Are you using old-school techniques to attract potential hires? Like so much else in the industry right now, tech tools can help you reach the right people. If you’re already harnessing data to target your best customers and predict what they will want to buy, you can use the same approach to find staff.  A recent report from QSR Magazine suggests taking the profile data of your best staff and setting out to find others with similar characteristics by creating “look-alike audiences.” Is there anything you are doing to attract and retain customers that can be adapted to potential employees? 

​Restaurant work, reinvented
As with so many other aspects of the restaurant business throughout the course of the pandemic, restaurant work is experiencing a period of reinvention – and it’s not all about raising wages. At its heart is the need to manage the work involved in the business so restaurants can offer meaningful roles and flexibly respond to turnover. A recent New York Times report describes how at a number of restaurants around the country, the kitchen hierarchy is being scrapped in favor of a more egalitarian system. This is playing out in a range of ways: At some restaurants, long-time employees are being given profit-sharing opportunities or even a stake in ownership so they have more incentive to commit to the business and help it thrive. At others, responsibilities are being shared more evenly, with employees being cross-trained in functions ranging from events to finance to food preparation – and being given opportunities to contribute ideas regardless of their rank. These steps – which many restaurants took during the pandemic in an effort to survive – are actually good long-term strategies that may make it easier for these businesses to roll with the challenges that come. This will make restaurant teams look different in the future – a smaller crew of higher-skilled employees who can recreate a recipe, manage incoming orders, interact with guests and make financially sound decisions, vs. a larger, more hierarchical team with different skillsets. By elevating the skills of its team, a restaurant can spread its risk more thinly – it won’t buckle if one employee leaves (though employees with meaningful roles are less likely to leave in the first place). Looking at your current staffing approach across your business, have you reverted to pre-pandemic approaches that need to be refreshed? Are there any roles that could be recast for improved post-pandemic resilience?

One silver lining of the pandemic for the restaurant industry has been how restaurant operators have shown the ability to creatively reinvent themselves – and well beyond the menu. In addition to creating curbside pickup lanes, working from ad hoc kitchen setups and streamlining the ordering process to improve how food is provided to customers, restaurants have expanded their offerings available for purchase. While operators may not need to go as far as selling toilet paper and other household staples as we emerge from the pandemic, it makes sense for them to think broadly about what they can do to generate new revenue streams – whether from guests visiting in person, those at home or even those who live nowhere near the brick-and-mortar business. Is your restaurant known for a special marinade, salad dressing or sauce? Could it develop one that could be sold on your website, in local stores or in larger wholesale forums? Is there other merchandise you could offer to guests who have made your restaurant part of their summer vacation traditions over the years? Could you offer a subscription for meals, desserts or homemade bread in exchange for unlimited coffee or a free glass of wine when the subscriber purchases a meal from you in person? Could you collaborate with a complementary restaurant or unrelated business to create a series of special offers? Tap into your data about customer preferences to better understand what drives your guests to your business. How can you take your most enticing offerings and ensure you’re generating as much business as you can from them?

Restaurants and consumers alike have experienced the effects of the current supply-chain crisis, whether in the form of product shortages, delayed shipments, or changes in store hours due to reduced labor availability. (According to a recent National Restaurant Association survey, 75 percent of restaurants have been forced to change menu items due to supply chain issues.) While the challenges are widespread, many of them can be minimized. Consider these actions: Where possible, shrink the number of links in your supply chain between a food item and your guest: Pre-pandemic, this was about helping the climate and cutting waste, whereas now it’s also become a necessity for any restaurant that wants to be more certain of the items it will be able to offer on its menu. Plan farther down the line. According to FSR Magazine the casual dining brand Twin Peaks now places orders 12 weeks in advance when four to six weeks used to provide ample time. Focus on your relationships. In addition to communicating effectively with suppliers and paying bills on time, lean into existing and new collective agreements that enhance your purchasing power. Consider your branding. As operators focusing on chicken wings have learned in the past 18 months, it’s important to give yourself some leeway to broaden your offerings – perhaps to include new cuts of meat, or plant-based alternatives, or different presentations. FSR Magazine also suggests restaurants might consider building up a just-in-case inventory buffer – depending on the perishability and size of items that must be stored.

​Even in the best of times, restaurant margins are thin. Challenges related to the pandemic, labor, food prices and the supply chain only place additional strain on them. But the good news is that there are a number of steps operators can take to cut costs without taking anything away from the guest experience. First, ease supply chain-strains by ensuring your inventory goes as far as possible. Encourage precise ingredient measurement across your menu – Modern Restaurant Management advises operators to measure ingredients in grams vs. ounces for a more precise result. Take stock of your energy use and find ways to use it more efficiently – by turning equipment on only at the time it is needed, using energy-efficient lighting, and adopting technology to monitor your appliances so you can be alerted and act quickly if something isn’t working as it should. Be just as mindful of food waste. To avoid having usable food scraps tossed out, Restaurantowner.com suggests eliminating trash cans in the kitchen and giving each kitchen employee a clear box with their name on it where they can place food scraps so managers can minimize food waste being generated from the kitchen. Where possible, consolidate purchases with a single supplier to gain leverage in purchasing agreements. Finally, make the most of the staff you have by scheduling people in accordance with your anticipated sales and traffic each week – your schedule should not be on autopilot

