Staffing

There are two restaurants with similar menus, prices, job positions, and functions with one significant difference – Restaurant A has exceptional employee retention rates, while Restaurant B faces high employee turnover. Because of Restaurant B’s high turnover rate, they are spending excessive money and time to recruit new employees while continuing to lose high-performing workers.

In the hospitality industry, and every industry for that matter, there is a constant desire and need to increase leader productivity. We use variables such as covers or rooms divided by the number of variable labour hours for any given position to measure efficiency. These measurements are also the basis for many other calculations, and as a scheduling tool – covers are up, so schedule more people, lower rooms booked, so schedule fewer front desk agents. They can also be used as a metric to measure individual employees’ performance or training progression.

Every Food & Beverage operation has different factors that impact its business levels, and with profit margins being so slim, there is little room for error. Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly how much business is coming in? You would always schedule the right number of staff and order the right amount of food. Your customers would never wait, servers and cooks would be productive, and there would be no food waste.

Doesn’t that sound like the perfect world? If your food and beverage operation runs this way, then there is no need to read on. However, most restaurants find themselves reacting to the business on a daily basis leading to poor or inconsistent customer service, frustrated employees being overworked or sent home early, and food waste. It doesn’t need to be this way! By creating an effective forecast, you can take out some of the guesswork and maximize your profit.

There are so many examples of poor planning in the food and beverage industry. Everything from the restaurant manager texting their employees at 11:00 PM at night to tell them what time they’re working the next day or if they’re working at all to a restaurant running out of food midway through service because they didn’t think it would be that busy.

The challenging and competitive labour market the hospitality industry is facing is nothing new, and there are numerous articles and strategies to improve retention and attract the best candidates. However, this problem has compounded in recent years with the number of people leaving the industry. At the leadership level, a void and skillset gap has emerged, making it very difficult to find candidates to fill the seemingly endless number of vacant leadership positions. When operators are unable to fill leadership positions with qualified candidates, they have a limited number of options to consider.

At one point or another, every owner/executive and leader in food and beverage has heard the line, “If we do or buy this, we can save labor”. Captivated by the idea of labor savings, many jump at the opportunity without any further conversation.

It is important to consider new ideas and equally as important to understand that some initiatives can have consequences that come at the expense of something else, such as:

• • Increased food costs,
  • Reduce value or quality to the customer,
  • Place the burden on other employees or departments,
  • Or all of the above.

You need to fully investigate each opportunity and ensure the savings are, in fact, realized.

The following story is intended to show the significant costs of unrealized labor savings, followed by examples of steps to help the decision-making process.

Getting menu pricing right is extremely important. If done right, it can drive sales and profit margins. If done wrong it can lead to profit loss and can be challenging to correct.

It can seem very difficult to determine what is the right way as there are so many opinions on how to price a menu. This is most likely due to the number of variables involved, such as menu style, location, and demographics that each property needs to consider. This article provides general pricing principles and considerations, but there is not one concrete answer that fits all operations.

Instead, we will explore how to use data and your competitive set to help determine your prices and a few other strategies to help lessen the shock when you need to increase prices.

This article is the last in a series about facing the reality of staffing levels in today’s changing industry. If you missed the last two articles Hours of Operations and Menu Size and Purchase vs Produce In-House, make sure to read those too. To round out this discussion, I will focus on fine-tuning and redesigning your processes for long-term sustainability.   

In the past efficiencies and productivity improvements were looked at to reduce payroll costs, It is hard to imagine currently that anyone would have an excess of employees. Now, we are looking at changing the operation to match the number of employees needed just to operate. 

When it comes to staffing levels, it’s not just about attaining and retaining talent. As the industry changes, it’s about learning to adapt to the new reality of staffing levels. In this series of blogs, I’m exploring the three main ways to address staffing levels on an ongoing basis. If you missed last week’s blog Hours of Operation and Menu Size, I suggest that you take a few moments to read through it after reading this one.   

For years, the Food & Beverage and hospitality industries have faced many challenges to acquire and retain talent at all levels. As we all know and have read for many months, this has been compounded by the changes in the workforce since the pandemic. This article is not about how to retain or attract employees as there is a lot of great information and posts available already. This is about dealing with the reality of long-term staffing shortages.