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In reply to the discussion: A Chick-fil-A owner shocked his employees in the best way after shutting down for renovations [View all]They pick the site, they build, they outfit the building. You pay them rent and 50% of the profits. You keep the rest. You also don't do other things--this is your job and your one business--and you are limited in the number of storefronts you can "own."
It's like having a franchise in a mall--you rent the site and pay the franchiser. (CFA started in a mall.)
Increase wages, that decreases profits, I'd assume.
But if you do a good job with the site then you do a good business. The system keeps it lean, and CFA controls the brand, and I've never seen one where the owner/manager wasn't actively on-site on a frequent basis. Since he only has a few storefronts at most, it's not like he's the CEO of a franchise with 15 or 20 storefronts. That gives him time to keep each one he has in good shape. (Spot checks from HQ are also done. I was sitting eating lunch in a CFA and a man in his late 20s asked if I had a moment, showed me his CFA ID, and asked if I could answer a number of questions. He showed up unannounced, inspected the place, talked to employees, and now was spending a couple of days doing nothing but interviewing customers to find out where their zip codes, how often they ate their, average check, impression of the manager, staff, food, cleanliness, etc., etc. He had an iPad and his data wasn't just going into his report, it entered the company's database in real time.)
The "preaching" also tells the franchisee to respect and maintain decent wages/conditions for the employees. So their turnover is a lot lower than other fast food franchises. The ones I've been to have also all focused on hiring kids and other part-timers. They could hire full-time workers, give them crap schedules with big gaps, but they don't.
And while I've seen other restaurants that hired high-school students work them 30 or 40 or 50 hours a week, the local CFAs really keep their hours down to no more than 20. Come end of the year, when some students are going to quit, they hire summer replacements a few weeks early so that by the time final exams hit the new staff are trained. The seniors get reduced hours, if they want them, during dead days and finals. The scheduling's a nightmare because suddenly instead of perhaps 15 part-timers there are 20.