Ask any restaurant operator what’s keeping them up at night, and staffing dinner and late-night shifts is near the top of the list almost every time. I’ve seen this problem firsthand. I spent decades in QSR at brands like McDonald’s and Dunkin’, before joining Another Broken Egg Cafe in the FSR space, and one thing hasn’t changed no matter the brand or daypart. This is a people business, and the more shifts a restaurant runs, the harder that business gets.
Another Broken Egg Cafe runs one shift, mornings into early afternoon, with no dinner or late-night. It’s one example of how a daypart structure shapes staffing, kitchen complexity and the day-to-day life of a franchisee and their team.
The More Shifts You Run, the More Can Go Wrong
In QSR, I dealt with three or four shifts a day, seven days a week. Every shift had its own hiring pool, call outs and scheduling issues. A general manager wasn’t running one restaurant – they were running three or four of them in the same day, and each with its own crew and set of challenges.
FSRs deal with the same kind of complexity, often with fewer resources to handle it. A restaurant running breakfast through dinner or late night needs a different kind of employee and a different level of supervision for each part of the day. Morning shifts tend to draw a different kind of worker than evening shifts do, and that gap is a big reason evening and late-night shifts are often the hardest part of the schedule to staff.
More shifts aren’t all downside, of course. More dayparts can mean additional revenue in the same real estate, and some employees genuinely want that longer day, whether it’s picking up extra hours or having more shifts to choose from. It works for plenty of concepts and people. However, it comes at a cost that’s easy to underestimate until you’re actually in it.
What It Costs to Keep Replacing Employees
Hourly turnover in QSR has run as high as 200% a year at some brands. Lead a team of 20 at that rate and you’re hiring 40 people a year just to keep 20 employees on staff. Every one of those hires costs money, in recruiting, training, onboarding and the productivity you lose while someone new gets up to speed.
A lot of that turnover traces back to the shifts themselves. Closing late one night and opening early the next morning can wear people down and shows up as call-outs before it turns into resignations. Bouncing from a slow late lunch to a chaotic dinner rush in the same day adds its own kind of stress. Give people regular hours and a predictable pace, and they tend to stick around, because they can plan a life around the job instead of constantly adjusting to it.
At Another Broken Egg Cafe, hourly turnover runs closer to 50% to 75%. It’s still turnover, but a fraction of what multi-shift operators deal with, and that margin can compound quickly. The longer someone stays on a team, the better they get at the job, and that shows up in speed, consistency, check averages and how a guest feels walking out the door – having a major impact on whether they return for a second, third and fourth visit.
How One Shift Simplifies the Whole Operation
Running a single shift changes more than the schedule – it also changes the kitchen. A menu built for one or two dayparts means less preparation and a kitchen that isn’t trying to be three or four different restaurants between breakfast and late-night. That kind of simplicity makes it easier to train someone fast and get them genuinely good at the job, instead of asking a back of house or front of house team to master different menus, preparation and service styles all in a single day.
For a manager, it means running one team through the same rhythm instead of pulling together coverage across three or four shifts. Most of our locations run with two to three managers, where a FSR or QSR operation covering a longer day typically needs several. Scheduling gets easier too. When a crew works the same hours every day, availability is predictable, opening and closing routines become second nature, and the kitchen can prepare almost exactly to the volume it knows is coming.
That same predictability carries into people’s lives outside of work. A 7am to 3pm schedule is a completely different offer than a split shift or a rotation that runs into the evening. People can build their lives around hours like that – whether that means being home for their kids after school or even finishing school themselves.
For a franchisee, when the restaurant closes at 3pm, it closes. There’s no dinner rush to worry about, late-night close to manage, or guessing what the evening will bring. You know when the day ends, and the rest of it is yours. That’s a very different life than owning a restaurant that’s open late, and it’s a big reason operators stay in this business longer and reinvest.
What This Means for Anyone Evaluating a Restaurant Franchise
Labor sustainability across the restaurant industry isn’t going to fix itself, and no single model works for every concept. However, the daypart structure a brand builds around has more to do with staffing outcomes, training costs and franchisee quality of life than many people realize. Every extra shift adds complexity, cost and risk to the people side of the business, and that can matter just as much as real estate or unit economics.
For any operator weighing where to invest, or any franchisor considering how to support the franchisees already in their system, thinking it through pays off. A model that’s easier on the people running it is easier to staff, train and grow, and it’s worth just as much attention as the real estate or the financials, because people are the business.