MrSchroeder
Lombard, IL
Male, 33
I *was* an assistant manager for a McDonald's Franchisee in Tucson, AZ from 2007 to 2008, and was hired with the explicit intention of being management and not a standard crew member. I worked hard in learning the procedures and processes of the corporation, with a goal of a much longer career than I actually had. My every day life evolved while I was there, starting from the least desirable position to overall operations. I wrote a blog detailing my experiences as well.
Very rarely will a McDonald's dining room be full. The longer people stay, the more often they'll come. If you make it easy and convenient for a customer to come hang out for an hour and a half, the more likely they'll repeatedly come in. Even if they just order a soda or a coffee - the profit level of those drinks is so high that it takes 10 refills before the McDonald's loses money. Also, if you come more often, you spend more money. It's pretty simple really.
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Several million dollars a year of product testing and development is the short answer. I think the deal is they use seriously high quality potatoes (because they have buying power), and ensure consistent cut size. The fries go through a very thorough cleaning/soak to get some level of starches out of them. Then, they get flash fried (par-cooked), and then flash-frozen. At this point they're packaged and sent to stores. There was a really good "Modern Marvels" episode called "Fast Food Tech" that Netflix probably has.
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Generally people would plan when they were leaving and give adequate notice. I do remember several employees who "walked out" or quit with no advance warning. Some had good reason such as being treated poorly by other staff members (one woman walked out after being propositioned by the late-night manager), managers being disrespectful when someone who was not trained to a task could not accomplish the task as expected, and one crew member that I remember in particular had requested months ahead for a week off to go on vacation with her family and the scheduling manager scheduled her anyway, told her if she didn't show up she's fired and so she didn't show up and the manager in question tried to claim it was "quitting". I however backed up the crew member and made sure she got unemployment because the manager said she was fired - and I'd heard it, there was no quitting involved).
I myself walked out with no warning, but my case was pretty special and quite frankly it was a poor decision when I made it, but I felt right about when I did.
I was moved into the store I did my very initial "crew" style training at. I elaborated in my blog and in this thread elsewhere, but the short of it is I was clearly not welcome, and when I addressed the fact that I was constantly verbally abused and was threatened repeatedly by the management team in that store, the Directors of the franchise and Owner/Operator told me I was lying to them. It came to a head one day when the Training Manager (essentially a Director level in the franchise company) was present, and watched three women surround me, screaming at the top of their lungs calling me every anti-white racist cuss word that exists in Spanish and English. The reason for their displeasure was I was following the policy and procedures in regards cooking breakfast sausage 15m before the end of the Breakfast period. Really.
So, finally the store manager grabbed a big metal pan used to bake biscuits and pies and smacked me with it. I tried to walk away but she followed after me screaming at me. It was about the 3rd or 4th time she hit me in the body with it that the Training Manager (who was literally 5 steps away the whole time) stepped in and told us all to separate. I turned to her and said something like, "This is exactly the type of treatment I was describing that you told me was a lie". Her response was, "Go calm down" and I said, "No thanks, I quit instead".
It was very difficult to be put in that position, but the harsh reality is that even though I demonstrated excellence, and helped to grow the store I was originally in for about 15 months into an operation that developed several top crew members and several management trainees/candidates, and in the first month I was assigned handling inventory in full I negated the previous year's losses, and I was able to do a myriad of other tasks far more accurately, efficiently and effectively than my peers, the Owner/Operator intentionally ignored my reports of harassment and abuse, violence in the workplace, and overt racism - I was one of two non-Hispanic employees in the store out of approximately 25 or 30. Now, a white guy claiming racism is a bold thing to say. I speak relatively fluent Spanish and know what I was being subject to. As you can read through my blog and all these posts, I almost exclusively had positive experiences and tried to be a positive influence. Except this.
In the end (I shall not discuss it) I was compensated relatively fairly well for the whole incident, although I have not continued my career with McDonald's after that. I may one day return, but it seems unlikely to me as there are in fact several better applications of my capabilities, knowledge and experience than in a McDonald's restaurant (although I did love it. Never had so much fun, got fit, and was in a position to develop people and a workplace environment more thoroughly than any other before or after).
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Bartender
Which customers are the worst tippers?
Hospice Nurse
Ever heard any crazy deathbed confessions or family secrets revealed?
Zookeeper and Animal Trainer
Why are some people so protective of endangered species?
Well first and foremost, a store generally wouldn't be "way overstocked" - it likely wouldn't even be a little bit overstocked. Every McDonald's is a business and as such doesn't just pile up their stockrooms, coolers and freezers with more product than they need (at least not enough to benefit a shelter or other organization) unless in a gross case of incompetence.
Directly to the point of the question, most of the food that was wasted (the term for throwing out food that doesn't meet quality or safety expectations) was food that was already prepared and exceeded it's hold time - and at that point it can't be given away. Because all of the products that make McDonald's food have a long shelf life, and the few products that do have a high rate of spoilage (such as lettuce and milk) are used in quantity, there's little actual stock spoilage or food going bad. Also, once food is spoiled, it's spoiled. I'm sure you can agree, it would be far worse to give a shelter or some organization food that has gone bad than to give them nothing.
