With serious competition, high operating costs and an increasingly high turnover rate, the day-to-day running of a restaurant can be a long and complex process. Since restaurants are usually a challenge to run successfully, it is very important for restaurant workers to possess certain skills in order to achieve the intended outcomes. Therefore, having a good understanding of the key characteristics of the people you are looking for will help in improving the rate of your hiring success, and will also make the process more streamlined for everyone involved.

Here are the top 7 characteristics to look for in the next restaurant hire in order to run a profitable business:

1. Flexibility: With restaurant food and drink sales in the US reaching $798.7 billion in 2017, restaurant employees often have to work unusually long hours as compared to a basic desk job in order to cater to the demand. Restaurant employees are expected to switch gears if unexpected situations arise: from answering the phone to managing staff, mingling with customers and more. For instance, if there is a sudden surge in patrons, the BOH team might be required to fill FOH positions and quickly get back into the kitchen to prepare the dish.
2. Creativity: In an age where new restaurants are mushrooming at an extremely fast pace and old ones are closing shop just as easily, creativity is what distinguishes one from another. From beautifying the interiors to making marketing plans, designing menus to creating beautiful food – your employees need to be highly creative in order to offer unique and unmatched restaurant experiences to patrons. With its rustic interiors, concrete walls and hypnotic canvases, LA restaurant Majordomo is a perfect example of what modern American dining could look like.
3. People-skills: Restaurants often operate with a huge number of guests, vendors and partners on a daily basis. With so many people working in the ecosystem, it is critical that your employees have great people skills. The ability to interact with vendors to ensure optimum inventory, with other employees for better functioning of the restaurant and with customers in a positive, friendly, and professional manner is important for proper functioning of the business.
4. Precision: In situations of high guest traffic, employees must be able to handle multiple orders from multiple tables simultaneously. Accuracy then, becomes a major challenge. For example, during happy hours, employees might have to put in another round of drinks while fetching food for one table and cleaning the mess from another. Your employees must not get overwhelmed in such situations and must be able to handle multiple tasks with efficiency and poise.
5. Customer service: Since restaurant success starts with a great customer experience, employees’ ability to make positive and lasting connections with guests is essential. Employing people who possess extraordinary customer service skills can ensure the guest experience is comfortable and high on service. The better the guest experience, the more repeat customers, higher the sales. In 2017, American fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A earned revenue of $5.7 billion and had a customer satisfaction score of 87!
6. Cultural fit: When it comes to hiring new people, finding candidates that are a cultural fit is critical. Candidates who share the same attitudes, values, standards, and goals as your restaurant is extremely important. When you have people who believe in what you believe, your outcomes will always be favorable: better operations, better food, and happier guests.
7. Team player: A good cultural fit also nurtures loyalty and encourages a spirit of teamwork. Since employees are a part of an environment that reflects their own belief system, the sense of shared values helps build robust teams that create stability and decrease turnover rates. It is only when the restaurant environment is stable, that employee engagement is high.

Achieve Higher Levels of Success

Whether you are a global chain operating multiple restaurants, or whether you are just embarking upon the journey, the combination of a robust concept, good food, a comfortable atmosphere and impeccable service style is what defines a profitable restaurant. With over 1.6 million new restaurant jobs to be created in the US by 2027, it is critical you have the right employees on board who know how to make the right business decisions. So, look for these characteristics on your next restaurant hire, cultivate them to reach higher levels of success, and set a good example.

Millennials are taking over the world – quite literally! Millennials will soon outsize the Baby Boom generation and will become the largest living generation. By 2030, the Millennial generation will have 78 million people whereas; the Boomer generation will only have 56 million people in the United States. However, ask any restaurant manager what their greatest challenge is, and the unanimous response will be hiring and retaining the millennial workforce! As the demands and expectations of millennials rise, and as they constantly search for something better and different, hiring and retaining millennials is challenging for any industry – especially in the restaurant industry where the annual turnover rate is a whopping 94% – much higher than any other industry.

So what can you, as a restaurant operations manager, do to hire and retain the best people from this lot?

Top Tips

Attrition is never good; not only does it affect your restaurant operations; but it is also costly when your most valuable people quit. Some of the main reasons why millennials quit their jobs are lack of opportunities, unsatisfactory compensation and benefits, mundane work, dull work environment and no recognition or appreciation. Since millennials are imperative to the success of your restaurant, understanding their needs and catering to them is vital. Here are 5 tips to hire and retain millennials:

1. Offer flexibility: One of the first things you need to do to encourage and motivate Millennials to work for you is by offering flexibility in work hours. Millennials are always looking for flexibility and autonomy while pursuing job opportunities; they like to be in control of their own schedules, rather than be forced to adjust to a rigid schedule. Start by embedding flexibility into the core of your corporate culture and letting millennials set their own schedules. You can choose from a variety of scheduling software and offer an easy way to swap shifts or request schedule changes for a happier and more efficient workforce.
2. Get smart: With millennials touching their smartphones 45 times a day, it becomes increasingly important for you to embrace and implement digital technology across your operation lifecycle: from using smart inventory management tools to digital training options, smart scheduling to quick ordering through tablets and smartphones. The millennial generation has no time or inclination to operate the traditional way and are more devoted to working smarter. Hence, implementing digital technology is critical to keep up with their pace and motivate them to do their jobs more efficiently.

