Some restaurants take additional measures to attract and retain workers

When Laurie Schive And her husband opened Blue Loon Bakery in a small town in New England in 2018, she did not expect hiring and keeping the workers would present a large part of the challenge.

After all, earlier in his career, Schive made a leap of dozens of countries as a clandestine service officer for the CIA, focusing on the limitation of the propagation of weapons of mass destruction. Later, she was director of Global Risk Consulting in a Big Four company.

Nevertheless, find people to cook pastries and sourdough breads in Europe.

Harder but made them stay, she said.

Hiring in the catering sector has rarely been simple. Now, to attract and retain staff members, some employers say it is necessary To adopt an approach to cooking: the deployment of various advantages, training, technology and additional flexibility in planning.

An all-safe strategy is often necessary because the shortages of labor remain a sustainable challenge in the restaurant and food services industry, which should employ approximately an American worker out of 10. The National Restaurant Association provides that industry will add 200,000 jobs to the United States in 2025, which increases employment to 15.9 million by the end of the year.

In so -called fast service restaurants, many workers do not last a year or even six months, told Bi David Henkes, principal director of the Technomic market research company.

“When you talk to restaurants about what they are doing, a large part involves trying to stem the flow,” he said, referring to the succession of hires and the future. This is because people often consider the work of the restaurant not as a career but as a “spring level springboard,” said Henkes.

Laurie Schive, co -owner of Blue Loon Bakery, referring to workers

For this reason, and because the benefits of the industry often oscillate around 3% to 5%, it can be difficult to persuade the bosses to invest in workers who may not even last a whole season of Burrito. However, Henkes said, restaurants are increasingly putting money in hourly workers by offering “carrots” such as partial tuition fees, scholarships and 401 (K) plans.

These measures, said Henkes, “show that the restaurant is investing in the person.” This, in turn, can be paid by reducing the share of workers who put their aprons well before doing a year in work.

Find a career, not just a job

The turnover of the Burrito Chipotle chain among the hourly workers in restaurants – crew and managers – increased from 164% in 2022 to 145% in 2023, then to 131% in 2024, the company told BI. Turnover greater than 100% means that the company, like many of its peers, must replace more workers in one year than it uses at the same time.

The directors of salaried restaurants and field staff also left Newport Beach, California, at lower prices in recent years.

These are decreases according to which laws Alexis-Collins, the chief of the people of Chipotle for field operations, attributes in part to the efforts of the company to show workers that there are ways to progress in a career rather than simply maintaining a job.

This growth could mean switching from Burrito Slinger to regional vice-president, which consists of supervising up to 500 locations. The remuneration for these management jobs exceeds $ 600,000 per year, said the company. Alexis-Collins said that part of the messaging to beginners understands being clear about what it takes to move forward.

“You don’t guess,” she said. More than 85% of chipotle managers started on store teams, said Alexis-Collins.

The company offers quarterly bonuses for one week of salary to crew members whose restaurants are successful, up to $ 5,250 per year for education and a debt study program.

However, most of its catering employees “come to want a job,” she said.

Alexis-Collins said that Chipotle had tried to make improvements, especially at the general level, because they are “the captain of the ship”.

An effort implies an artificial intelligence platform that discusses with job candidates, collects its information, plans interviews and sends letters of tenders on behalf of a manager. Chipotle thinks that the tool, called Ava Cado, could reduce the time necessary to hire restaurant employees up to 75%. It is management aid.

“The more stable the chef of the restaurant, the more the retention of the crew team,” said Alexis-Collins.

Chad Moutray, the chief economist of the National Restaurant Association, also told Bi that having the right manager in place is not only for net profit but also to “ensure that your workers remain”.

He said that many food services tend to find a job in places they already eat. This creates a level of membership from the start, said Moutray. However, for employees to remain, they must also feel appreciated, have colleagues with whom they like to work and have managers who exhibit what is expected, he said.

Make the groan of technology

Henkes, from Technomic, said that more restaurants were “a large push” to increase labor satisfaction using technology to eliminate certain subordinate tasks from workers’ plates. This may include the addition of kiosks where customers place orders or the introduction of automation in back areas where food is prepared.

Henkes has said that if many investments that restaurants do in technology relate to the workforce, the objective is generally not to replace workers. Instead, he said, it is to do things like the automation of taking an inventory to release workers to interact with customers.

“What he does is to redeploy them to greater value activities,” said Henkes, referring to technology.

He said that software juggling workers’ quarter requests can offer employees more predictability and flexibility in their schedules. This is important to stimulate work satisfaction, but it also helps restaurant workers who hold more of a job.

“It has become a very scientific approach to make sure that people are programmed when they want to be and that changes are covered,” said Henkes.

Stimulate wages and benefits

Schive, in Blue Loon Bakery, said that if the workforce is the cost it has Most of the control, training employees are the most difficult for business management.

“You recruit them, you form them, then you have to keep them,” she said.

Schive uses a calculator of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to determine a decent salary for full -time workers in his New London, the New Hampshire, Bakery, who occupies a white plank house built in the 1830s and an attached barn.

While the pandemic began to calm down and workers in many industries have intensified their work, Schive and its co -owner and husband, Mike Morgan, decided that they had to increase remuneration and other advantages, especially for full -time workers.

Blue Loon covers 75% of the health bonuses of full -time workers and offers a retirement account with a 3% match.

Recently, the bakery added six weeks of family medical leave paid for part -time and full -time workers.

“I don’t know that it really contributed a large part to our recruitment effort, but it helps,” said Schive.

She and her husband worked with real estate agents to try to find workers a place to live in a tight housing market. The couple also let an employee use a small chalet on their property while she was looking for a house.

Schive, who is the president of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, said that other bakeries and restaurants had taken similar measures to help workers secure housing, because a shortage of affordable options can be an obstacle to attracting him employees.

Blue Loon now has more than two dozen staff members for the busy summer tourist season – almost what he has in winter.

The goal is now to keep them. This includes the night baker, Schive, hired after the pandemic locking temporarily closed a neighboring college where he worked.

“I hold him like a sinister death,” she said, “because he is wonderful.”