Who pays fast food workers best, and who pays worst?
Just how much money are the people serving you your fast food meal getting paid?
And what actions have these companies taken, or been forced to take, in order to improve
the wages of their workers?
Here's what you need to know about the money fast food workers make.
McDonald's might just be the most iconic fast food chain on the planet, and could make a
decent claim to being one of history's most recognizable brands.
Nowadays, the company employs around 210,000 workers in 36,000 locations around the world.
But how much are those workers getting?
According to the employment review site Glassdoor, the average base pay for a McDonald's worker
at the lowest level is $9 per hour.
This range is variable, however, mostly because fast food wages tend to be decided by franchise
owners rather than the corporations themselves.
The average total pay comes to about $19,000 per year.
Of course, that wage increases as you work your way up the ranks; shift managers make
an average of $11 per hour, while some department managers make an average of $12 per hour.
Recently, McDonald's made headlines after it finally relented and abandoned its long
battle against campaigns aimed at raising the minimum wage.
The company announced that it will cease lobbying to oppose minimum wage increases at any level,
and they will not, quote, "participate in association advocacy efforts designed to defeat
wage increases."
For campaigners such as the "Fight for $15" movement, this was nothing less than a huge
victory.
As the biggest rival to McDonald's, it probably won't come as a huge surprise to find that
Burger King's wages aren't too dissimilar.
According to Glassdoor, the average hourly pay for a Burger King cashier is $9.
Shift and assistant managers, however, can make as much as $11 per hour, and operations
managers can even make as much as $67,580 per year, which isn't a bad amount by any
measure.
Burger King has been no stranger to controversy based around the way it treats and pays its
workers.
In April 2015, the company's co-founder David Edgerton suggested that a rise in the minimum
wage to $15 could kill off the dollar menu.
He said,
"What's going to happen, really, is you're going to see less and less of the quick and
dirty kind of places...You're not going to get these dollar hamburgers anymore that both
Burger King and McDonald's had.
I see a lot of $10 hamburgers arriving on the scene."
Like McDonald's and BK, Glassdoor suggests that entry-level workers at KFC make an average
base pay of $9 per hour.
Shift supervisors can make around $10 per hour while assistant managers appear to make
an average of $12 per hour.
Some reports even have restaurant general managers making an average of $14 per hour,
but that figure comes from only a handful of reports.
Pretty standard, but KFC has had a special role to play in the fight against low wages,
albeit unwittingly.
Naquasia LeGrand is a KFC employee from Brooklyn who became one of the faces of the Fight for
$15 movement after being recruited by union activists to join the campaign.
LeGrand appeared on The Colbert Report to promote the movement, telling him,
"I worked at two KFCs and still couldn't make it.
Still couldn't see at least $300 a week.
I did two KFCs."
Glassdoor has Subway's average base pay as $9 per hour (sound familiar?) with store managers
appearing to make an average of $12 per hour, and shift leaders and assistant managers making
around $10 per hour.
But the real difference between this company and other fast food chains is that Glassdoor
users have actually reported considerable additional pay for Subway employees.
According to the site, the average additional pay for a Subway worker is $311, with some
coming from bonuses and some from tips.
Those bonuses seem a little less shiny, however, when you consider that, according to a 2014
CNN analysis of data collected by the Department of Labor, Subway leads the nation in wage
violations and employee underpayment.
According to the report, franchisees have had to reimburse Subway workers over $3.8
million dollars over the years, as part of around 17,000 different violations.
Glassdoor reports that Wendy's employees make an average base hourly pay of, again, $9.
Shift supervisors seem to make $11 per hour, shift managers get an average of $10 per hour,
and assistant managers hit an average of $12 per hour.
Reports also suggest that restaurant general managers tend to hover around $56,000 per
year.
Considering Wendy's locations seem to be so comfortable with paying its workers around
$9 to $12 per hour, it does seem curious that, in 2018, the company's CEO blamed their low
sales figures on income inequality in America.
It's a tough pill to swallow from a CEO who, according to Eater, makes $55 for every dollar
one of his employees makes.
"There's more to life than a little money, you know."
At first glance, nothing seems too out of the ordinary for Domino's: Glassdoor suggests
that their delivery drivers make an average of $8 per hour, their assistant managers make
around $11 per hour and their general managers make about $45,058 per year.
Pretty close to what we've seen before, right?
Well, let's dive into those delivery driver stats.
Glassdoor's users reported an average of $6,111 in tips, with some claiming tips as high as
$25,000.
Considering people tend to be more willing to tip their delivery drivers than they are
cashiers in fast food restaurants, maybe the delivery driver is a more lucrative job than
the behind-the-counter worker, even if the average wage is a little lower.
To his credit, Domino's ex-CEO Patrick Doyle made a few positive statements in regards
to wages during his tenure at the company.
In 2015, Doyle, who, we should point out, made $43 million in three years at Domino's,
told CNBC that the chain would have to raise wages to meet competition and retain employees.
"More people being employed means they're gonna buy more pizza.
If that puts some upward pressure on wages, that's actually a great thing."
But, to be clear, like many fast food chains, Domino's stores are franchises, and it's the
owners of those stores who decide the exact wages.