In your hiring process as well, you need to engage with them through mobile devices – make it easy for them to find you while they are looking for a job and make it easier to apply for the job at a click of a button!

3. Innovate your training: With 44% of millennials ready to leave a job because they didn’t have the skill development opportunities they wanted, using traditional methods of training can bore and demotivate them. If you want to cater to the technologically-savvy workforce, you need to make a dramatic shift from your conventional training methods and incorporate innovative techniques. Since training is no longer just about compliance or company-mandated policies, by using modern training programs such as micro-learning and AR-driven training, you can offer a multi-faceted learning experience that taps into millennial interests, appetites, and career goals.
4. Create an appealing atmosphere: In order to alleviate the exhaustion and frustration of everyday work in the restaurant industry, you need to make your work environment interesting and appealing where millennials feel motivated to work and are appreciated for their contributions. Empower them by offering mentoring and professional development courses, give them opportunities to demonstrate their social responsibility, and encourage collaborative and creative efforts for improved morale and satisfaction.
5. Make work fun: Millennials are always in search of something exciting, challenging and creative; therefore, in order to hire and retain them, you need to create a fun work environment to make every day more appealing, interesting and stimulating. Millennial attitudes are shaped through the several social media connections and by communicating with diverse people and cultures. Although these attitudes can be difficult to address, it’s important to understand that excitement and challenge is what drives them. So, make work a place where they can do their jobs while having fun, being creative and building relationships.

The Power of Now

With millennials making up nearly half of the US workforce, many restaurants are under the impression that millennials will shape the future of their business; the truth is, millennials aren’t the future, but the present. However, with millennials being more demanding and less inclined to follow conventional procedures, you need to develop innovative strategies for recruiting and hiring these seemingly hard-to-please workers. Since millennial turnover can impact your business profitability, making adjustments to your operations and bringing in technology is a great way to cater to their needs. In addition, offering flexible work hours, innovating your training methods, creating an appealing atmosphere and making work fun are equally important. Understanding millennials career aspirations and attitudes about work and doing what’s best to win their hearts, minds, and loyalty is what will define the success of your restaurant.

If you happen to walk into a restaurant, don’t be too surprised to find the chef doing the dishes, or the manager setting up tables. The labor shortage in the restaurant industry is at an all-time high, and no; this problem is not new, but it has surely come to a point of extreme concern and fear. According to Dallas News, labor shortage is becoming a crisis that will only get worse. Managers filling in to perform tasks due to the lack of skilled (and unskilled) labor has become commonplace, but there are ways you can deal with it.

Reasons for Labor Shortage

The restaurant industry is portraying a very sorry figure. As more and more eateries, bistros and cafés mushroom in the most up-market of locations, striking a balance between high rent and labor wage is excruciatingly difficult. According to East Bay Times, upward of 60 restaurants in the Bay Area closed down between September 2016 and January 2017. Plus, the increasing prominence of celebrity chefs causes mistaken perception among aspiring chefs that success can be easily earned through fame. In an industry as dynamic as the restaurant, several factors contribute to labor shortage:

• Dynamic restaurant growth is causing an unprecedented need for skilled workers at all levels
• Historic low unemployment rate (Sub 4%) has translated into a significant shortage in the required demographics
• Meager minimum wage ($7.25/hour in Texas) is making attracting and retaining labor extremely difficult
• Diminishing skill-based learning programs is leading to a severe skills gap
• Rising inflation and increased cost of living is causing an enormous demand for higher salaries
• The onset of new dining options is making it difficult for restaurants to find and keep good employees
• Increase in health insurance costs is putting immense pressure on restaurant owners
• Growing anti-immigration laws is causing a massive dearth of entry-level skilled workers

Creative Solutions to Deal with Labor Shortage

Apart from delivering delectable food, recruiting and managing employees is one of the most pressing concerns for restaurants. According to the National Restaurant Association, labor recruitment is a top challenge for most restaurants. While some just close shop due to the dearth of labor, some others turn to creative solutions to deal with labor shortage:

1. Create a fun work environment: Although restaurants usually operate on thin profit margins, in order to retain top talent (and attract more), operators need to create a fun work environment to make the whole experience more appealing. For instance, Ratatouille and Company holds mock cocktail parties to enable their servers to learn skills like pouring Champagne and answering queries about items on the menu. They also let their chefs prepare their favorite dish and identify ones that can be part of their menu.
2. Empower workers: Worker dissatisfaction and frustration is common in the restaurant industry. Hence, it is essential you put the right people with the right skills on the right jobs. Give your workers the tools they need and empower them to work smarter and at a more professional level. Offer benefits to high performing employees and stipends for professional development to keep labor motivated, engaged and committed; Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s and Taco Bell are helping employees pay for college tuition.
3. Be flexible: Since a majority of labor in the restaurant industry are students or chefs fresh out of culinary school, offering flexible hours that allow them to work longer (or fewer) hours can help in attracting more qualified workers. Instead of imposing strict, rigid schedules, enable flexibility in order to improve worker satisfaction, making the most of the limited labor and reducing turnover. In-N-Out Burger has been rated the number 1 fast food restaurant chain primarily due to its flexible scheduling.
4. Upskill their capabilities: If restaurant owners screen and train their employees properly, there is sure to be a substantial impact on turnover. Training the workers using creative training methods and honing their skills for their jobs helps in increasing their productivity and efficiency, ensuring loyalty, and reducing the need and cost of hiring more people.
5. Leverage technology: Using modern technology solutions, restaurant owners can systematize their hiring and training processes. Using mobile apps such as ZippyApp, restaurants can streamline their hiring process with easy application management and tracking, automated application matching, optimized hiring pages, and with access to a huge database of potential candidates.

