Guidance on Staffing Levels for Wrap Shop

[Sam_Halcyon]

Hi all

Does anyone here have experience of scheduling and/or staffing requirements for a cafe, sandwich shop, fast-service takeaway (e.g. Subway) business?

I am putting together a business plan for a Mexican themed wrap shop and I'm having a little trouble identifying the size of the workforce that's likely to be required.

I've outlined 5 members of staff per day to begin with would cover opening times of 11am - 8pm (along with a shift manager and general manager) but what I want to know is how many members of staff should I be looking to recruit to comfortably cover 5 positions each day, 7 days a week.

Shifts are likely to be 4.5 - 5 hours max.

Once the business is up and running I suppose I'd get a better idea of demand and popular times etc. but is there a general rule of thumb I can go by to begin with?

Thanks
Sam

 

[Newchodge]

5 members of staff And a shift manager And a general manager for 1 shop, open 63 hours/week. Are you expecting the shift manager to work 9 hours/day, 7 days/week? Don't you need 2 shift managers? Do you need a general manager as well?

 

[fisicx]

Or maybe three shift managers to cover training, leave, sickness and other absences.

Local Mexican place seems to have loads of staff and always advertising for staff. It’s a high churn industry.

Mate who owns a csfe says if he needs more staff he always recruits extra as half never even turn up for work.

 

[Sam_Halcyon]

@Newchodge I should've made myself more clear.

My proposed staffing strategy for each day is as follows:

2 shift managers (5 hours each, 1 morning, 1 afternoon - to cover 30 mins before and after opening)
5 staff to fulfill orders. Start times staggered throughout day to provide adequate cover (more over lunch period for obvious reasons)

So that's 7 people required each day. Can't be the same 7 people every day, and taking into account sickness, leave, training other absences as mentioned above, I'm wondering what adequate staffing levels on the books would look like to keep things running. Double up the number of staff reuiqred each day? Triple?

@fisicx - my initial feelings were churn rate would be high, and perhaps I'd be recruiting regularly to keep up. Who knows?

Like I say, my proposed strategy is just what feels right, but reality might dictate it's off and I need more/less. It's an understanding of overall number of employees I should be looking to recruit to keep things going that I'm looking for.

 

[IanSuth]

remember each member of staff gets 28 days holiday per year, that is 5.6 weeks so nearly 11%, with 5 serving staff every other week on average 1 will be on holiday, remember to factor that in to your req's

 

[Drax35]

Mate who owns a csfe says if he needs more staff he always recruits extra as half never even turn up for work.

One thousand times this! I'm so glad someone taught me this when I was recruiting for a Subway store years ago. Called 30 hires, 20 turned up for training, 12 were still with us for opening day and by the end of the first week we were down to 7 or 8.

A good rule of the thumb I used to staff stores (can't remember if this is an official Subway thing or not), was to aim for 20 "units" (subs or salads) per staff hour during peak periods. It's fine to do more, or less, but below 10 your staff will get bored and above 30, they'll get stressed.