Fast Food Restaurant Staffing Case Study Woksheet

CASE STUDY

STAFFING A FAST FOOD RESTAURANT

You are the Store Manager of a fast food restaurant, and need to prepare a work schedule for employee staffing for the upcoming week.

Requirements

1. Build a workable schedule in Excel showing how many managers and employees are needed each hour from Sunday through Saturday for the counter/cashier or kitchen, setup, and cleanup, and justify your conclusions quantitatively (i.e., schedule based at least partly on forecasting formulas). You may exceed scheduled hours on a given day, but not by more than one hour. For scheduling purposes, the work week starts on Monday, and ends on Sunday. Show each day’s work schedule on a PowerPoint slide (there will be 7 slides for schedules).

1. Prepare a table showing how many hours each employee (not including managers) will be working for the upcoming week. Place this table on a PowerPoint slide.

NOTE: there are multiple good ways of staffing the restaurant, so there is no single “correct” answer.

Constraints

Employees work the counter/cashier stations, work in the kitchen, help set up the store before opening, and clean up after the store closes in the evening. Managers work counter/cashier and kitchen stations, basically functioning as “employees,” each day from 10 am through 2 pm (four hours daily), and from 5 pm through 8 pm (three hours daily). At other times they are engaged in management functions such as ordering inventory, accounting, scheduling, business forecasting, hiring new employees, store maintenance, etc.

Two employees are needed for one hour each to set up the restaurant in the morning before opening, starting at 9 am (the restaurant opens at 10 am), and two employees are needed to close the restaurant at night from 10 pm to 11 pm as part of the cleanup crew.

The restaurant is open for regular business from 10 am to 10 pm each day of the week. You have collected statistics over the last 8 weeks (a large enough sample size), and have reached the following conclusions about the current sales trend.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of a typical week’s sales which occur each day.

Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows the percentage of a typical day’s sales by hour.

Figure 2.

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Your sales forecast for next week is $38,350. Each counter/cashier staff employee can handle up to $200 per hour of work.

Do not schedule a “partial person” (e.g. “.7 of a person”) during any hour for employees or managers. If your sales forecast requires a “partial person” then round up. For example, if your schedule initially requires 1.3 people to work a particular hour, schedule 2 people. Assume that, during open hours, the same number of employees are needed in for kitchen positions as scheduled for the counter/cashier positions.

Each employee must have a 30 minute break if scheduled to work more than 4 hours (e.g., the employee will be on-site 8.5 hours if working from 9 am to 5:30 pm.) Schedule the break somewhere in the midst of the schedule, but not during peak periods of 11 am up to 1 pm, and 5 pm up to 7 pm.

The Store Manager has Wednesdays off and works from 9 am to 5:30 pm. The Assistant Manager has Mondays off and works from 4:30 pm to 11:30 pm. The Swing Manager works Mondays from 4:30 pm to 11:30 pm, Wednesdays from 9 am to 5:30 pm, has Thursdays off, and works all other days from 9 am to 5:30 pm.

Some employees want as many hours as possible (up to 40 weekly but no more than 8 hours daily), but none work a “split shift” (working, say, lunch, off for the afternoon, and then coming back in for dinner). Some employees are high school students, and can work only weekends, but no more than 8 hours daily. No employee may be scheduled for less than 2 consecutive hours at a time. Each employee must be “off” at least one full day each week. Attempt to give day shift employees the most hours possible. Some employees may work only weekends, or only one day per week.

Try to schedule employees to work across peak periods without either leaving or taking breaks. These peak periods are 11 am up to 1 pm, and 5 pm up to 7 pm.

Here are the names of the available employees. Not all employees need to be scheduled each week.

CASE STUDIES: CHAPTER 3 GRADING RUBRIC

Student name:

1. Build a workable schedule in Excel showing how many managers and employees are needed each hour from Sunday through Saturday for the counter/cashier or kitchen, setup, and cleanup, and justify your conclusions quantitatively (i.e., schedule based at least partly on forecasting formulas). You may exceed scheduled hours on a given day, but not by more than one hour. For scheduling purposes, the work week starts on Monday, and ends on Sunday. Show each day’s work schedule on a PowerPoint slide (there will be 7 slides for schedules). 10 pts.

1. Prepare a table showing how many hours each employee (not including managers) will be working for the upcoming week. Place this table on a PowerPoint slide. 6 pts.