Chapter 12 - Labor Cost

Labor cost and its relationship to survival | Two major considerations in control of personnel | Theory of labor cost control | Eight basic reasons for high labor costs | Management’s goal is profit | Employer recruitment and selection

Labor cost in the restaurant field has risen to the point where increased sales can no longer offset the increased cost of labor. Over a period of ten years this cost has increased from an average of 25 per­cent to nearly 30 percent of sales. Payroll control is the most discussed subject in the restaurant industry today. The concern is not only for the immediate problem of controlling payroll now, but also the readily visible danger of further sharp increases because of the increasing growth of unionism, increased competition for labor by members of the hospitality field and by competitive industries in the labor market.

In the future, survival of both the chain and independent food serv­ice operators will depend primarily on their ability to control the cost of labor. Unfortunately many of the restaurant operators continue to rely on a periodic check of the relationship of cost to sales to control payroll. If the cost is less, no greater, or slightly greater in proportion to sales, they stop at that point. If the labor cost exceeds the previous period, they demand an immediate reduction of these labor costs.

The significant number of failures and mediocre operations silently testifies that this is an inconsistent and an illogical procedure to follow. The control of personnel involves two major considerations: control of the cost of personnel in terms of total payroll dollars and control of the number of people employed in an operation. The first considera­tion may be regarded as a dollars-spent approach; the second, number-of-employees approach. The successful operator utilizes both methods by determining the cost and number of man hours required to produce a given amount of sales, by setting up basic performance standards for each employee and each department, and by providing suitable checks and limits of supervisory power so that all the employees function effectively, economically, together, for their own good and for the ultimate good of the food service operation with which they have identified themselves.

Several highly successful operators that were interviewed in the Can Manufacturers Management Study presented an important concept of labor cost control. In essence, they stated that no one can control labor cost until he realizes that he is not hiring people but purchasing a potential to do work.

This theory is significant in two respects. First, each operator must determine what work is required. Is this job necessary? Can it be done by another employee? If it isn't necessary or if the work can be done by another employee, added potential to do work is not needed. Sec­ond, if the job is necessary and an additional employee is needed, the prospective employee must have the potential to do the work well. The qualifications of the prospective employee must match the specifica­tions of the job. Stated another way, the only conceivable reason to hire an additional employee is that certain work must be done and he will be able to do this work well.

There are eight basic reasons for high labor costs. A study of these reasons, keeping in mind that we purchase ability to do work—not people, will materially aid a good operator in controlling his labor costs. These eight basic reasons are:

1.  Failure to obtain a sufficient number of applicants for the posi­tion open.

2.  Poor selection of applicants.

3.  Impulsive, unplanned hiring and consequent over-staffing.

4.  Poor employee work habits—lack of proper training, no follow through on instructions given to make the work more produc­tive; inadequate supervision.

5.  Poor scheduling of employees. No knowledge or use of wage, hour, position or sales schedules as they relate to employees. No performance standards for departments and employees.

6.  Poor layout of kitchen and dining room equipment and facilities.

7.  Lack of labor saving equipment.

8.  No regular detailed system of analyzing and using data to con­trol payroll.

In attempting the reduction of labor costs an operator cannot begin by haphazardly attacking a particular cost that looks important at the time because it was only recently noticed. A labor cost control system must be an organized, planned, frontal attack on all the causes for high costs. Here are the rules with which one successful operator makes his labor cost control system work for him:

1.  Determine what work must be done and what jobs are or will be open so that your restaurant will operate successfully.

(a) Is this work necessary? What is the basic purpose of the job?

(b) Is there a better way to accomplish this purpose?

(c) Can you eliminate unnecessary parts of the job?

(d) Can you combine or distribute various elements of the job to another job?

(e) Can you simplify the job so it can be done by a lower priced employee or so it can be done in less time?

(f) Can it be done earlier, later, faster, by different people or with different equipment, layout, methods, materials or inventories?

(g) Can it be done by machinery instead of labor; is it cheaper to purchase or to process and manufacture?