The vast majority of stores actually run understocked in an effort to reduce costs. However, this backfires seriously because it is much more expensive to get stock that a store is short of (by immediately delivery or borrowing from another store) - not only realistically (it costs more to have immediate delivery from a warehouse or the costs associated with driving to another store and borrowing product) but also from a paperwork standpoint. Also, product requests/shortages affect a management team's performance assessment as these inventory inconsistencies are tracked on a daily basis. Inventory management being the second most manageable aspect of a McDonald's restaurant (labor being the first), this is rightly a big deal.
In the rare case that a product goes bad inside of it's shelf-life, in most cases it gets returned to the distribution warehouse for a refund/replacement. I think this happened with maybe 1 product box every 10 deliveries or so, a really great record considering most deliveries were on the order of 2,500 individual boxes.
Managing inventory well is one of the most costly aspects of managing a McDonald's and one of the most difficult. The first store manager I briefly trained under (before moving to the store I worked at primarily), never walked her stock rooms, coolers and freezers before making orders - she relied on her managers to accurately count inventory for reporting purposes. These staff members followed her example and barely put any effort into their work, meaning her inventory reporting was never accurate (something I encountered nearly instantly and tried hard to resolve in the short time I was there, ineffectively). This manager never reviewed her inventory reporting prior to making orders, but only used that reporting to meet the requirement that it be done. She also could never comprehend why she was always running out of stock and had high spoilage. So basically, she had no idea what she had on hand when she went about the task of ordering more stock, and even if she had used the tools at her disposal, they would have done her more harm than good through their inaccuracy.
The second store manager I worked with had more experience (a decade with McDonald's, as I recall him mentioning repeatedly) and thought he could "eyeball" product stock and made orders based off of usage and studied the inventory reporting but also never walked the stock room, walk-in or cooler. He delegated all inventory counts to a capable manager (usually me) and used that inventory reporting to determine what he would order.
I mentioned elsewhere that my first year, the store I was in lost $5,000 for the year. In the course of one month, strictly controlling inventory and actively reviewing reports *and* the physical stock, I was able to reduce our inventory overage by $3,500 and reduce stock requests (borrowed/immediate shipped) by a further $1,500 - negating for that loss from the year before. The trick was to make sure there was not a surfeit of stock that had very long shelf life and increase the stock of short shelf-life items enough to cover but not enough to waste. It just so happens that the products with the longest shelf-lives (generally proteins) are the most costly - so cutting the number of them by a small amount has a great effect. The shortest shelf-life items (like lettuce, tomato and milk) also had a lower cost. 5% fewer protein items in stock (let's say $1000) and 10% more vegetable/perishables stock (call it $250) had a net positive effect on the inventory.
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I was hired as a manager - I didn’t work as a crew. However, when someone had their hours significantly cut like you’re describing, it was generally due to performance issues or a lack of motivation to succeed at the work assigned. I’m not saying that is definitely true for you, and I don’t know what you were hired for, how your training has progressed, and how your store is staffed. $200 every two weeks? I can barely management my household on that much money every 3 days (which still isn’t all that much). I’m no life coach, but I would say the very first thing you should be doing is reassessing your performance. Identify your strengths and your opportunities for growth. Have a conversation with the store manager (or if needed, the Owner/Operator) and highlight your strengths while finding out what you can do to address those opportunities. Explain that you know you are good at <strengths> and that you have to improve upon <opportunities>, but you’re not only willing but able to learn to capitalize on those strengths. Be honest and explain that you need as close to full time hours as possible, and find out what you need to do to get those. If that’s not possible, or they’re not willing for whatever reason to help you grow and give you more hours, then perhaps you should hunt down a new job.
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Menu is not dictated entirely. Some stores don't participate in sales/specials/promotions/seasonal items. Right now McRib is back - some stores aren't carrying it. Some stores have found they don't sell salads as well, so maybe they price those higher or don't carry the same variety.
Pricing is definitely up to the Owner/Operator, and depends on market. Most of the stores don't have a "Dollar Menu" anymore, or if they do it's very limited. They have a "Value Menu" where items are $1.19-$1.59.
However, franchisees can't "add" items that are not part of the McDonald's menu to their menu and cannot serve food "off menu" as a rule (like a Land-Sea-Air burger (Big Mac with a Fish Filet and a McChicken on the burger patties).
As far as decoration goes, there is a ton of leeway allowed. In Tucson, one of the stores was decorated like an expensive, rich guy's library. Shelves and books, dark floor, the vinyl seats were faux leather, a couple of large lounging armchairs and ottomans... A very impressive design. In Chicagoland, there are several theme restaurants, including a 1950s pastel diner look. However, I do believe that they must predominantly have the familiar Gold and Red in some way and all deviations are probably required to be approved by McDonald's Corp. but I'm not certain.
Here's a couple links with the more unique McDonald's restaurants including one that's a freaking AIRPLANE! http://www.sortrature.com/unique-mcdonalds-restaurants/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckroes/galleries/72157622406186208/
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