​In recent months, the Covid vaccine has become political – and therefore a heated topic of conversation. Across the country, a restaurant’s (or a municipality’s) decision to mandate vaccines for employees and/or guests has resulted in some unpleasant confrontations – between operators and employees and between guests and employees – and all at a time when restaurants are already struggling to attract and retain staff. While some of these confrontations have been difficult to avoid, a restaurant can decrease the likelihood of conflict by taking steps to communicate clearly, and in advance, with employees about vaccine mandates. A recent report from Human Resource Executive provides some tips. It’s most critical to get out in front of the mandate by discussing it with employees, listening to their concerns and providing them with ample lead time to act. If people are resisting, understand their concerns and personalize your communications around them – they may need to hear the message from someone they can more easily relate to. Also appreciate that an employee may have a valid reason to not get a vaccine, so speak to your legal advisor about how to frame communication about that with staff. In advance of a mandate, determine the consequences of not complying – this goes for employees as well as guests – and find gentle ways to communicate about it. Again here, it helps to get out in front of the mandate and avoid surprising a person with a consequence wherever possible. Finally, while President Biden’s rule about vaccine mandates has made this a more urgent topic of conversation at restaurants, try to keep your conversations with employees politically neutral and focused on the well-being of your team, business and the industry overall.

Is it finally time for big changes when it comes to restaurant pay? After years of restaurants testing the waters with no-tipping policies and, in many parts of the country, having to adapt to new minimum-wage requirements, the pandemic (and the unruly diners it has brought with it) may be providing an industry-wide time of reckoning. Many operators are finding that making adjustments to the compensation they offer – whether through their hourly wage, tipping policy, or health benefits – has become a must at a time when the industry is losing workers to other professions. The operators who have found ways to make it work are reporting some early success: According to a recent New York Times report, operators who have changed their compensation structure to ensure a steady living wage – or even simply offering other quality-of-life benefits like flexible schedules, lower health premiums and student debt-reduction programs in its place – are attracting staff. Providing income and scheduling stability stands to help restaurants retain their staff too (and minimize the high costs of employee turnover). Of course, it takes a strong business model to make it work financially, and operators are making such money-saving moves as streamlining menus and adding a service fee to checks to make that possible. As you consider your operation’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to employee compensation, where are there opportunities for you to improve your staff’s quality of life in meaningful ways? If raising wages isn’t an option, are there ways for you to make your existing positions a better long-term fit with your staff’s personal lives – and minimize your turnover costs in the process?

Throughout the pandemic, ghost kitchens have enabled many restaurant operators to keep business going behind the scenes when dining rooms were closed. But as it turns out, operators may be able to build more trust with the public if they pull back the curtain on the foods they’re preparing in ghost kitchens. According to a Datassential survey, three-quarters of consumers said they would support a local restaurant that “goes ghost” in order to stay in business. At the same time, they’re sensitive to restaurants using ghost kitchens to present multiple faces to the public: 55 percent of respondents said they think it’s dishonest for a restaurant to sell the same food under a different name and two-thirds said virtual brands should share their locations and state that they are digital-only concepts. If you operate a ghost kitchen, consider telling your customers why you’re doing it – and how it helps improve the final product they receive. Instead of turning them off, it may actually help you build trust with them.

In a recent legislative update from Washington, Sean Kennedy, the National Restaurant Association’s executive vice president of public affairs, said the restaurant industry had lost 45,000 jobs at the end of August. Further, new vaccine and testing mandates at businesses with a certain threshold of employees on staff could also make already-challenging staffing conditions even more difficult. To be sure, this is not exactly the Covid-19 recovery that restaurant operators had in mind – but there are efforts underway to try and change that. Industry advocates are urging lawmakers to continue to replenish the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF), though Kennedy says it appears that members of Congress don’t want to add any Covid-recovery measures to the $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending plan in process, which is focused largely on climate initiatives, paid leave, childcare, education and healthcare. Because funding the spending plan will impact businesses in the restaurant industry, however, Kennedy is urging operators to add their names to Restaurants Act, a grassroots organization for the restaurant industry that is looking to generate broad support from the restaurant industry in order to urge lawmakers to continue to fund the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. (The fund closed to new applicants in May and according to a recent announcement from the Independent Restaurant Coalition, 82 percent of independent restaurants are concerned they may close permanently if the fund is not replenished.) You can join or learn more about the effort to refill the fund at Restaurantsact.com.

The restaurant industry is still trying to climb its way back to pre-pandemic employment levels. According to research from the National Restaurant Association, the industry is still about one million jobs shy of the 12.3 million jobs it offered before Covid-19 hit. Throughout the pandemic, many news stories have said the high rate of restaurant employee turnover was due to staffers’ unemployment benefits surpassing their restaurant earnings. But according to a recent report from Restaurant Dive, the reality is more complicated than that, and a combination of factors are responsible for escalating employee turnover: Among them are a shift of workers into other professions, a shortage of people with cooking skills and increasing reports of abuse on the job. But there are steps restaurant operators can take to help mitigate some of those problems at their own businesses. Restaurant Dive suggests adopting tech tools like on-demand pay apps, which tend to offer more flexibility on pay schedules. Further, it advises operators to be clear in job postings about wages, schedules, benefits, room for advancement, and incentives such as employee referral bonuses. Overall, put yourself in the shoes of a potential employee, who wants to work in a safe environment, understand their responsibilities on the job, be paid on time for shifts completed, and be granted some flexibility if and when their personal lives require it.