R ANT D E P OT

Attracting Workers Back to the Restaurant Industry

8%. Some restaurateurs blame the crisis on enhanced unemployment benefits. However, according to a Black Box Workforce Intelligence report in August, “Recent evidence shows that cutting those benefits doesn’t significantly reduce the labor shortage.”

Billy Manzo, owner of Federal Hill Pizza, with two locations in Rhode Island, sees it differently. “Sorry to say, but politics has a lot to do with this [problem],” he says. “East Coast blue states are paying people to stay home and stay masked, while red states are pushing their economy forward. The other part of it is, people who made our industry their part-time or full-time job have come to the conclusion they can make the same or more money with less stress doing something else. It’s just that simple. With all that being said, if you have an employee who’s doing a good job, pay them as well as you can while fostering a culture of positivity….You need to build the team.”

But do workers even want to join your team? For its Q2 2021 United States Job Market Report, Joblist surveyed 30,000-plus job seekers. A solid 60% of workers, with or without hospitality experience, said they wouldn’t consider a hospitality job for their next position. And 58% said they “prefer working in a different setting,” while 37% said the pay is too low. Twenty percent cited lack of benefits, and 16% cited lack of scheduling flexibility.

Even worse, 69% of all survey respondents said nothing could change their minds about working in the hospitality industry. Just 26% said higher pay could change their minds, and 14% said it would take increased benefits to lure them in.

This labor crisis “could force restaurant owners to innovate in order to create a better work environment and work flexibility,” says Doug Ramsthel, a partner at Burnham Benefits, an employee benefits brokerage and consulting firm in California. “It’s unclear what and how these changes would be made, but addressing worker needs in order to attract and retain talent will be more important than simply increasing wages.”

The Blackbox Intelligence report offers some clues. It found that 87% of restaurant workers surveyed said they want to earn a set livable wage rather than rely on tips. They also want promotion opportunities, more flexible schedules, health benefits, paid time off, and a better company culture and work environment. Thirty-five percent of hourly restaurant workers and job seekers are parents, the report says, and 18% had to leave their job to take care of their family or kids. For these workers, schedule flexibility is a must.

Fortunately, unlike Joblist’s survey, the Blackbox Intelligence survey found that 66% of workers said they would return to the restaurant industry “if the right conditions were met.” The report concludes, “This is a moment for restaurant owners and managers to take a look at how they do things and what their staff is up against. By creating a positive work environment and meeting workers’ needs, restaurants can reduce turnover and hire top talent in the tightest labor market we’ve ever seen.”

Robots On The Way

But what if workers still don’t want to come back in sufficient numbers? Fortunately, there’s a solution to every problem, even if, at first glance, it looks scarier than the problem itself. Remember when you firmly believed customers would never want to order a pizza online? You thought they wanted to talk to you on the phone. Now everyone carries a phone in their pocket or purse, but they let their fingers do the talking.

Digital technology has proven a godsend in terms of order taking. So are automation and robotics the solution to the labor crisis—cute, fat little R2D2s delivering or serving pies, and mechanical arms spreading sauce and sprinkling cheese on a dough skin? Would your customers mind a fresh, hot pizza made by cold, unfeeling metal claws?

One pizza industry leader is ready to find out, PMQ has learned. We can’t reveal the details yet, but San Francisco-based xRobotics has inked a deal with one of the country’s top pizza chains, boasting thousands of locations around the world. xRobotics’ new xPizza Cube (or the Cube, for short) can prep up to 300 pies per hour, including sauce, cheese and pepperoni. The dough crust is placed on a fast-spinning platform; while it spins, dispensers add the toppings to precise proportions, prepping a 16” pepperoni pizza in under 50 seconds. Compact and designed for kitchens with limited space, the machine can be assembled in five minutes in the morning, according to xRobotics, and takes 10 minutes to clean each night.