Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Employee Planning
Along with rent, utilities, and supplies, we have to figure in employees. Without people to help bake the goods and simmer the soups and take the customers' money in exchange for the yummies, we would quickly go out of business.
We want to be open so people going home from work can pop in and get fresh out of the oven bread for dinner, and stay open late for the people who get off work on the swing shift (hoot shift people have lots of choices on their way home, ALL of the local bakeries open at 6:00 AM and are done with their bread baking by noon). No bakery in town is still making bread at 4:00 PM, and the people who swing by to buy bread after work are only going to be able to buy what's left over. The best, most popular breads are gone by then.
Not at Cracked Cauldron! Nope, we plan to open our doors at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and stay open until the late shift has had a chance to come for bread and soup - probably around 4:00 AM.
That means we will need people baking bread and preparing soup as early as noon. That means 2 8 hour shifts a day. We'll need at least 2 Soup Monkeys, 2 Bread Monkeys, 2 Coffee Monkeys , 6 Flour Monkeys, every day. Including office staff (Manager - who can also do secretary and HR, Bookkeeper. Purchasing), we'll need to hire 15 full time people, and 12 part-time people, just to start with.
That's a mind-boggling $830,592.00 a year in wages. If that's supposed to be 1/4 of our gross income, then we'll have to make $3,322,368.00 a year to be profitable.
I am suitably stunned. As "Moneybags", I only make $16,000.00 a year, and my house will only offer loan collateral up to $200,000.00.
To fit inside our budget, we will have to have fewer employees, be open fewer hours, and maybe offer fewer items upon opening.
Don't worry, we'll still have frequent fresh cookies - cookie dough can be made in large batches and baked in 15 minutes for oven fresh delights.
All right, so, we adjust.
Soup and Flour Monkeys can be combined. Bread and Coffee Monkeys can be combined. All Monkeys do clean up. We'll combine Manager with Purchasing,and hire an outside CPA firm to do bookkeeping, wages, taxes. That brings our total employee expenses down to $299,520.00, for total annual expense of $1,198,080.00. Well, that shaved off the need to earn two million a year.
Eek.
I hope my math is as bad as I think it is.
We can work up to the top goal.
I wonder how long it will take us to get there?
