A Subway store is a small crew on a thin margin, in the brand with fast food’s heaviest wage-and-hour enforcement history. WageTime is payroll built so your record answers the audit, across every EIN you operate.
For independently owned and operated Subway franchises. WageTime is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Subway or its franchisor. “Subway” and “Sandwich Artist” are trademarks of their owner, named here only to describe the businesses this page serves.
None of these is the tip-credit problem a sit-down restaurant has. They are the standing conditions of running sandwich shops at the wage floor on thin per-store sales, and each one is either your unpaid second job or a Labor Department case with your store’s name on it.
The 2023 case put it plainly: operators of fourteen Bay Area Subway stores were ordered to pay nearly a million dollars and to sell or shut down. Subway has carried more wage-and-hour scrutiny than any other fast-food brand, and the exposure is the ordinary stuff, unpaid closing time, bad deductions, and overtime figured by hand.
Eight percent royalty plus a four-and-a-half percent advertising fund is 12.5 cents of every gross dollar, gone before food, rent, or a paycheck. On a store doing a few thousand a day, labor is the one big number you can actually move, so you need to see it by store, this week, not at month-end.
The most common way a sandwich shop underpays is the closing routine and the early bread bake done off the clock. It is minutes a night, and it is exactly what a wage-and-hour investigator adds up. If the punch does not capture the time, you cannot pay it and you cannot prove you did.
Subway lines lean on 14- to 17-year-olds, and that is a rules layer, not a footnote: hour caps on school nights, and slicers and ovens off-limits under 16. The Bay Area case included minors put on dangerous equipment. A schedule that ignores the caps is a citation waiting to be written.
California’s $20 fast-food minimum applies to national chains with 60 or more US locations and names the franchisee as the employer on the hook. Subway clears that threshold many times over, so a California store runs a wage floor four dollars above the old state minimum on every single check.
Every US Subway is franchisee-run, and each store you own sits in its own EIN with its own filings. The franchisor is not the joint employer, so the wage record, the back pay, and the audit are yours. Generic payroll answers with a login per store and a spreadsheet to see the group.
The record that survives is one with every edit named, timestamped, and effective-dated: WageTime tests each check against the store’s own wage floor and keeps the history a wage-and-hour investigator asks for.
Replaces the overtime rate someone guessed, the deduction that should not have been taken, and the paper timesheets an auditor asks for and you cannot find.
WageTime turns labor into a number you read, not one you reconstruct: job costing lands hours and pay by store as the run happens, so a store running hot shows up this week, not at month-end.
| Store | Labor % | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Maple Ave Subs LLC$9,800 net · $2,646 labor | 27.0% | On plan |
| Route 9 Subs LLC$8,200 net · $2,460 labor | 30.0% | Watch |
| Midtown Subs LLC$10,500 net · $3,360 labor | 32.0% | Running hot |
Replaces the labor-percentage spreadsheet the bookkeeper rebuilds every week, and the hot store nobody catches until the P&L lands.
By capturing the minutes that got Subway in trouble: punches come from WageTime’s mobile time clock, so the closing wipe-down and the early bread bake land on the clock, paid and provable.
| Sandwich Artist | Hours | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Tyler S.5:58a - 2:06p (open) · On-site | 8.1 | Approved |
| Jade P.2:00p-10:18p (close) · On-site | 8.3 | Approved |
| Andre W.3:04p - 9:41p · Outside radius | 6.6 | Review |
| Cleo K.9:40p-10:31p (close) · On-site | 0.9 | Approved |
Replaces the closing wipe-down nobody paid for, and the argument over hours that has no punch to settle it.
A departure on a two-person line takes half your coverage, so WageTime closes the gap: the new hire signs tax forms and clears the I-9 from a phone, and the one who left gets a final check the same week.
| Person | Move | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Nadia F.Maple Ave | New hire, first shift Thu | Self-onboarded |
| Theo B.Route 9 | New hire, first shift Sat | Self-onboarded |
| Marisol A.Midtown | New hire, first shift Mon | Waiting on I-9 |
| Elena V.Maple Ave | Left after Fri close | Off-cycle Mon |
| Jordan P.Route 9 | Back after finals | Records intact |
Replaces the new-hire packet by the bread oven, the manager’s onboarding hour between rushes, and the “it’ll be on the next run” final check.
Every US Subway is franchisee-run, so the wage record, the back pay, and any audit sit with you, and WageTime documents that liability per store: each EIN files its own returns, deposits included, under one sign-in.
| Store | People paid | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| Maple Ave Subs LLCEIN ••-•••5182 · returns filed | 11 | Complete |
| Route 9 Subs LLCEIN ••-•••6337 · returns filed | 9 | Complete |
| Midtown Subs LLCEIN ••-•••2914 · returns filed | 10 | Complete |
Replaces a payroll account per store, three sets of year-end filings, and the consolidation spreadsheet nobody trusts.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoIn a 2014 CNN analysis of Labor Department data, Subway franchises led fast food with more than 17,000 wage violations and about $3.8 million in back wages, and enforcement continues, nearly $1 million against 14 Bay Area stores in 2023. The pattern is unpaid closing time, bad deductions, and overtime by hand, all of which WageTime processes automatically with an audit-ready record.
If your store is in California, yes. The $20 fast-food floor applies to national chains with 60 or more US locations and names the franchisee as the covered employer, and Subway is well past that count. WageTime’s minimum-wage processing runs the floor per store, so a California location tests against $20 while a store in another state tests against its own number.
WageTime’s scheduling conflict safeguards flag rest-period gaps, overnight shifts, and double-bookings before a schedule publishes, and break and meal rules live in the timesheets, so the obvious problems surface early. The federal caps for 14- and 15-year-olds, three hours on a school day and nothing after 7pm, and the slicer and oven limits under 16, stay yours to apply. WageTime does not provide legal advice.
Straightforwardly. A sandwich shop takes no server tip credit, so crew earn the full hourly wage and any app or counter tips ride on top. Tip earning codes carry those reported tips into the run and onto the W-2 without a tip-credit calculation underneath. Bring one real pay period to the demo and we’ll set the codes up with you.
You run all three from one sign-in, but each store stays its own EIN, files its own federal, state, and local returns, and keeps its own books. Because you are the employer of record and the franchisor is not the joint employer, the audit-ready record is set per store, so each store answers for itself. A fourth location is another company under the same sign-in, scoped on the demo.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per month per person paid that month, no long-term contract. The three-store group in the screens, 30 people paid, comes to $450 for the month: $150 in company bases plus $300 in per-person fees. Runs are unlimited, so off-cycle final checks and weekly pay cost nothing extra. Switching is full-service and paid, scoped on the demo.
Last week’s schedule with the teen crew on it, the labor percentage that runs hot, and the Sandwich Artist who quit after Friday close. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo store: you’ll watch a wage-floor flag clear, a closing punch get captured, and a final check run off-cycle.
Book a 20-minute demo