They have staffed their location with as many people willing to accept minimum wage as they can find. That’s… not a lot. I don’t know how many that was, I can only be certain there was at least one there.

Not wanting to work is different from quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is showing up and doing the bare minimum or less, but still getting paid, which seems to be what you’re suggesting. Not wanting to work is not accepting (or leaving) a job that is underpaid. Expenses have gone up dramatically, but wages have not, so it’s become much harder to find people willing to work at $15 per hour.

The franchisee could solve this problem by paying better. I guarantee they’d find good staff for the right price. I used to this stuff. It’s easy to build a good staff if you pay them well and treat them with respect. The trouble is they need the sales to afford the staff, which they’ve already torpedoed by having such shitty staff. They’re in a death spiral now. Best case scenario, Sonic terminates the franchisee’s license and sells it to somebody else. Worst case, it just shuts down entirely. But based on the response from corporate I got, they couldn’t care less either.