But the question remains in a nation dealing with the “Great Resignation” employment dilemma: Where will the restaurant workers come from?
“No doubt about it, labor is a big issue. Half of all restaurants are operating without a full staff, and 70 percent have positions that are hard to fill,” Peter Romeo, the editor at large for Restaurant Business, told The Epoch Times.
Labor Shortage
Finding workers has been tough on restaurants since the pandemic, as many have disappeared. According to a January report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1.7 million Americans are missing from the workforce in all industries compared to February 2020. Despite the scarcity of workers, several restaurants with big growth expectations must figure out where their future workers will come from.For example, Chipotle Mexican Grill has recently announced it hopes to recruit 19,000 new employees to make its food, expecting a busier spring than usual. The fast-Mex chain is hiring at a pace 27 percent greater than a year ago.
Chipotle is far from the only restaurant chain expecting more growth in 2024. The surprising factor in all of this is that during COVID-19, Americans, with a lack of options, got used to ordering in and cooking at home. Mr. Romeo believes that a couple of factors have contributed since then to people wanting a dining experience outside the home.
“There [are] two factors; one, convenience for people today has never been more important, and every time we seem to max out, it continues to grow. The second is that there is sort of this full monty of people wanting the dining experience again.
“This has greatly surprised the industry,” he continued. What people want now is to go out, be pampered, and be with other people. They also had more money to do this coming out of the pandemic.”
But one of the factors affecting the absence of an available restaurant workforce is that employees feel beat up and not as important as customers, especially with most restaurants understaffed, according to Jasmin Vitolo Parks-Papadopoulos, head of community relations for the Culinary Hospitality Outreach and Wellness (CHOW) nonprofit.
CHOW’s stated mission is to support wellness within the hospitality industry and improve the community’s lives through shared stories, skills, and resources.
“A lot of folks are very centered towards listening to the consumer but not the employee. For instance, people don’t mind working double shifts, but it’s more about not being heard and not allowing them to take specific days off. The change starts with [a] conversation,” she told The Epoch Times.
“Every restaurant will have a different temperature. But employees want protection from the customer, [which] is always [the] right mentality.”
One of the other conclusions the NRA report made was that restaurants looking to be more efficient and customer-facing would employ more technology. According to the study, 60 percent of operators will make improvements designed to improve the customer experience. Some of those changes have included using robots to try and help solve employee shortages.
McDonald’s is one franchisor that has invested millions in new technology and launched a robotics-run restaurant last year in Fort Worth, Texas. Chipotle is also expected to use more robots in its growth, as well as Chick-fil-A, which began autonomous delivery in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas, last year. Some restaurants have even turned to robots as wait staff.
Mr. Romeo, who has covered the restaurant industry for decades, is not one of the proponents of replacing human workers with robots.
“If you look at the instances where robots have been embraced, it’s miniscule. You’re basically talking about a huge expense for a job that pays very little,” he said.
“They’re not the silver bullet, and those robots that bring food to your table don’t go as fast as people do. It’s not as good or effective and not what you get from a human being.”
Ms. Parks-Papadopoulos is a former chef and self-professed employee who dealt with high-functioning anxiety. She left the industry to help others and believes that some of the employment shortage issues for restaurants can be solved by changing how employees are managed, saying it’s not just about a high hourly wage; it’s about seeing each person as an individual.
“I think traditionally what we’ve done is we have this model of the kitchen culture, and it’s viewed as a gift to come to this restaurant and learn from this chef. But we need to believe that we’re also making long-term investments in our people and growing them and making room for mental health issues,” Ms. Parks-Papadopoulos said.
“We are telling people they need to check themselves at the door and clock in, but we need to realize that hospitality workers need to be invested in the long term. If your business does not care about your personal life, it creates fractured human beings and a large issue of substance abuse,” she added.
