Flexible scheduling is becoming a powerful recruitment and retention tool in foodservice operations that run long or continuous hours — such as healthcare, higher education, corporate dining, and large multi-unit restaurant groups. Because demand varies by daypart, operators can offer alternative scheduling models that help employees balance personal obligations while still meeting operational needs.
In your facility, is there room to restructure schedules to offer greater flexibility? You might offer split or short shifts (e.g., 10 a.m.–2 p.m.) that allow caregivers, students, and working parents to pick up hours around family schedules, for example. Alternatively, four-day week rotations with 10–12 hour shifts could give full-time workers more consecutive days off, reducing burnout in high-volume kitchens. Technology can help here too: shift-swapping platforms can let your team trade or add shifts without manager intervention, increasing autonomy while preserving coverage. These tools also help fill last-minute gaps without costly agency labor.
This flexibility may be especially useful in 24/7 healthcare or senior living, where weekend brunch, late-evening meal service, or holiday surges require nontraditional coverage. In campus dining, where volume spikes at predictable hours, short shifts can help build predictable labor expenses and minimize idle time. For multi-unit brands, standardized flexibility policies can help support retention across markets — reducing turnover costs and strengthening the business’s brand as an employee-friendly employer.

Today’s kitchens routinely host four generations under one roof – from seasoned Baby Boomers to Gen Z newcomers. That dynamic can be a point of friction. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 67 percent of companies experience conflicts between employees of different age groups. A Deloitte study found that 60 percent of workers feel their organization’s communication style doesn’t resonate across generations. Age-related conflicts often stem from differences in communication styles.
But the combination of multiple generations can be a strength when operators take steps to accommodate the qualities and preferences of all groups. One key success tactic is paired mentoring, where veteran staff share time-tested techniques and kitchen wisdom, while younger staff teach digital tools, point-of-sale shortcuts or social media tactics in a form of “reverse mentoring.”
It may also help to have rotation teams of mixed age groups on prep, line and service shifts. This can encourage shared ownership and reduce age-siloing. Blending generational strengths like experienced judgment and tech fluency can set the stage for smoother collaboration.
This extends to communication preferences. In-person huddles may satisfy older staff, while younger staff may more naturally turn to apps or group chat to stay in sync – and of course, you may have senior staff who are tech-savvy and junior team members who are happy to communicate face to face. Understanding the strengths of individuals and taking a dual approach to accommodating preferences can build respect, innovation, and a culture where multi-generational staff pull together.

In an industry where staff turnover is an ongoing challenge, every action foodservice operators take to make employees want to invest in the organization can help. The 2023 Deloitte Global Human Trends
These efforts can not only encourage talented employees to stay — they can also encourage the employees who report to them to stick around. A 2022 Gallup study found that managers account for 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement — so the quality of your leadership team plays a key role shaping your employees’ experience. In senior living and adult care communities, where the environment demands high levels of precision, empathy and compliance, effective leadership development can be especially critical.
If your staff turnover could be improved, is there opportunity to review and enhance the leadership pathways in your organization? Consider structuring your training so it helps staff build emotional intelligence and resolve conflicts in addition to improving regulatory knowledge. Ensure employees have mentors in your organization and go through practical rotations to gain exposure to a range of roles in the kitchen, dining room and back office. Give them a feedback loop and coaching where they need it — and connect that feedback to specific measurements on food safety outcomes and staff engagement.

Finding and retaining skilled culinary staff remains a challenge for foodservice providers, with turnover rates hovering around 73 percent. Standing out to candidates (and being able to retain talent) calls for offering purpose, flexibility and clear pathways for career growth. Foodservice companies that have taken steps to provide these benefits report significant progress. One company partnered with the Culinary Institute of America recently to develop a program to provide foodservice staff with weekly online lessons, mentorship and leadership support. The program has reduced the average time to fill a culinary position by 29 percent, saved an estimated $185 per day on vacant culinary positions, and kept staff turnover to nearly 73 percent below the foodservice industry average according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If your recruitment and retention numbers leave room for improvement, you can take a number of approaches to enhance your culture – and make your organization a more appealing place to stay for the long term. Some possibilities to consider: Offer flexible scheduling so staff can build some stability into their week. Elevate the mission behind your work – whether it’s sustainability, scratch-made meals, a commitment to senior health, or connection with the community. Build a stronger internal career ladder with apprenticeship and/or mentoring programs and trainings that teach staff new skills and help them develop their careers. Get staff involved in creating the menu, as well as testing new tools or tech that supports – not replaces – their work. Recognize and promote examples of development from across the organization – a dishwasher who became a chef, or a manager who oversees shifts with a strong record of great service.

How is your employee retention? In the five years since the pandemic, restaurant operators have had to revamp how they attract and retain employees. As hiring is still a challenge, many are leaning into financial incentives that are hard to leave behind.
Michael Shemtov, whose company runs seven restaurants in Atlanta, Charleston and Nashville, said his restaurants include a “healthy hospitality” surcharge to every bill (currently 2.2 percent). This allows them to pay 70 percent of every employee’s health plan (up from 50 percent before the pandemic). Staff are also auto-enrolled in a retirement savings plan and offered a maternity/paternity savings match. “My thesis is that if I can get them to save $4,000-5,000 in a retirement account, then they’re really going to think hard about leaving me for another job,” he told Eater.
Stock options are another strategy. Brands like Shake Shack and Macaroni Grill have adopted this approach to boost retention among their management teams. Sweetgreen also offers equity incentives to salaried team members. They position this benefit as part of a larger effort to attract long-term employees – and they link equity to performance and contribution.
Beatnic, a vegan restaurant, introduced industry-leading paid parental leave in 2022 for all employees – full-time and part-time – including miscarriage leave under their bereavement policy. Granted, not every restaurant can make such incentives work financially. But at a time when talent is harder to find (and expensive to replace), what creative adjustments you can make to your benefits that might make it more appealing for people to stay?

