For an business constructed on hospitality, a restaurant’s workforce is its best asset and, doubtlessly, considered one of its largest challenges. Although the labor scarcity of the final two or three years has eased, there are nonetheless extra jobs accessible than there are workers to fill them.
However new Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation analysis finds that many operators are deploying new applied sciences, akin to Synthetic Intelligence, chatbots and analytics, to modernize the hiring course of and enhance worker effectivity.
A brand new report, Workforce Technology: Transforming Restaurant Recruitment and Retention, highlights 4 key areas the place know-how helps operators fill jobs and improve their workers’ efficiency.
- Reshaping recruitment practices and enhancing effectivity. Adopting automation, AI-driven applicant monitoring methods (ATS), and chatbots can scale back hiring instances, streamline applicant administration, and unlock managers to allow them to focus extra on operations and workers. Operators are discovering that know-how that simplifies the hiring course of can even improve the candidate’s expertise in addition to save money and time.
- Prioritizing retention and correct coaching. Structured onboarding packages, employee-engagement packages, and management coaching are rising as key methods for enhancing long-term retention and fostering office stability. Moreover, optimistic worker experiences drive retention. Restaurant corporations that emphasize office tradition, set clear job expectations, and supply mentorship and progress alternatives assist to make optimistic inroads. For instance, Chipotle’s “Burrito Buddy,” which pairs new workers with skilled companions to assist navigate a smoother transition within the first 90 days, is proving profitable as an onboarding and retention software.
- Optimizing data-driven decision-making. Leveraging AI and knowledge analytics to optimize scheduling, predict turnover dangers, and determine high-potential managers can improve effectivity whereas decreasing labor prices and operational disruptions.
- Evolving communications and engagement instruments. Operators are implementing digital platforms, engagement surveys, and real-time suggestions instruments to reinforce transparency, worker satisfaction, and office tradition. An instance of this, the Potbelly Pulse, applied by fast-casual sandwich model Potbelly, is used to evaluate worker suggestions and sentiment, determine challenges, and spotlight areas the place the worker expertise may very well be improved.
In accordance with the 2025 State of the Restaurant Trade report, 77% of operators declare that recruitment and retention stays a big problem. With the business anticipated to make use of 15.9 million folks this yr and 17.4 million by 2035, getting the hiring piece proper is main precedence.
“Expertise is influencing the way in which eating places promote job openings, display screen and rent, and practice workers to succeed on the job,” says Chad Moutray, the Affiliation’s vp of Analysis & Information, who interviewed workforce consultants at 16 restaurant corporations for this report. “The usage of applicant monitoring methods, automated chatbots, and scheduling instruments is impacting all the things from permitting candidates to use for jobs when it’s handy for his or her schedules to giving managers extra freedom to deal with operation- and service-enhancing duties as an alternative of time-consuming administrative duties. It’s clear that embracing extra workforce know-how is essential to fast and environment friendly hiring, efficient onboarding, and profitable coaching.”
A number of of these interviewed instructed Moutray that automating half, or all, of their recruitment and coaching practices are decreasing the sum of money they spend to promote job openings and are serving to them retain between 60% to 70% of workers. However additionally they acknowledge that the human contact remains to be very a lot vital.
“They see worth in automating a number of the course of,” he says. “They know that knowledge and automation are essential, however human interplay remains to be crucial in hiring and onboarding workers. Although know-how will proceed to cut back time constraints, managers perceive that it’s equally essential for job candidates and new hires to really feel welcome and assured of success.”
Obtain the complete workforce know-how report here