Embrace Change

Gas prices or labor shortage – some things are just out of your control. Although the root causes of labor shortage are complex, there’s a lot you can do to minimize the impact: from creating a fun work environment, to training and educating your workforce, offering flexible work hours, and leveraging technology for boosting efficiency. Whether you’ve just begun your journey or whether you are an old player, take note of these solutions. You cannot help labor shortage from happening, but if you play your cards right, you can certainly embrace change and make sure your restaurant deals with it the right way.

While the latest 5% unemployment rate indicates the nation’s economy is strong, it means more competition for restaurants. One in every ten Americans is employed in the restaurant industry, and the improving economy means these workers have more options.

Labor trends. The surge in restaurant employment growth indicates there is a gap between job openings and available candidates. We are in one of the tightest labor markets we have seen in decades, and low unemployment and ample supply of jobs puts even more pressure on restaurant owners and operators. The competition for quality workers is very high, and the restaurant labor pool is shrinking. Check out our blog to learn tips for hiring in a tight labor market.

Labor challenges. As the U.S. economy strengthens and the unemployment rate decreases, restaurant owners and operators are likely to see recruiting and retaining employees becoming more of a challenge. Developing a solid hourly recruiting marketing strategy will give you a leg up in finding quality employees. Our innovative approach to recruiting casts a wider net to capture quality applicants. We distribute your jobs to the most popular online job boards and post to social media gaining the most exposure to your jobs.

Retaining employees. High turnover has been a constant struggle for the restaurant industry. In 2014, the National Restaurant Association showed the restaurant-and-accommodation industry had a turnover rate of 66.3%. Showing your workers who they can become within your organization is a great way to keep them loyal and reduce turnover. Devoting more resources to employee training and education can benefit you in the long run.

The restaurant business offers many benefits, which is why most restaurant workers express a lot of optimism working in the industry. The restaurant business is worth approximately $709 billion (yes, that’s billion with a B!), which leaves it as a place for tremendous opportunities and growth. Still not convinced? Here are 7 benefits of working in the industry that will help change your mind!

1. Opportunity for All: The restaurant industry is one of the few that provides job opportunities for all age groups – from Newbie’s to Veterans, Host to General Managers, there are job openings for any age group ranging from 16-65 (and over).

2. Tremendous Employment Growth and Career Advancement: It is estimated by 2025 the restaurant industry will employ 15.7 million workers – an increase of 1.7 million from 2015. For those who have worked in the industry, nine out of 10 claim it is a good place to land a first job, and 70% of all workers ages 18-65 have advanced to higher paying jobs. The highest-paying restaurant jobs can easily reach six-figures, and are attainable for anyone with the right experience.

3. Great Networking Opportunity: On top of providing tremendous career advancement, working in restaurants offers great networking opportunities. This is especially true of those who work in Front of the House positions — like Hosts, Servers, Bussers, and Bartenders — as these tend to be very engaging jobs. In these roles, you get to meet all types of people from different backgrounds. These individuals can turn into work connections, unearthing new opportunities.

4. Not You’re Typical 9-5 Job: The restaurant industry is one of the few that offers flexible working hours to fit around family and social lives. It is also one of the few to offer both part-time and full-time work, as many restaurants are open extended hours. Many younger employees make the most of what the industry has to offer and are also enrolled in school (if you are enrolled in school, check out our blog for some great tips on How to Handle Being a Full-Time Student with a Part-Time Job!).

5. Training Included: Many restaurants provide their own training program which can help workers develop their individual skill sets. This allows them to move into successful careers – regardless of their education.

6. A Rewarding and Lucrative Career: In regards to hourly pay, many restaurant employees make a hefty hourly wage, especially those who earn tips on top of their base pay — like Servers and Bartenders. Restaurant managers of many corporate and some private businesses earn very competitive salaries — not to mention quarterly and yearly bonuses. In fact, nine out of 10 owners and operators say they will likely work in restaurants until they retire.

7. Travel Opportunities and Job Security: Restaurants are located around the globe, and there are no indications it will slow down (remembers, that’s billion with a B!) Many corporate restaurant brands operate internationally, and are willing to provide placements or relocations.

What is your favorite thing about working in the restaurant industry? Post your comment below!

*Statistics taken from The National Restaurant Association.