Max’s RestaurantLesson Five Assignment

Team FourRobert Casper

Jean LeedyBrian White

Jerrand Osei Assibey (MIA)

How many employees will be needed to operate the new facility?

Given that our new restaurant will be located in a college-town, there are several special considerations to take into account: Considerations• Recruiting: Many of our employees will be seasonal due to our focus on recruiting college students. By targeting our recruiting efforts on Freshman students, we can reduce turnover and training costs

by retaining them as employees for all four of their college years. • Move-in & Move-out: Some of our student staff may be settling into new living arrangements at the beginning or end of the school year and have limited availability during this time. Corporate

assistance to fill shifts might be necessary. • Summer: With many students leaving town over the break, less staffing is needed during summertime (Non-peak season). • School Events: Football, basketball, or other big sporting events attracting large crowds to town. Graduation, Parents Weekend, Alumni Weekend, Homecoming, all will need additional staffing to help

meet increased demand during these busy weekends. (Peak Season). • Customer Flow: Our primary business will more than likely occur between noon and midnight; with the larger majority of our sales falling the latter half of the day. Dinner and Late-Night should provide

more staffing than lunchtime.

Number of Employees Needed to Operate Restaurant:During peak season staff should include:• 1 Salaried General Manager• 2 Salaried Managers• 1 Hourly Supervisor• 3 dishwashers• 10 prep cooks• 6 order takers

During non-peak season• 1 Salaried General Manager• 2 Salaried Managers• 1 Hourly Supervisor• 3 dishwashers• 8 prep cooks• 4 order takers

How will you address the problem of fluctuating human resource (employee) requirements?

Turnover in the restaurant industry is traditionally high, and in a college town it is likely to be even higher. We will need to continually accept applications for positions and keep an organized detail file/folder of prospective applicants. Our Managers need to be prepared to fill-in and/or make-up for missed shifts and employee shortages. If absenteeism/turnover becomes an issue, we could consider hiring more employees with reduced individual shifts/hours . (For Example: Replace a daily 8-hour Cashier shift with two 4-hour Cashiers). This would allow us to maintain level labor costs with the additional benefit of having another trained employee available to pick up missed/extra shifts when necessary. A pool of 12 Part-time cashiers could fill 6 Full-time positions, assuring us constant coverage at that spot. We could apply a similar strategy to all hourly positions filled by seasonal college students.

As stated above, we should target Freshman at the university in order to reduce training costs and turnover by hopefully maintain them for all of their college years. The scheduling of student employees will be key. The store manager must maintain a copy of their availability and schedule their shifts accordingly. In the event of missed shifts, we need to ensure that all managers are hands on and are willing to do all work from cleaning toilet to inventory control. If the sales go down and they have to cut labor, the salaried managers will not count as labor, so they will have to work more hours and do more jobs, basically countering cuts to hourly employees with job enlargement of the salaried employees.

Again, since we are based in a college town, both our customer volume and our labor market levels will fluctuate seasonally. Staffing will need to take seasonal events into consideration, such as sporting events, graduations, etc., and our customer volume and labor market should both decrease drastically during summer months. We will adjust our staffing levels to correspond accordingly by following the plan below:

When an employee shortage is expected, such as when moving from summer into the fall as students return and business increases, we will recruit and hire more staff by doing the following:

1) Creative Recruiting – Events such as job fairs or taking applications at a booth on campus. 2) Compensation Incentives:

a) Signing bonus – Offer a $50 bonus to new hires as incentive to apply. b) Referral Bonus – Offer a $50 bonus to employees who refer a new hire. c) Retention Bonus – Offer a $50 bonus to employees on their yearly anniversary date.

When an employee surplus is expected, such as when moving from Spring into the summer when students leave town for the break, we will reduce our workforce by doing the following:

1) Attrition – Employees who leave employment will not be replaced. 2) Restricted hiring – No new hiring will be done in the spring in anticipation of the surplus. 3) Retrenchment/layoffs – As a last resort, staff will be laid off based on seniority, with the newest employees being let go. They will be provided a minimum of two

weeks of notice and a $200 severance payment. In addition, they will be given the first consideration to return to employment once new hiring begins again.