In a relative departure from what we've seen so far, Glassdoor reports that Chipotle's
average crew member salary is as high as $10, and then there are tips, too.
Impressively, the average rate for service managers at Chipotle is actually $15, while
kitchen managers make $12 per hour on average.
As far as fast food wages go, this is all pretty decent stuff.
But the company hasn't been without its fair share of controversy when it comes to labor
practices.
In 2014, Chipotle began requiring its employees to sign arbitration agreements to prevent
them from getting in on a 10,000-person class-action lawsuit that claimed the company was making
employees work "off the clock," that is, without pay.
Put short, an arbitration agreement forces workers to resolve their differences with
their employers via an independent arbitration process rather than, say, class action lawsuits.
In 2018, the Supreme Court declared that it was perfectly legal for companies such as
Chipotle to do just this.
Unfortunately for them, this plan backfired spectacularly.
As of December 2018, Chipotle was facing almost 3,000 arbitration cases and counting from
their own employees, who all claimed that the company was refusing to pay them properly.
Chipotle's attempt to block these cases via the courts was refused, with the judge who
made that decision describing the company's actions as, quote, "unseemly."
According to Glassdoor, Taco Bell seems to pay its workers an average of the standard
$9 per hour.
Shift managers hit around $11 per hour on average, while assistant managers go up to
$12 per hour and assistant general managers can make $13 per hour.
So far, so normal.
But one benefit to working at Taco Bell, according to one Glassdoor poster, is the employee discount
which took off at least 50 percent on food and drinks.
And that's where Taco Bell's more recent wage problems come into the picture.
In 2018, a class action suit was leveled against the company that claimed they had been forcing
employees to stay on the premises to eat discounted meals.
Apparently, Taco Bell offered 30-minute meal breaks during which workers were allowed to
buy a meal at a heavy discount, on the condition that they remained in the restaurant to do
so.
In the end, the court ruled in favor of Taco Bell, insisting that taking the discounted
meal was a choice on the part of employees, and so the company hadn't violated California
law.
Despite this, the court did grant summary judgement for Taco Bell and reminded the company
that employees should be able to use break times as they wished, and could only force
workers to remain on-site if they had chosen to purchase a discounted meal.
According to Glassdoor, Chick-fil-A team members are paid, you guessed it, $9 per hour on average,
with a few of the site's users reporting a smattering of cash bonuses and tips.
Team leaders make $10 to $11 per hour on average, shift managers make about $13 and managers
can make around $14 per hour.
These, however, are average wages of franchised locations across America, and some branches
of Chick-fil-A are going one step further.
In 2018, The Washington Post reported that the owner of a Chick-fil-A in Sacramento was
planning to raise his employees' wages from $12 to $13 up to $17 to $18; a huge increase,
well above what is demanded by most labor campaigns.
Eric Mason, the owner in question, had this to say about the move:
"As the owner, I'm looking at it big-picture and long-term.
What that does for the business is provide consistency, someone that has relationships
with our guests, and it's going to be building a long-term culture."
Glassdoor might suggest that Starbucks pays its workers an average of about $11 per hour
at the lowest level, but it's that bonus cash that really pays off for employees.
The website reports that workers make an average of $960 per year on tips, $663 in cash bonuses
and even $403 in stock bonuses.
On top of that, shift supervisors make about $13 per hour, while shift managers can make
an average of $15 per hour.
Not bad.
And the company seems to be making further amends to its workers.
In 2018, Starbucks spent $120 million to address complaints made by the company's baristas,
who said they were getting paid too little to be on the front lines of the business.
Following their annual wage increase in January 2018, the company also claimed it would address
imbalances between corporate employees and in-store workers, expanding some of its benefits,
such as paid paternity leave and sick time that can be used to care for family members,
to include non-corporate employees.
According to Glassdoor, Dunkin' pays their workers an average of $9, that's right, nine
dollars, per hour, with many making a decent return on tips, too.
Wages for shift leaders go up to about $10 per hour on average, and assistant managers
can expect to make around $11 per hour.
Sadly, Dunkin' workers shouldn't expect to see much of a change anytime soon.
In 2015, Dunkin' CEO Nigel Travis branded the idea of a $15 per hour minimum wage, quote,
"outrageous."
Despite admitting he supports, quote, "reasonable increases" to the minimum wage, Travis insisted
that small businesses and franchises would be negatively impacted by such a hike.
He went on to argue that it would even prevent Dunkin', a multibillion dollar company, from
being able to make any new hires.
Instead, Travis insisted, a living wage of around $12 per hour was a far more reasonable
demand to make.
According to Glassdoor, Baskin-Robbins pays its workers the seemingly-standard $9 per
hour on average, though the website does have some reports of cash bonuses and decent tips.
Wages for shift leaders and assistant managers increase up to an average of $11 per hour,
which is about the same for assistant managers, and managers can even make up to an average
of $18 per hour.
Not bad in general, but it's still not exactly excellent pay for a job that, according to
one ex-employee, really is harder than it looks.
In a 2016 LinkedIn essay, Barack Obama suggested his time at Baskin-Robbins had taught him
some valuable lessons.
He wrote,
"Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists...And while I may
have lost my taste for ice cream after one too many free scoops, I'll never forget that
job, or the people who gave me that opportunity, and how they helped me get to where I am today."
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