A recent report about foodservice employment offers reasons for optimism: Research from payroll services provider ADP found that employer investments in retention are paying off for workers in leisure and hospitality. In the first post-pandemic years, job-switchers were seeing more pay gains than existing workers, but that has changed. In September of this year, for example, year-over-year pay levels for workers who had remained in their job were up 4.6 percent, compared to a 3.3 percent increase for job changers, the report found. It’s evidence that employer efforts to recruit and retain employees are gaining traction.
If you’re looking for new ways to boost retention in your business, there are actions you can take beyond wages. Offer flexible schedules – and grant staff agency to select and swap shifts as needed. Measure performance across a range of benchmarks – like earning positive guest feedback, going the extra mile to help a colleague, or supporting food safety efforts – so staff have ample opportunities for recognition. Offer financial flexibility through earned wage access. Nurture an inclusive, engaged culture – by hosting staff gatherings to build team morale and planning volunteer efforts in the local community. Provide a strong induction program, then follow it up with regular feedback, recognition, and development-related support in one-on-one meetings and team settings. Show staff how to rise in the ranks: When staff understand the path to advancement and what they must do to follow it, they have more reasons to stick around. This (along with other efforts including those above) has historically helped restaurant brands including Lettuce Entertain You achieve high employee retention rates.

When the airline JetBlue was first founded and began screening candidates for its flight crew, one of the people they hired was a former fireman. He didn’t have experience working for an airline but, having rescued people from burning buildings, he understood how to care for people. A similar hiring approach might be helpful in the foodservice industry, where labor is a perennial challenge. While human resources experts tend to agree that a 10-15 percent annual turnover rate is healthy across all industries, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found the average annual turnover rate in the foodservice industry to be nearly 80 percent over the past decade. That makes it especially important to be able to attract and retain the right staff.
Yet the latest methods for recruiting and screening potential candidates may be leaving talent behind, according to a recent roundtable discussion held by the Institute of Hospitality. Specifically, the use of conventional HR practices, paired with artificial intelligence to screen candidates, may be detrimental to certain candidates who can perform well in their job but have invisible disabilities or conditions that affect social interaction or communication. As a result, something as routine as a group interview or a trial shift might introduce barriers for a candidate who could perform well in a role. AI-supported screening systems can compound these issues by overlooking transferable skills from outside of the industry – or by misinterpreting facial expressions or communication styles. Similarly, recruitment or training materials that aren’t in a candidate’s native language may present barriers too.
Looking at your recruitment processes, are there opportunities to broaden your scope when seeking ideal candidates? Do the tools you currently use to identify candidates inadvertently screen out people who, with training, could bring valuable skills to your business?

November is among the peak months for hiring foodservice staff. The people you bring on board now will help see you through the festive season and help set the customer service standard your guests will expect from you in their return visits in the New Year. But at a time when the average annual turnover rate for the restaurant industry hovers around 80 percent, operators also can’t afford to spend too much time sorting through the candidates who will be the face of the brand. A recent report from Modern Restaurant Management suggests some helpful interview questions that can help you get to the heart of a candidate’s skills quickly. For example, asking a candidate to describe a time when they had to explain something complex to a coworker or customer can demonstrate how well they provide information, listen, and clarify an issue without getting overwhelmed and frustrated. Asking them to share an example of when something went wrong at work and how they responded can help you understand how they approach unexpected problems. Having them describe an encounter with a difficult customer can help you evaluate their level of compassion and ability to de-escalate challenging situations. Then once you have new talent on board, you can work to retain them. (If you’re looking for inspiration, four brands that have been standouts in this area are Five Guys, Chipotle, Union Square Hospitality Group and Lettuce Entertain You, according to Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration.)

Employee turnover in the hospitality industry hovers around 74 percent, making staffing a perennial challenge for operators. While employee compensation and benefits are important to attracting staff, they may not have as much power as more human elements of employee retention. That came through during a panel discussion at the National Restaurant Association Show earlier this year, where restaurant operators with higher-than-average retention rates spoke about how they find and keep talent. As Foodservice Director reported about the discussion, operators emphasized the importance of figuring out your message before recruiting, having a people-first mentality, and offering a clear career path. Operators who do this know and understand their brand purpose and message before hiring, ensure employees know ​what the business stands for, and illustrate how each employee’s role contributes to that message. They lift up the team over the individual, taking politics out of the equation by supporting each person’s value to the team. They also prioritize hiring from within and showing each person a roadmap of where the job can lead.  

In a recent podcast, Ed Daugherty, executive campus chef/regional director of dining at the University of Tulsa, demonstrated how he uses all of these approaches – and has achieved 71 percent employee retention as a result. During a multi-part candidate interview process, he focuses on the organization’s core values and on finding candidates who possess related traits: friendliness, teachability, and a “willingness to do the next right thing” over cooking skills, for example. As soon as an employee is hired, they are wrapped in the message that they belong there – through pre-shift huddles, promotion of employee wins, the sharing of staff ideas and feedback with management, the celebration of employee milestones, and the use of multiple communication channels to share ideas and promote staff successes. Each month, managers nominate employees of the month for a random gift drawing and must explain why the person is valuable to the team. Their comments are shared with the employee whether they win or not – and winners come from across the larger foodservice operation at the university, highlighting roles and opportunities that employees can consider in their longer-term career plan.