Arby's is shopped. Hopefully, BWW will be shopped once again. Thoughts?

[www.usatoday.com]

Arbys did not buy BWW. The investment company that owns Arbys is buying them. Investment companies are not like conglomerates. Their businesses are totally seperate with totally seperate management structures.

I stand corrected :-)

I heard BWW is Independently owned by a company very involved in Oregon State Univ. My friends daughter goes there, and when I took her to Wings for lunch, she told me, she could be wrong unless they recently sold and that's why it's no longer shopped....shades of Panera Bread.

Actually I stand corrected, Roark Capital actually bought BWW within the Arby's company (which is very rare). Right now BWW is a publicly traded company (BWLD). The largest current shareholder is Blackrock Capital at just under 10% with Vanguard next at 7%. It is not related to OSU at all.

Roark Capital owns a lot businesses. Among those are Anytime Fitness, Arby's, Carl's Jr/Hardees, Auntie Anne's, Cinnabon, Jimmy John's, Moe's, McAllister's, and Miller's Ale House. As you can see those companies are all over the board on being shopped. Most by different companies. Some have recently started being shopped. Some have recently stopped being shopped. I wouldn't associate the purchase, which hasn't even closed yet, with their shopping program.

The company is not related to OSU, the original owners child goes there and they are very active and donators to the Univ., .my friends knows them through the Univ., which has nothing to do with their business, now in the process of being sold. Same thing happened to Panera Bread having been sold to a huge German Co. which owns many business's. This (my opinion) hasn't helped Panera, as they seem to have gone downhill with no improvements, and bad service...coffee pots empty at 8:30AM. The German Co. owns the largest best coffee company in Europe, and the thought was they'll bring it to Panera, hasn't happened. Time will tell about BWW. They both need MS services, and it takes time to straighten everything out and good managership.

When I worked for Hardees -- and this was just one little branch owned by a woman in Georgia or Alabama, I dunno -- It was a mess -- We started out with an allowance of 32% food cost and 28% labor.

So, for the sales of the day, we could spend 28% + GM pay of that on the labor and when you total up our food, paper, and cleaning supplies they shouldn't run over 32% of sales. Well, the longer I worked for them, the lower it went. At last call, they wanted a food cost of 21.8% and a labor percentage of 15%+GM pay. They then allowed assistant GM pay AND GM pay and a 10% labor which was stupid... It was stressful -- and they were floating that assistant GM from store to store with one location eating the cost for paperwork purposes.

GAH thinking about the place is getting me angry haha. So.. many mornings we did between $2000-$3200 for breakfast over a 5 hour span. A $3200 day in 5 hours is about $640 an hour. The average of everyone works out to about $8.25 per person being paid out per hour.

With a 15% or a 10% they were only allowing either $64 or $96 to be spent on labor depending on which time period we were in -- sometimes we had a GM and Assistant, others we did not. We went through 8 just in my tenure there... myself included... So, at $64 that means they would allow a 7 or 8 person crew in the building and everyone must be breaking out for half hour break. At $96 then you could have an 11 or 12 person crew with breaks.

The building is designed for there to be 1) biscuit maker, 2) prep cook, 3) grill cook, 4) sandwich maker A 5) sandwich maker B, 6) Manager, 7)DT order taker and drink maker/coffee/shakes, 8) DT bagger of food, 9) DT cashier money taker and food hand out person, 10) front line cashier 1, 11) front line cashier 2) 12) front line bagger 13) cleaning, lobby, coffee 14) second shift leader or manager for relief and banking, 15) if you're lucky a second front line bagger 16) lunch time prep cook/changeover

Running a 16 person building with 10 people is fine, or even 8, but what ends up happening is you have allowance of 8 people so you're almost cut down to half from the get go, and then those people call in or get sick, or quit or show up late and on and on and on and although the manager has devised an excellent scheduled plan to get through the shift, someone is angry about decaf being empty and swears the manager on duty needs fired -_- and that they could run the show better than the people who showed up and have bills to pay. Blah. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And at night time? There will only be 2 people on shift after 7PM. Yep, TWO. A manager and a cook. The manager is expected to run drive through and the front cashier and the people outside wonder why it took 8 minutes to get to their order when the manager is helping cook, clean, and take orders on 3 cash registers... I digress

Good luck to BWW, though.

Has anyone see Jimmy John shops - I'd love do a few of those.

I have only seen JJ video shops and those are VERY sporadic.

MountainCacher - I had a very similar experience working with the local franchise for Burger King. Breakfast shift only had 2 people until 10 or 10:30. I ran the drive-thru and front counter; Oscar ran the kitchen. We were responsible to have all of the prep done for the entire day by 10am. Oscar and I could knock it out, but on Oscar's 1 day off (Wednesday), it was a nightmare. Heaven help us if the person at 10:30 didn't show up (or showed up late). That meant we couldn't take a lunch break that day (mind you, we started our shifts at 5am). Some people talk down about fast food workers, but Oscar was the hardest working person I had ever met. He deserved better.