2.  Once the determination is made that a job or series of jobs are necessary, set up a basic manning table.

(a) Personally check your assistants, supervisors, department heads, etc. to determine which are worth keeping.

(b) Ask your supervisors to fill out cards on each job within their department indicating the jobs that are necessary to the operation and the employees that are most capable of filling these jobs.

(c) Consider each job as a single unit having its own particular work schedule and area or station.

(d) Name and number each necessary job.

(e) Make it a rule that new employees can be hired only if one of the numbered positions are open.

(f) Determine minimum and maximum wage levels for each position.

(g) For control and budget purposes, classify and identify each job within a department. Payroll cost breakdown can be accomplished in many ways depending on the size and type of operation. A departmental classification of jobs may be done by listing your employees under the section or department in which they work. For example:

Receiving, Storing, and Issuing
Receiving clerk
Other receiving help

Preparation
Vegetable cleaners
Salad preparation workers
Butchers, etc.

Processing
Cooks
Bakers

Service
Counter girls
Waitresses
Bus boys
Head waiters

Junior Administrative
Bookkeeper
Office help
Cashiers
Food checkers

Administrative
Manager
Day assistant manager
Night manager
Food Production Supervisor

(h) Determine fixed and variable positions within each department. A fixed position is one that must be filled regardless of decrease in sales volume; a variable position is one that can be eliminated if sales decrease.

(i) Organize your executive control through people occupying fixed positions.

(j) Determine production and/or performance standards for all variable positions. How many customers should be served per waitress? How many sales per cashier? How many covers per dishwasher?

(k) Assemble performance standards in table form to show number of employees needed for various volumes of work.

(l) Check to see that the number of employees needed in any one department is not based only on peak load require­ments.

3. Set up job analysis and job specifications for each position.

(a) Job analysis serves management by organizing and analyz­ing the details of the job—purpose of the job, requirements of the job, methods, tools, equipment used.

(b) Job specifications describe in detail the physical, mental, and emotional demands on the individual doing that par­ticular work.

(c) One is used to analyze the job, the other to fit the proper person to the job.

4. Purchase the potential to do the work.

(a) Install a detailed system of hiring, selecting, training, motivating, and maintaining a productive labor force. The complete details of personnel management will be dis­cussed in the fourth section of the management study.

5. Set up proper schedules for employees.

(a) Position or station schedules—a schedule of employees listing name and station of work for each day. This is used by the employees in an operation that rotates workers to different stations; by management to check how effectively each station is covered during the day and under varying volumes of sales.

(b) Hour schedules. This is the common type schedule used in many operations. It is composed of a list of employee names and their respective hours of work during each day of the week. Unless this schedule has incorporated enough payroll statistics so that cost per man hour can be related to sales per man hour, it will have no value except to the employee.

(c) Wage schedule. On this type of schedule the first row con­tains a list of the employee names classified according to the departments in which they work. The second row con­tains a list of their daily wage rates or hourly wage rates if they are part-time workers. The succeeding seven rows (if this is a seven-day operation) are headed by the days of the week each row represents and contains the total daily wage of each employee for that day. If this wage schedule is used in conjunction with a daily sales figure, manage­ment will be able not only to judge the relative productivity of labor per day—that is, compare cost of labor to sales for each day—but also to check labor productivity by de­partmental standards and, if necessary, determine cost per man hour with sales per man hour. Where proportionally large increases of labor cost occur because of slow days or slack periods within any one day, days off and reliefs can be adjusted on the work schedules or part-time (and occasionally full-time) workers, dis­missed to make labor more productive.

6.  Several restaurant operators have added the pre-cost concept to steps outlined above. They have evolved a system for their operation to forecast their sales volume, and on the basis of the sales forecast, forecast their costs for that period.

(a) On the basis of past sales records, general, and local eco­nomic conditions, forecast your sales volume by months one year in advance.

(b) The week before the month becomes current, divide the month into weekly forecasts.

(c) Refine your next weeks forecast by considering unusual local events, holidays, weather, and other special items that may affect next week's business.

