I don't understand how it costs $4.35 in hourly labor to make a salad. I know you've got prep cooks, servers/cashiers, dishwashers, and managers. I assume some of these roles overlap in practice. If everyone makes $18 an hour on average, and there's five people on the clock, that's $90 an hour in labor. So, if they average 7 x $15 salads an hour, which seems rather low, shouldn't that cover labor costs at the franchise? This is oversimplified and makes many assumptions, that's obvious. I'm wondering what the missing piece is.
Labor burden is always more than the amount the worker is getting for gross pay. That $18 is more like $25 when you add unemployment insurance, benefits, etc. I agree the labor math here is really off, but there must be other factors.
