I work for a small privately owned restaurant group as an assistant bar manager/bartender. I am in line to take over the bar program for our main location. My boss has taken another job and I will be his replacement. Our GM will almost never be around as he will be in charge of running one of our sister locations about an hour away and opening and operating a location we expect to be running this fall. All together we have 4 restaurants currently running and one opening soon. This will leave me essentially in charge of our most successful location.
I am excited for the opportunity to step up and show the owner that I’m the guy for the job. I have been working in restaurants in basically every capacity imaginable for most of my adult life. I have 12 years of industry experience, including 10 years bartending, and 6 years of managing. The last bar that I worked at before my current job averaged 12MM-14MM/year revenue. I am confident in the value and expertise I bring to the company and the owner I see most often loves and respects me. We’ve gone out drinking together, gone to sporting events together, gone out to dinners, etc. He knows I am trustworthy and hardworking and I have the best interests of the business in mind. Would it be nuts of me to ask for a small amount of equity in just my location in lieu of a standard raise? My leverage here is that he would have a bar manager with a vested interest in maximizing sales, minimizing waste, and making the most cost conscious decisions possible. I would have a direct motivation to doing my absolute best to increase success instead of just getting things done for a paycheck.
A little background about the restaurant group. There are currently 3 owners. I don’t know how much equity each has and I don’t believe it’s an even 33% split across them. However, owner A is in the process of, and almost finished, buying out owner B. This means equity will be available soon as it’s safe to assume, just split among the remaining 2 owners. The location where I work has been open for 2 years. Business has been very good and we did just around 7MM in revenue our first year, breaking even on all costs to the business; the liquor license, renovations, equipment, licenses, etc. We are on track to do about 4.5-5MM in revenue this year.
Now for some real numbers. I am paid $50 every day I work and $75 on sundays ($275-$325) per week plus my bartending tip money. Overall I average somewhere between 4,500-$5,500 a month take home pay. I am torn between just asking for a normal salary raise, which should be around $750/week plus bar money, or punching up and asking for sweat equity to the modest tune of 2% Net Sales. Just for an average, I pulled last week’s numbers and we did $86,894.37 in net sales. Maybe ask for 1% with a performance contingency for more later?
Am I crazy to even ask, and should I just negotiate a standard raise? Or should I try and figure all they can say is No and then “settle” for a normal raise?
Submitted April 07, 2019 at 02:03PM by shredthegnarlic http://bit.ly/2I5XV4i