(d) Set up a standard payroll budget for each department in your operation for one month in advance.

(e) On the basis of your next week's sales forecast, refine that week's payroll budget and set up a system of weekly and
daily reporting of payroll cost by each department.

(f) Compare actual costs with budgeted costs. Any excess be­ yond budgeted costs requires a detailed explanation. The excess represents the amount of money that might have been saved if each department stayed within its budget.

(g) Find out when and why each excessive cost fluctuation occurred. The cost may have occurred because of overtime hours, hiring of part-time employees or extras to replace those on vacation or those absent for the day. Or the excess costs may have occurred because the operation stayed open too long (check the closing point of an operation, section one of the management study) or the fact that the number of employees needed was determined by peak load require­ments. Whatever the reason, when you eliminate the cause, you will eliminate the cost.

Many restaurant operators may feel that the pre-cost pre-control system cannot be followed and that it is too much work. But every day these same managers or owners must spend money for food and labor. The reason is that they anticipate sales. The reason they spend a certain amount of money for food or labor is that they forecast a certain amount of sales. Since a forecast of sales and cost is made one way or the other in any operation, it is obviously better to design a detailed, organized system of forecasting based on actual sales and cost records than to depend on intuition or a hunch.

The six rules described above can decrease the labor costs and in­crease the profits of any food service operation because they eliminate the basic causes of high payroll costs. To make these rules effective, two others should be mentioned. First, the ideas that apply to a particu­lar operation must be studied by the individual operator and put to use. An idea or improvement is useless unless it is used. Secondly, the oper­ator must continuously check to see that the improvements stay in effect. There should be a complete follow-through.

For example, one cause of high labor cost may be that the number of employees required was based on peak loads. This cause, like the others, should be analyzed, checked to see if it applies to your own operation, and followed through until that particular cause of high labor cost is eliminated.

To illustrate the analysis and application of this idea, consider a restaurant that has its peak period at lunch. During this period 12 to 1:30 it serves 225 customers. From 1:30 until 2:00 it serves 25 cus­tomers. At two o'clock this restaurant closes for three hours—it opens for a small dinner business that begins at 5:00.

The idea that the number of employees required in any department should not be determined solely on peak loads can be illustrated in any department that contains variable positions—the service department (waiters, waitress, bus boys), the preparation department, and the cooking department. As an example, we will select the dishwashing department.

Since the restaurant serves 225 people in an hour and a half, it will serve, on an average, 75 customers every half hour during its peak period. If this same operation averaged six dishes per customer, the dishwashing department will clean 75 times six, or 455 dishes every half hour.

Looking at our investment requirements, if we bought about eight dozen of each dish item, we would have based our investment in china on peak loads. This in turn means that we must have enough dish­washing employees to supply our guests with clean dishes, glasses, and silverware at the rate of 455 for every half hour, because a little after the first half hour we will be out of clean dishes.

With this situation we will probably need three dishwashing em­ployees: one to scrape and pre-flush dirty dishes, one to stack and load the machine, and one to remove clean dishes, stack on clean dish table and transport clean dishes to the area of use. Moreover, if we pur­chased a machine capable of washing 455 items of china, silver and glassware every half hour, the three dishwashers would be through with their work about 2:00 and we would have to put them to work doing something else.

However, if we increased our investment in dishes and glassware from eight to 15 dozen of each item, we could buy a smaller machine and base our labor requirements on the total operating period instead of peak load period. The peak load is 225 customers from 12:00 to 1:30 and 25 customers from 1:30 to 2:00. Consequently, from 12:00 to 5:00 P.M. we would have to take care of 250 customers times six items per customer or 1500 items. Since we may want to give the operator time to change the tank water, clean out the dishwashing ma­chine and prepare for the evening peak period, we might want him to be through by 4:00 with the dishwashing. This gives us four hours— from 12:00 to 4:00 to wash 1500 items or about 375 items per hour. On an average, a 20x20 rack holds 25 items and since 375 divided by 25 is 15, the capacity of the machine should be about 15 to 20 racks per hour. But one operator can certainly handle 15 to 20 racks per hour. Therefore we not only can save by purchasing a smaller dish­washing machine but also eliminate at least one dishwasher.

