Hiring and developing a general manager for each location

This is part 4 of 7 in our series Running a multi-location restaurant group. Earlier: what changes for the owner, standardizing recipes, checklists and training and sharing staff between locations.

With one store, the owner is the general manager, whether or not anyone uses the title. With two, each store needs one person who owns its results: the team, the guests, the food safety and the numbers. If nobody owns a store, you do, and you can't own two stores from one place.

This post is about that role: what a general manager (GM) owns, where to find one, how to build the next one before you need them, and the federal rules that decide whether a salaried manager is owed overtime. For the shift lead below the GM, see hiring a shift lead. For the new manager's own first month, see the first 30 days.

This is general information, not legal advice. The federal regulations quoted here were checked on the eCFR on October 5, 2026.

What the GM owns, and what you keep

Write a one-page role card before you hire, and give it to every GM. Part 1 of this series split decisions into group decisions and local ones; the role card turns that into a job.

Then say how the GM is measured. The lines of the owner's weekly scorecard work well: labor %, prime cost %, checklist completion, temperature excursions, unanswered low reviews and open follow-ups. A GM who knows the scorecard is the job doesn't have to guess what you care about.

Promote from within, or hire from outside?

Neither is always right. Whichever you choose, the new GM learns your system at a store that already runs it before they take over their own. That's "systems before people" from part 1 of this series. For interviews, a structured scorecard keeps you comparing candidates against the role card rather than against each other.

Build the bench before you need it

The worst time to look for a GM is the month the store opens, or the week the current one quits. Build a bench:

• A path: shift lead, then assistant manager, then GM. Write what each step needs, in skills you can watch someone do.
• Someone who could run each store for two weeks. If your GM takes a vacation and the store falls apart, the bench is empty.
• A development plan per person on the path, reviewed in your monthly check-ins (performance check-ins (coming Nov 5)).
• Before store three: store two's assistant manager should be nearly ready to run a store.

A 90-day plan for a new GM

At day 90, talk about what went well and what's next, in writing. If the GM isn't working out, say so clearly and specifically, agree a short plan with dates, and decide at the end of it.

Salaried GMs: the federal exempt test

Paying a GM a salary doesn't by itself mean you don't owe them overtime. Under federal law, a manager is exempt from overtime as an executive only if they meet every part of the test in 29 CFR 541.100, which covers any employee:

1. "Compensated on a salary basis pursuant to § 541.600 at a rate of not less than $684 per week" (lower in some U.S. territories), "exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities;"
2. "Whose primary duty is management of the enterprise in which the employee is employed or of a customarily recognized department or subdivision thereof;"
3. "Who customarily and regularly directs the work of two or more other employees; and"
4. "Who has the authority to hire or fire other employees or whose suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, advancement, promotion or any other change of status of other employees are given particular weight."

A few points for restaurants:

• "Two or more other employees" means "two full-time employees or their equivalent" (29 CFR 541.104). One full-time and two half-time employees count.
• Working the floor doesn't end the exemption by itself. The regulation's own retail example: "An assistant manager can supervise employees and serve customers at the same time without losing the exemption" (29 CFR 541.106).
• But closely supervised, low-paid managers usually aren't exempt. The primary-duty rule adds: "if such assistant managers are closely supervised and earn little more than the nonexempt employees, the assistant managers generally would not satisfy the primary duty requirement" (29 CFR 541.700). A GM who mostly works the line, needs your sign-off for everything and earns barely more than the crew is the risky case.
• States can set a higher salary level or a stricter test than the federal one. Check your state's rules, and ask an employment attorney or your payroll provider before you put a GM on salary.

Bonuses work best tied to the numbers a GM controls, such as labor and food cost against their targets, checklist completion and guest reviews, rather than to total sales alone, which also move with the weather and the neighborhood. Write the bonus rules down before the period starts.

Managing your GMs

• A weekly one-on-one with each GM, 30 minutes, with the scorecard in front of you both.
• A monthly meeting with all the GMs together, so they learn from each other. Part 7 of this series covers the meeting rhythm.
• Coach on trends, not on single days. One bad Tuesday is noise; four weeks of rising overtime is a conversation.
• Back them in front of their team. Disagree in private.

Where Mays fits

• The built-in Manager role runs a store. A manager builds and publishes the schedule, approves requests, edits the time clock, manages checklists and inventory, adds employees and pays for their own locations, and sees only the locations they're assigned to. See Roles and permissions.
• What stays with admins by default: adding locations, changing someone's assigned locations, roles, organization settings and billing, Insights, integrations and Learning. A custom role can carry extra permissions, but in the app its people get the employee screens, not the manager ones.
• Each GM sees their own store. A GM assigned to one location doesn't see the other's schedule, people or checklists. An area manager assigned to both stores sees both. See Location access for managers.
• Salary in the schedule. A person on Weekly salary counts as their weekly amount in the schedule's labor cost and gets no overtime warnings. Mays doesn't decide whether a salaried manager is exempt: that's the test above. See Positions and wages.
• Handovers in writing. Each location's manager logbook keeps shift notes, incidents and follow-ups that every manager at that store can read. See The manager logbook.

What Mays doesn't do: by default a GM doesn't see Insights, where labor cost and prime cost by location live, so you'll share those numbers with them in your one-on-ones.

Your GM checklist

• A one-page role card, with what the GM owns and how they're measured
• A decision on promoting or hiring, and time at a working store either way
• A bench: a path, a plan for each person on it, and two-week cover for every store
• A 90-day plan with the owner's part written in
• The exempt test checked before any GM goes on salary
• Bonus rules written before the period starts
• A weekly one-on-one with each GM, and a monthly meeting with all of them

Give every store an owner

Give each GM their own location, the Manager role and the logbook, and keep the setup with you.

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