/etc. Manual labor? Walking swiftly around an air-conditioned space that is under roof isn't really tough manual labor. Try climbing around 16" pipes 32' above a factory floor where it's 120 degrees and having to maneuver yourself so you can grind, clean, mark and weld something so that it meets critical standards.
Yep, those two jobs pay drastically different and for good reason. They are drastically different, need different skills, etc.
Bottom line - I'm not rude to anyone and I don't need to be told not to be and I don't need to be told to be thankful YOUR freakin' employees showed up for work today! Run your business better, train your people better, YOU treat your people better and they wouldn't have a crappy attitude to begin with.
At least 7.65% more for the FICA match.
Places that offer a full suite of benefits figure 25-33% above the wage to cover State mandated Unemployment Insurance, FICA, insurance, 401(k) etc. So that $20/hour person is really $25-$27/hour with all the other costs associated with hiring and paying a worker.
Similar threads