One successful restaurant operator in California solved a similar problem without the mathematics outlined here. He had six dishwashers that were being paid a dollar an hour or a total of $288.00 a week. The dishwashers were usually through at 2:30 and the manager had to run around finding something for them to do.

When he got tired of doing this, he dismissed one dishwashing em­ployee. The dishwashers were now getting through with their work about 3:00. The manager reflected on this situation and decided to dismiss another dishwasher and raise the remaining employees' wages 10^ an hour. The dishwashers were getting through with their work around 3:40. The manager finally decided to make one of the remain­ing four dishwashers the head dishwasher, give him a raise of 20^ an hour, dismiss another dishwasher and increase the pay of the remain­ing two dishwashers another 10^ an hour. The head dishwasher was now paid $1.30 an hour and the two dishwashers, $1.20 an hour. Their total wage for a 48 hour week was $177.60, a savings of over $110 a week or $5,720 annually!

Management's Goal is Profit

Toward this end, successful management seeks to eliminate exces­sive and unnecessary costs.

To reduce the high cost of labor turnover, effective methods of employee recruitment and selection must be used. Go out after the kind of person you want. Positive recruitment usually gets better re­sults than the kind that waits for the girl to appear and ask for a job. Stouffer's Restaurant's, with one of the finest personnel staffs in the country, go after the kind of waitress they want with this kind of a newspaper advertisement:

WAITRESSES 18-25 to  train for permanent positions  as STOUFFER GIRLS in our new restaurant. Experience not necessary, salary while training. High school graduates preferred. Meals, uni­forms provided. No Sunday work.

Note that in this ad "experience is not necessary." Stouffer's have a systematic training program for waitresses and would prefer to train waitresses in their own way of doing things. Waitresses or carhops who have learned poor work habits are harder to train than inexperienced girls. They must first "unlearn" the wrong ways of doing things.

Note also that the job title is "Stouffer Girls," which implies a job that is a cut above the usual waitress position. Permanency, no Sunday work, meals and uniforms furnished, are listed as added inducements to attract the girls wanted.

Restaurants usually find that at least some of the personnel should be middle-aged or older to give stability to the place. Many restaurants have only middle-aged waitresses and a few with excellent turnover rates have only waitresses with children and families.

Points on Hiring

Every time you hire a new employee you are betting with yourself that he or she will be an asset to your restaurant. You make a predic­tion that your choice is good. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. How can you increase the odds in your favor?

Like any gambler, you would like a sure thing. But this is impos­sible, since there are many factors in the new employee's life over which you have no control. Still, there are many things you can do during the initial employment interview which will help to identify useful employees. Let's consider some of the ideas now used by suc­cessful restaurateurs around the country.

A Boston restaurant operator is very much interested in whether or not an applicant for short-order cook or fry cook has had radio train­ing in the military services. He finds that such people are ear-trained— that they are more sensitive to picking up orders placed by waiters, waitresses or kitchen supervisors. They make fewer mistakes because they are alert to sound and are trained to organize sounds.

A New York City operator arranges to observe the alertness of prospective executive employees by inviting them to wait for him in the dining room.

"Order yourself anything you like," he tells the candidate, "and I'll be down in a few minutes."

He then watches the applicant to see what chair he chooses. Does the person pick a table where he can observe the entire section of the dining room? Does he sit with his back to the wall so that he can see what is going on? According to this operator, his surreptitious obser­vations of candidates have paid off in better supervisory employees.

An operator of a Florida health resort says that he has hit upon the critical question to ask an applicant. This question, he says, tells him at once whether a particular girl is suited for waitress or other guest contact work, or whether she would be better placed in the back of the house. The question he asks is "Were you born happy?" If the girl breaks into a smile, he feels she has a sense of humor and will be gen­erally pleasant in her relations with patrons.

