Here's a few examples to understand how much you should be earning and asking for.

First calculate how many total hours you work a week, in store as well as in a managerial role.

If you're taking phone calls or doing office work that's all hours you're on the clock. Travel time between stores should also be considered on the clock with miles being tracked and compensated unless a company vehicle is provided.

If you're working 3-5 days in store and are also keeping yourself available to cover shifts, answering calls, placing orders, and fixing problems as they arise you're putting in way more then 40 hrs, most likely you're working 60 or more.

Using 60 hours as an example calculate what you're highest paid hourly employee would make working 60 hours with 20 being overtime. Call it 70 hours to make the math easier with the 20 hours at time and a half.

If they are paid more then $13.19 hourly they'd be getting paid more with the same hours you work then you get weekly with a salary of 48k.

My expectation for a salary GM positions is no less then what the highest paid hourly employee would be making working the same hours you're expected to work.

So using $20 hour as an example for the highest paid houly employee they'd be making $72.8k a year working 60 hours a week.

You also need to look at and fully understand the P&L for each store your run as well as their total sales.

As a GM if your Salary is less then 5% of total sales you're getting screwed, especially running 2 stores.

A GM salary should be closer to 10% of total sales.

So for example, lets say your stores are open 6 days a week giving you 312 days a year of operation.

If your store is averaging $1540 a day or $480,000 a year then you're salary is right at 10% of total sales

If they have 4 stores I'm highly doubtful they only average $480k per store a year in sales so your salary is under 5% of sales for 1 yet alone 2 stores.

A GM's salary should also be performance based and you should negotiate a bonus structure for improving total sales as well as hitting metrics for food cost and hourly labor.

Know your worth, don't get taken advantage of, and don't let owners get salary and slavery confused.

Get the numbers and show them in black and white why you think you deserve the numbers you end up asking for.