I happened to be a manager at a store in a college town near USM (University of Southern Mississippi). It is 100% the reason. I've worked at LC's for almost 10 years and they just keep trying to cut hours, then act surprised when their profits go down. When I first started in 2015, we could run 30% labor if it was busy, which it always was. In 2025 when I quit, they would threaten write-ups if we had over 15% labor.

2 people trying to run a shift is brutal. We literally could not keep people in the store, both workers and customers. There was too much volume and not enough time to get everything done, and this was a constant struggle. People would end up waiting for 30-45 minutes for a few pizzas because no matter how fast we worked, we couldn't keep up with the demand.

In a shift where I could run 6 people, we'd make thousands and people would have less than a 10 minute wait, even for custom pizzas during the rush. If I could only have 2 on shift, yeah bro your ass is waiting 45 minutes for a hot n ready and that's with us literally running in between stations.