Age limits have proved important to many restaurant operators. The Soreno Hotel Dining Room in St. Petersburg wants older, mature women for hostesses and waitresses. These ladies mix well with the hotel guests, who usually fall in the over-fifty age bracket. At the same time, this dining room uses young busboys and young roll-and-relish servers. The thinking is that the hotel's guests like to feel themselves in the competent hands of older waitresses but like the touch of youth too.

Drive-in operators catering to a young crowd usually use young girls—but not always. Where there is a problem with rowdyism, older married girls—perhaps those who do not fill out the abbreviated cos­tumes quite so well—help to set a more conservative atmosphere. It can be said that the customers themselves select the waitresses, deter­mining the correct age group and personality type.

A Chicago operator has a special technique for spotting prospective waitresses who would fail to be alert and fast on their feet. He asks a waitress applicant to follow him upstairs to his office. On the way up, he walks fast, then glances back over his shoulder to see if the girl is at his heels or has lagged behind.

This same operator does as some of the soap ads suggests. He gives them the "smell" test. If they have body odor when applying for a job, he assumes they would certainly have it on the job.

The distance that an applicant lives away from the restaurant often determines if the person will get to work on time and will remain with the restaurant very long. Some operators find that any persons living more than an hour's ride from work soon look for other employment.

Each food service job requires some special skills, body or person­ality traits. Probably as important as anything else for the pot and pan job is the resistance to skin infection. People well suited by tempera­ment, intelligence, and physical stamina often fail on this job because of skin infections.

Employ people who have a natural resistance to skin infections. To help avoid infections, provide vaseline or special skin lotions. Have the pot and pan man apply these to the entire backs of fingers and hands.

Better yet, if your place is big enough, install a pot and pan wash­ing machine. Or use live steam to clean pots and pans and save the hands.

Where the job is not too heavy, use women rather than men. Women are characteristically more patient than men and are more likely to enjoy routine jobs. Women are more careful than men on dish ma­chines and are being used in a few places on the pot and pan sink. One study showed that women dish machine operators broke fewer dishes than men. Where some of the work is too heavy for women, put in a mixed crew.

Some operators have observed that overweight people make poor cooks, especially short-order cooks. They cannot move around the kitchen equipment easily. Usually they cannot react fast enough to keep pace with the work and their tolerance to heat is low. A good short-order cook, they say, is a particular type, usually thin and wiry, unusually alert and fast moving.

All of these methods used for selecting employees are what might be called unscientific. What might work well for one manager might not work at all for another. Some managers who are autocratic and dic­tatorial will find that only submissive employees will do a good job for them. Other managers who are paternalistic may help dependent per­sons to blossom forth in the work situation.

Psychological tests for identifying well adjusted, happy employees are just beginning to be used with success for selecting waitresses. Van de Kamps, one of the best operated drive-in and service restaurant chains in the country, is now using a test developed by Ward Jenssen, management consultant of Los Angeles. Van de Kamp management has had little problem with turnover but asked for the test with the hope of improving customer relations. Even so, savings have resulted. Van de Kamp officers estimate that it costs about $50 to train a waitress. Dr. Jenssen, the psychologist who developed the test, figures that savings should run about $10,000 a year.

The manner in which the test was developed is interesting in itself. In interviews with restaurant managers of Van de Kamps, four key factors in waitress performance were evolved—1) attention to detail, 2) speed of work, 3) effect on co-workers, and 4) customer service.

Eighty waitresses were rated by a scale developed around these four factors. They were divided into two groups, those who were outstand­ing or well above average in performance and those who were average or poor in performance. These waitresses were then given a series of psychological tests covering temperament, personality and general intelligence.

Finally, a single test which is a measure of temperament was se­lected. This test—the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey—was found to distinguish between the girls who had been rated in the high group and the girls who had been rated in the low group. Of course, no psychological test can be expected to differentiate com­pletely between "good" and "bad" employees. With this test Dr. Jens-sen discovered it had these results.

