Multi Unit Operations interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Walk me through your most impressive district, restaurant, or operational turnaround.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why a multi-unit seat — and why chain restaurants specifically?
5. Why the sector — what's your point of view on this restaurant format?
6. Why the firm?
7. When a guest is choosing between the firm and a top competitor on a Tuesday at lunch, what's the restaurant-level reason she ends up at the firm?
8. If I gave you the firm's last-12-month SSS, prime cost, and OSAT performance for a typical district, walk me through how you'd diagnose district health in the first 90 days.

Technical concepts to master

• Prime cost bridge — the restaurant P+L every multi-unit leader must walk cold

  Restaurant-level EBITDA bridge · Food cost % drivers · Labour % drivers · Sales leverage and de-leverage

• Food safety and HACCP — the non-negotiable baseline every multi-unit leader owns

  HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) · ServSafe certification and the food-safety culture · Food-safety incident response — the stop-service / hold-product trigger · Audit cadence — internal QA, third-party, and health-dept

• LTO (limited-time offer) operating economics — the chain restaurant growth engine

  LTO economic model · Operating-readiness for an LTO rollout · Restaurant-level LTO under-execution risk

• General Manager development and the coaching cadence — the long-cycle craft of multi-unit leadership

  General Manager tenure and the bench depth equation · Multi-unit coaching cadence — the weekly rhythm · General Manager performance management — the difficult conversation · Restaurant-walk discipline — the operating audit on the floor

Practical drills

• Your district has 14 restaurants averaging $3.0M annual sales each ($42M district volume). Last year's prime cost was 58% (food cost 30%, labour 28%). This year: food commodities are tracking +6% inflation, hourly wages +5%, and SSS is -4% YTD. Corporate wants you to hold prime cost at 58%. What pressure does that put on each line, and what's your operating response?
• Corporate is launching a new LTO in 6 weeks — a premium chicken sandwich at a $9.99 price point (versus a $5.99 core menu sandwich). Initial test results show +8% transaction lift in test restaurants, $1.20 average check lift, and a prime-cost shape of 62% (vs. district run-rate 58%). Walk me through your 6-week rollout plan across your 14 restaurants.
• It's 8:45pm on a Friday. The General Manager of one of your restaurants calls you: a guest has just come back into the restaurant saying she's been throwing up for two hours after eating a salad earlier that day. She has medical records showing she's been to urgent care. Your restaurant is at peak Friday-dinner volume with 120 guests on premises. Walk me through your next 60 minutes.

Smart-question anchors

• Operating priorities and the Regional VP scorecard — what good looks like for a District Manager in the {firm_name}'s next 12-18 months and the gating prime-cost / SSS KPI
• LTO operating cadence and menu innovation — the {firm_name}'s LTO pipeline, training cascade, and how multi-unit leaders are held accountable for LTO execution
• Food-safety and crisis-response posture — the {firm_name}'s ServSafe certification rate, recent audit-score trajectory, and the partnership cadence between districts and corporate QA
• Drive-thru and off-premise / digital posture — the {firm_name}'s investment in drive-thru SOS, first-party app, third-party delivery, and how the off-premise mix shapes restaurant-level economics
• General Manager development and the internal-promotion ladder — how Assistant General Manager seats progress to General Manager and how General Manager seats progress to multi-unit roles

Sourced from

National Restaurant Association (NRA) — operations + workforce resources · Black Box Intelligence (formerly TDn2K) — chain restaurant performance benchmarks · QSR Magazine and Nation's Restaurant News — chain restaurant trade press · Cornell Centre for Hospitality Research + ServSafe / FDA Food Code publications · 10-K filings + investor day decks of major chain restaurant operators · Glassdoor, Indeed, and Reddit r/restaurateur District Manager interview threads