Pros
Worked as an hourly employee, shift supervisor, and salaried manager (series of promotions over the course of 1.5 years). I worked for Covelli Enterprises, the largest franchise of Panera, so some of this may or may not apply to other franchises and corporate: - Lots of hours availible due to high turnover rate (good for hourly) - Very easy job functions (c'mon its sandwiches and salads people) - Management paperwork is extensive but all common sense - If you have a good team it is a lot of fun I recommend being a Manager for the following people: - People who don't mind working 50-60 hours a week for a fairly small salary - People trying to get management experience to move forward with their career elsewhere - People trying to get a first time management job, again, for experience I recommend being a Hourly Associate for the following people: - High school kids - College kids - Someone with no experience who wants to work their way up to management (see above for management reasons)
Cons
- Too many hours for management (salaried managers required to work 50 hours/week, usually its closer to 60 though) - Incompetent managers (as an associate and as a manager I worked with some of the worst managers, people who were fired from full service restaurants, etc, and power-tripping 19 year old managers) - Food is not real (no actual cooking, everything is frozen and portioned out, even the dough and pastry blanks are frozen and pre-made) - High turnover (good for hours if your hourly, but pretty depressing when in 4 months you are working with entirely new people, also managers come and go like crazy, they promote just about anyone and apparently hire just about anyone too) - Pay (pretty terrible, Covelli Enterprises starts hourly at minimum wage, shift supervisors get no more than $9-10/hour, and assistant managers get $30-36k/year for very long work weeks) - Covelli is about as stingy as it gets, labor, product, pay, everything - I realize that's why they are so profitable, but invest some profit into taking care of your people and I bet there wont have as astounding of turnaround as exists