Of those selected, 75 percent would be in the "Desirable" group, 25 percent would be in the "Undesirable" group. Of those rejected, 11 percent would be in the "Desirable" group, 89 percent would be in the "Undesirable" group.

Incidental to his study, the psychologist found that the major causes for waitress failure were that they were either too slow or that they were highly active ("manic" in the psychologist's terminology). Other reasons for job failure were that some of the girls were critical or intolerant of others, hypersensitive about themselves and subject to occasional moods of depression.

Further analysis of this test is being made. It can be expected that the test itself will be improved to make it even more sharp in identify­ing applicants for the job of waitress who will be satisfactory on the job or who will not work out well.

Use of an application form as a screening device and as a perma­nent personnel record can aid in successful hiring. It should include questions that give management information that has a practical value in identifying those persons who will fit into the operation. Use a heavy card application form which can be handled easily and readily filed.

The form shown on page 170 is an example of what can be developed. Each item on the sample form has been found useful in some restaurant.

Several of the items bear on the problem of the applicant's stability —number of dependents, marital status, car and home ownership, and business ownership.

Items 16 and 17 having to do with bonding and arrests would sel­dom be answered honestly but may be of some psychological value in making management's interest in such things known to the applicant.

Item 20 regarding the distance the applicant lives away from the job has proved critical for several restaurants. People being more than an hour's ride from the restaurant do not stay long regardless of other factors.

Item 14—"list your physical disabilities"—may provide an oppor­tunity for the employer. Partially disabled employees often are more stable and motivated to do good work than unimpaired persons. No job requires all of a person's faculties to perform. Hire faculties that are needed.

The back of the employment application is a record of the appli­cant's recent employment. Chances are an employee who moves about frequently will continue to do so. The best prediction of what a per­son will do in the future is what he has done in the past.

FRONT

EMPLOYMENT APPLICATION The Jolly Far Drive-In
	1. Type of work desired: 1 choice                                          2 choice
	2. Print Last Name                  First                  Middle					4. Social Security No.
	3. Address:         Street            City           County        State					5. Phone No. where     you may be reached
	6. Un case of EMERGENCY notify:     Name         Relationship             Street        City         County      State           Phone No.
	7. Your Height	Weight	Sex		Single          Married          Widowed
					No. of Dependents
	8. Date of Birth: Month                            Day                              Year
	9. Do you own a car? Yes              No            Do you own a home? Yes               No
	10. Do you have a health card? Yes              No
	11. Veteran? Yes       No        Branch                                Dates               Last rating
	12. Do you object to split shifts? Yes             No
	13. Have you ever been employed by this company? Yes ____ No ____ Position _______       From                       To                        Reason for discharge
	14. List your physical disabilities: ____________________________________________
	15. Encircle Highest Grade Completed        Grade School   High School   College        1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8       1 2 3 4        1 2 3 4			16. Have you ever been denied a bond? __
				17. Have you ever been tried in court? ___
	18. List special skills: ___________________________________________   ____________________________________
	19. Hobbies: ________________________                      ________________________			20. How many miles from your home to here? _______________
	21. Do you or have you ever owned your own business? Yes ____ No ____        Name of business                             Location                                  Type

BACK

	22. Briefly fill in job experiences:
	Last Job: 1. Employer	Rate of Pay:	Special Information
	Address	How long did you work there?
	Kind of Business	When did you leave?
	Why did you leave?
	What was your job called?
	Tell what you did on the job:
	2. Employer	Rate of Pay:	Interviewers’ Statements & Comments
	Address	How long did you work there?
	Kind of Business	When did you leave?
	Why did you leave?
	What was your job called?
	Tell what you did on the job:

Do not expect, however, to hire highly motivated, well trained em­ployees. You must train and motivate them. It is easy to fire, but hard to replace.

Every time we fire a person we have failed! We failed either in making a wise selection or in training and motivating that person.

