Chapter 255
In the hospitality industry, higher revenue exponentially drives up profit margins, since daily operational costs-like commercial rent and base salaries—remain fixed.
A restaurant needs a baseline number of patrons just to break even before it can start making money. If revenue drops too low, operations quickly bleed into the red.
With the school holidays kicking off, droves of students finished their exams and rushed to apply for seasonal jobs as servers, dishwashers, and delivery drivers.
Grant Ziegler originally had no intention of hiring temporary staff; he wanted to forge an elite, highly professional team.
But Mira had reasoned with him. Having a professional core team was vital, but bringing on temporary help during peak seasons was equally necessary.
Otherwise, the core staff would be utterly crushed during the holiday rush, and the company would be left paying idle hands once the slow season hit.
These roles didn’t require advanced skills. As long as the applicants were over sixteen and possessed a valid food handler’s permit, a brief training course was all they needed to earn their work badge.
The certification would remain valid long-term. High school and college students could return to pick up shifts during weekends or busy holiday rushes, allowing them to earn their own spending money.
Not only did this provide the restaurants with flexible labor, but it also offered financially struggling students a reliable income-a perfect way for the business to fulfill its social responsibility.
The disciples from Master Ellis’s dojo, like the Iron Wolves, were already earning solid paychecks doing security detail. Even those whose martial arts weren’t quite top-tier were more than capable of keeping the peace at the branches.
They had previously assisted the bike-sharing startup, but now that the bikes were fully deployed and operations had streamlined, that venture no longer needed temp workers.
That freed them up to pitch in at the various restaurant locations.
Elara left the moment her exams wrapped up. Her father had been discharged from the hospital but was still in the recovery phase, making mobility extremely difficult for him.
The driver who hit him came from a struggling family and simply didn’t have much to his name. After covering the hospital bills, he had only managed to scrape together a few thousand dollars to cover follow-up treatments, lost wages, and living expenses.
They had to squirrel a portion of that money away, too, because once her father’s wounds healed, he would need a second surgery to remove the steel plates in his leg.
When she ran the numbers, funds were agonizingly tight. Aside from her father’s absolute necessities, every remaining dime had to be strictly saved.
As for her biological mother, there wasn’t enough concrete evidence to prove she had orchestrated the hit-and-run.
The police had issued a severe
warning before releasing her, but the sheer intimidation of the encounter. meant the woman likely wouldn’t dare make another move against Elara anytime soon.
Mira still urged her to stay cautious, knowing exactly how malicious that woman’s heart was.
Elara planned to settle her father back in their rural hometown, where the cost of living was low and plenty of folks were looking for odd jobs For barely anything a month she could hire a local to keep an eye on him.
The people there were incredibly salt-of-the-earth; if an emergency arose, the whole neighborhood would step up to help.
With that settled, Elara caught a bus back to Melvion City, determined to grind out a paycheck over the winter break.
The moment she arrived, she tracked Mira down, desperate to start working and earning immediately.
“First, you need to hit up a clinic and secure a food handler’s permit.
Do you want to be a server or help out in the kitchen?
The delivery drivers pull in the most cash, but you need to be an ace on a scooter and navigate unfamiliar neighborhoods for every order. It’s not a great fit for you.
Why don’t you stick to waitressing? It’s physically exhausting, but the harder you work, the more you make, and the tips and bonuses are fantastic.
The restaurant covers room and board, so you can talk to Grandma Finn about pausing your chores her place for a month. Running back and forth every day would run you ragged p>
At the time, the going rate for a waitress in a major metropolitan restaurant was barely a thousand dollars a month.
At Solflare Hearth & Grill, the base pay started at fifteen hundred, with performance- based bonuses stacked on top.
With business exploding the way it was, the bonuses were eclipsing the base salary by a mile.
“Mira, you don’t think they’d withhold my pay at the end of the month, do you p>
She had heard nightmare stories of shady diners refusing to pay temporary hires who left after a few weeks.
“Never. You can work there with absolute peace of mind. I’m the face of Solflare Hearth & Grill. Every day you clock in is a day you get paid.