I did a brief stint in the casual dining industry. My friends laugh at me when I bring up old HR war stories from my days at Applebee’s, but the reality is I loved that work. Over the years, I’ve tried to figure out why.
First, it was a constant challenge. The moment you figured out one location, another one needed help. Second, I loved the people. Guest service-focused. They wanted to deliver an experience people enjoyed. I love eating out, and so do so many people. It was an experience you could immediately relate to. So given my background and personal affinity towards the restaurant industry, I was immediately intrigued when I saw the National Restaurant Association recently released its Workforce Technology Report, discussing the challenges the industry faces today. The report served talent leaders from 17 different major restaurant organizations, including Chipotle, Potbelly, and Flynn Group (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s).
Turns out, not much has changed since I left Applebee’s:
- High turnover
- Hard to recruit
- Hard to retain your best
Over 75% of restaurant leaders say recruiting and retaining employees are a “significant” challenge to their business. If you’ve been to a restaurant since the pandemic, you’ve probably seen this in action. You see full sections of a restaurant open, but you can’t be seated. Signs saying “please be patient,” so you try to find a manager to speak to but you can’t find one because the manager is probably on the line helping cook everyone’s meals.
If a customer comes in and has a bad experience because we’re understaffed, they probably don’t come back.
I had a field operations leader I used to work with who loved telling his general managers, “Staff for the business you want, not the business you have!” The point being, if a customer comes in and has a bad experience because we’re understaffed, they probably don’t come back. You saved a little bit of money by running lean, but you cost yourself a returning customer. Sure, it costs a little more to be properly staffed, but you can then deliver an amazing experience, and those people will keep coming back multiple times.
Given all the challenges, it feels like most restaurants today aren’t appropriately staffed. I have some ideas on how to fix that.
What can you do?
The research within the report identified some things that can make a big impact. About 54% of candidates for restaurant jobs will apply on nights and weekends. The faster you can get those people screened and interviewed, the better chance you have at winning that talent. Speed matters. Of course, most restaurants don’t have the resources or the technology that allows you to screen and schedule after hours. But the bottom line is you'll be uncompetitive if you can’t change that. Big chains are, or will be, making this change by leveraging conversational AI tools to automate the application and scheduling process literally whenever. It’s no longer a “nice to have” — it’s a must.
Another big one: You have to make it easy for your employees to bring in their friends and family. Over 65% of restaurant leaders say their employees are their best ambassadors for attracting new hires. This isn’t about rewarding an employee 90 days after a new hire starts. That’s monopoly money to them! It’s not real! Reward the behavior that leads to the next hire. Give them a $10 gas card just for giving you the name and phone number of someone who might want to work for you. Give them a $100 cash bonus, on the spot, when that person shows up for the interview! Reward the behaviors that lead to hiring.
The research also shows that the first 30-90 days are the most significant in determining whether someone stays on longer. The restaurant industry in general runs at about a 100% turnover rate. Stop allowing your new hires to just leave and create a 30-day onboarding plan. Yes, for part-time employees. Figure out how to keep people engaged in those first thirty days. Most new hires leave for simple reasons like their schedule, feeling out of place, feeling like a failure, etc. We have to stop the mentality of “Well, they’ll make it, or they won’t. We’ll just hire another one.” No, stop hiring another one and make this one work. Yes, it takes a little more effort, but when you analyze the difference between high-turnover locations and low-turnover locations, the actual effort to improve just isn’t that much. Technology (assessments) can help here and has been proven to drastically improve short-term turnover in frontline roles.
It’s impressive how the restaurant industry is leveraging data to improve candidate and employee experiences. To be able to get managers in the field the data they need in real time, with prescriptive strategies to improve their outcomes. A restaurant leader today must be both data-driven and process-driven to succeed. It’s more science than art in today’s restaurant world.
The phrase “in the weeds” comes from the restaurant industry. It means that the restaurant and usually the kitchen are struggling to keep up with the demand. I often would enter a restaurant at lunch or on a weekend night, and they would be in the weeds! My job, in field HR, was not to make it worse. Which meant I usually jumped on the dishwasher and washed dishes. Too often, managers are in the weeds when it comes to hiring. We need to find a way to make it easier for them, and I think we have with the high-volume hiring tech that is available.
Hiring should be a non-issue for the vast majority of locations and roles, but it’s not. The industry shouldn’t be in the position it is in 2025, and one of the only ways out will be through technology adoption and taking action on the data insights they receive.