Employee Scheduling Cuts Labor Costs

A food service operation in the South doing a business of $80,000 a month recently reduced its dishwashing crew by 20 people. Wages paid each warewasher was only $25 a week, but over the year this reduction in personnel cut the payroll by over $25,000.

When the Hilton people took over the Plaza Hotel in New York they reduced the dishroom crew by 40 percent—at a savings of over $500 a week.

The principles of effective work scheduling apply to the two-man hot dog stand and the hamburger heaven as well as to the diner and the restaurant doing a million dollars a year in business. These prin­ciples can be simply stated:

1.  Determine standards of production per man hours. How many covers can be washed by one man working one hour? How many salads can be made by a pantry girl per hour? How many pies can be pro­duced by a baker per hour? These standards must be set for your own operation, since layout, style of operation, and equipment will be unique for each establishment.

2.  Try to spread the work evenly throughout the hours of opera­tion. Instead of having a crew large enough to handle all work during
the rush hours, spread all work evenly throughout the day. Pre-
preparation of food and dishwashing are good places to start.

3.  Adjust employee schedules to fit the work load left. After the work has been spread as evenly as possible, there will still remain peaks and valleys in the production schedule.

Since few restaurants operate a straight eight-hour day, employees must be scheduled to fit the work load as it rises and falls throughout the operating day. Scarcely a food operation exists which cannot re­duce its payroll by at least 10 percent by rescheduling employees to fit the ups and downs of the work flow. Instead of having one or two crews reporting together at particular times, schedule the individuals as needed.

Here is the schedule of cooks as used in one food operation:

Breakfast Cook                              6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Roast Cook                                7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
then                                       5:45 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Chef                                           8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
then                                6 p.m. until finish of work
Swing Cook                                scheduled on days
                           and substitutes for cook's day off.
Pantry workers (two)
One on at                              6:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
                                             5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
One on at                              7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
                                             6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The swing or relief cook is scheduled at only the busiest hours when he is not relieving the regular cooks. He is paid extra for the inconven­ience caused him by the odd-hour scheduling. Of course, with some union contracts such an arrangement is not possible.

4.   Fit in part-time employees as needed. Part-time employees can be good or bad depending upon the way they are treated, their skill and training, and their own personal circumstances. Training and morale is largely dependent upon management. Most jobs, if sched­uled tightly, can use one or more part-time employees to fill in during rush periods or to fill in at the end of the operating day.

Theoretically, it should be possible to spread the work out evenly throughout the day and schedule full-time employees to do the work. Practically, such a schedule seldom is possible. Where split-shifts are not permitted by contract or custom, two half-time employees are often more effective than one full-time employee.

Tight scheduling requires adjustments for seasonal peaks and val­leys as well. Schedule maintenance tasks and vacations, when possible, for slow periods. Often, one week of vacation can be taken during a summer low spot, another week during a winter slow period.

5.   Small operators should schedule employees for multiple jobs. The dish machine operator can be placed in charge of all kitchen sani­tation under the kitchen manager. If he is of average intelligence, the dish machine operator may also be the storeroom clerk, general main­tenance man, or any of the other jobs around a small restaurant that do not require full-time personnel.

Give the multiple-job man an appropriate title if you want to get best performance. The title "utility man" is better than "dishmachine operator." "Sanitation superintendent" may be stretching a point, but has been used effectively in some restaurants. Titles are important for the self-respect of the job holder and as an indication of the job con­tent. Try to give the most prestige-sounding title consistent with the actual tasks performed.

Be certain that the new employee knows that he is responsible for all of the duties which go with his job. Many an employee hired as a cook finds himself doing a porter's work. Resentment in such a case is natural. The same person may well be happy to do a porter's work, however, if such work is assigned to him when hired.

A large part of labor cost in a restaurant is directly related to the selection and scheduling of employees. Employees who are well equipped physically and in personality to do the work of the restau­rant make the job of management comparatively easy. Scheduling employees and planning work right makes possible maximum produc­tivity and high morale. The usual "idle" or "working" time which may approach 50 percent of available labor can be drastically reduced to the benefit of everyone.

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