Seeking ballpark staffing numbers to run a McD’s and a quick-stop type gas station (combo 7-11/Gas) type. Some Googling found corporate sales, but I need employee count at a lower level…assume a chain, but just one store is what I seek. Any suggestions how to get such ballpark figures?
I worked at Mickey D’s many years ago (it was one of many crappy jobs that got me through college). They have changed the way they do things a bit over the years but this should be good for a rough ballpark figure.
Your staffing needs depend on how busy that particular location is. If it’s fairly slow you only need one person on the cash register, one person to make the burgers and sandwiches, and one person to make the fries, and one person to run the drive through, and a manager to oversee it all. If you are that slow though chances are the location isn’t going to last. If it is busier, you need two or three people at the register, and an additional cook making the burgers and mcnuggets and such. So maybe six workers and a manager per shift. It’s mostly part time workers so you’ll probably have at least three shifts, maybe four depending on how late you are open.
The turnover rate is pretty high too, so you will often have a trainee on shift as well.
A little quickie mart can run with a much smaller staff, with one or two people on duty, depending on what services they offer. A lot of these are open longer hours though, with maybe an additional night shift to cover the wee hours of the morning.
Are you talking a full McD’s store or a kiosk in a rest stop?
A full restaurant IIRC had about 50 to 70 employees, maybe a dozen of them full time and the rest students doing 1 to 5 shifts (4 hour to 8 hours) a week. They had a decent turnover, and there was always stocking, cleaning etc. to do and a decent amount of office work. During the dinner rush in busy time they could have 10 or more employees on. Slower times, maybe 3… and overnight (12M to 6A) 1 cleaner while closed.
Those kiosk locations (like a small slow Walmart setup) would vary from 1 to 3 employees at a time depending on how busy and opening hours, but some can be not much smaller than a full restaurant. The one I’m thinking of was a branch plant of the full restaurant, so shared part time employees with it. Thus, they had a lot more flexibility in scheduling, if for example someone called in sick or Christmas rush.
A lot of these sorts of establishments nowadays use part-time employees for the flexibility and I’m sure there are good tax reasons. If times are slow, they will ask “do you want to go home?” (They aren’t allowed to schedule them then tell them “go home”). Students often don’t mind skipping an hour or two of work to go home early.
Whenever I go into 7-11 there seems to be 2 people during the day; perhaps 1 on midnight shift, and an administrator from time to time?
30 years ago, when I was teenager working lousy jobs, a new McDonald’s opened up nearby. The local news mentioned it as part of a story about the local economy, and they interviewed the manager saying “I have 90 job slots to fill”.( The next morning, I applied, but was beat out by other teenagers, more qualified than me, I guess 
).
So that was (yeah, a long time ago!) ninety kids to operate a typical suburban McDonald’s
Back then, it was all teens, and most of them only worked a few shifts per week after school.
Today, unfortunately, you can probably hire college grads full time.
The smallest staff we had at any one time at the Wendy’s I worked at; front register (also kept the dining room clean and handled the salad bar), front drive thru window, back drive thru, grill and sandwich maker. There would also be a supervisor in addition or filling in one of those slots.
In researching the question, you might find more useful answers if you think in terms of FTE’s (full-time equivalents, at 40 hours a week).
A McDonald’s might only need 20-30 FTEs, but if many of those employees are part-timers doing 10 hours a week, you need 4 of them to make up 1 FTE. So you might need 80 employees to meet the total staffing needs.
Jinx, are you thinking of attending Hamburger U? I’m sure they can tell you there.
Not that you’re not getting great info here.
I think every McDonald’s I have been to in the last 5 years has been open 24 hours, and I thought that was standard now. I could be wrong. I just mention this because a lot of previous comments mentioned being closed at night and variable staffing based on closing times. I don’t know if there is a single fast food place in my area that doesn’t keep the drive through open until at least 3am. When I was a teen Wendy’s was the only place “open late,” and they closed at 1.
I worked at a Wendy’s off an interstate exit, and we maxed out at about 14 or 15 employees on at one time, during the summer during lunch & dinner rushes. That probably ultimately was out of maybe 70 or 80 employees max during the summer, but they would definitely let the headcount go down during the winter, particularly during January-April.
I can’t think of any fast food places around me that are open 24 hours except maybe White Castle. It costs money to keep the place open and if there’s not enough business, it won’t stay open. Thinking way back to my days in fast food, the absolute minimum staffing was one cashier ( who also cleaned tables and handled the drive through in the location with a drive through) , one person in the kitchen ( making everything- burgers ,fries ,sandwiches and fried chicken if there was a large enough order to bother) and an assistant manager. If you don’t have enough sales overnight to cover the food cost and the wages, it’s not worth it. ( The owners stayed open on Thanksgiving exactly once. They lost money and never did it again) Some locations can make money overnight , but not all. The restaurant I worked at the longest was across the street from a busy mall.The train station was outside our door, and the bus stops were around the corner. It was very busy until about 1 hour after the mall closed and then it became a ghost town. We stayed open for another two hours or so, but we would have been there for those two hours cleaning up anyway.Since we were already being paid to be there whether there were customers or not ,we stayed open and served anyone who did come in, but the menu was limited based on how far we had gotten in the cleaning process.
I worked at a mom and pop owned truck stop that had an entire staff of maybe a dozen people. Manager, assistant manager, M-F morning, M-F overnight, half a dozen high school girls who worked evening and weekend days, plus me, who got stuck with the worst of all shifts: overnight weekends. There were typically two people working between 7 or 8 am and 6 or 7 pm, just one before/after that. The owners would occasionally pop in for a bit and help out, though they mostly came to do office-type work.