Fast food joint pays workers $12 an hour, and lives to tell the tale

MSNBC ^ | August 6, 2013 | Emma Margolin

[heartwood]

Rough calculation: five workers on staff, earning an extra five dollars an hour each, total $25 extra plus FICA. Suppose they only serve thirty meals an hour, that’s an extra dollar per meal with the higher wage. Factor in clean up time and opening time with fewer employees and no customers.

[heartwood]

Employers seldom want full time workers in jobs like this.

[Mr Rogers]

"Neither the high quality nor the tinkering are surprising when you consider that the food consultant for Moo Cluck Moo is Jimmy Schmidt — yes, the same Jimmy Schmidt who’s run Rivertown’s high-end Rattlesnake Club for 25 years now. And on-site manager Alan Fisher is a former sous chef from Opus One...

...“I’m surprised everybody doesn’t use better ingredients,” Moorhouse says. It’s his first venture into the restaurant business. “We can still run at industry standards using the best stuff.”

http://metrotimes.com/food/restaurant-reviews/moo-cluck-moo-1.1503615

They offer carry-out only, and "I think this is part of what makes Moo Cluck Moo special and out of the ordinary in its nondescript location sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a former auto repair shop (how more Detroit can you get, really?)"

Also, the earliest review on Yelp was from April.

Their Notorious Cluck ($6):

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You casually add in Social Security/FICA, but there is also Unemployment/FUTA, Medicare and workmen’s compensation.

[heartwood]

Thank you! I have not run a business but believe that taxes benefits usually run about 50% over wage? So the extra cost per meal might be as much as 1.50. If I’m right about thirty meals per hour.

[Mr. Blond]

Do they have a dollar menu?

[tbranam]

According to the Moo Cluck Moo website a large hamburger is $5.00 and fries and a soda is an additional $3.00, which without tax is $8.00. If I were you I would check my calculator.

[Mastador1]

“We manage our costs effectively, we use the best product that we can afford”.

I don’t know about anyone else but this statement makes me more than a little uncomfortable. It does not speak to a model of consistent high quality.

[GeronL]

What is on their dollar menu?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

However if you run the statistic (160,000 fast food joints divided by 50,000,000 customers per day) by you find that the average fast food joint only serves 312.5 customers per day and most of them will buy not full meals but there are also customers who buy more then one. On average out of 100 customers you will sell the equivalent of 83 full meals. That comes to 259.38 meals per day

At 17 hours times $5.00 times 1.5 times 5 employees equals an extra $637.50 that they would have to come up with per day.

So they would have to raise the cost to around $2.46 per meal just to break even on costs. The average FF meal costs around $6.00 so that would raise it to $8.46 per hour.

That is a 30% price jump. While the prices of your competitors remains the same.

How long before you have to close your doors?

[Windflier]

What is on their dollar menu?

Oh, lots of stuff, but you've got to buy exactly $12.50 worth on every order :-)

[MasterGunner01]

By what divine right do the morons at MSNBC telling ANY business what it ought to pay its employees? I’ll bet if the situation was reversed the suits at MSNBC would say “it’s none of your damn business what we pay our employees.” Hypocrite liberals.

[moovova]

It’s perfectly alright for the manager to pay $12 an hour. It’s his choice to make.

BUT...It should be a choice, not a law.

[Marko413]

Guarantee you the owners are running this business at a loss, just to make a point. There’s no way the market will support $12 an hour burger flippers

I remember in the 90s we used to talk about how In n Out Burger was paying $10/hour and they are still doing fine today. A business can do it, but I'd assume they have to sell a lot of product to keep up with it.

[moovova]

Took the MIL to the doctor last year (center city location). There was a 5 Guys Burger joint next to the doctor’s office. I grabbed a burger meal while she visited the doc. It cost me over $10 to get out of there (burger, fries, drink).

Good food, but I won’t be back. I ain’t paying $10 for a hamburger at a fast food place.

[Windflier]

I remember in the 90s we used to talk about how In n Out Burger was paying $10/hour and they are still doing fine today. A business can do it, but I'd assume they have to sell a lot of product to keep up with it.

I didn't realize they paid that much. I suppose they can, given the ever present lines outside their stores, and the hustle you see going on inside.

[willyd]

“They’d have to move two and a half times the volume ... “

That’s assuming they need the same number of workers to achieve the productivity. There are a wide range of “ability levels” in the fast food industry....lol.