The New Restaurant Labor Pool
QUESTION FROM: Mariah in CA
“I know most people use Indeed or more exclusive head hunting agencies to find help but we’ve been through 3 different hospitality specific staffing agencies who promote themselves as leaders in the business and we can not find a great sous chef. We’re offering a very competitive salary for our area, vacation and health insurance and still nothing! …our Executive Chef wants someone who has his level of experience or close to it and is unwilling to consider a recent graduate from the local culinary school which seems to be our only option at the moment.
Open to ideas here as we just can’t keep up.”
HH ANSWER:
Instead of looking for a great chef - you should be looking for a great person. A great person who cares enough / wants to be there and is trainable - i.e., a line cook who shows up every shift they’re scheduled and sometime arrives early. Offer that person the opportunity to advance and train them to be the Chef you need.
The idea that you’ll just find a super star Chef is a myth propagated by television, industry anomalies and owners with investors who have far deeper pockets than you. The days of “shooting fish in a barrel” are gone - for now and yet the strategy of “find something valuable, re-package it and then profit from it” is still pervasive throughout our industry and throughout our country. It’s why so few things are still made in the U.S. and why the IOT is where so many of our former staff members are making money.
Don’t get me wrong - repositioning and repackaging works well if you’re a re-seller on Amazon but it doesn’t work (for most of us) in the hospitality industry who have to wake up to the fact that the pool of available labor no longer looks like what it used to look like..
Sure some of us still have piles of applications on their desk but that’s definately not the norm…at least not yet.
You want steller highly skilled employees? You have to make them. Train them. Build them. Be a mentor. Develop and cross-train the people you have to be the employees you want. Believe me - it’ll be the bedrock upon which your culture of investing in people is built.
It’s a shame that your Exec will only work will highly experienced individuals as a big part of being a leader is developing your people and motivating them to perform at a level that exceeds their own expectations.
That being said, there’s no denying that the tide of available workforce is out and it’s more difficult than ever to find people who want to work due to it being a “buyers market” i.e., if you don’t have the culture you claim to have - they’ll go knock on someone else’s door.
As John Kushma of the Sentinal News says to those who realize they’re merely “fish in a barrel”- “Get mad as hell and don’t take it anymore! Because here’s what’s going to happen if you can’t. You will remain a fish in the barrel with all the other fish. The suckers. That’s a fish, right? A ‘suckerfish’. and the ‘characters‘ will be shooting you like a fish in your [work] barrel, taking advantage of you…”
And I’m seeing that happen more and more on the East Coast. People ARE walking in off the alley and into the back doors of those restaurants helmed by men and women of integrity - of solid reputation - and of prestige - and they’re asking if we’re hiring again.
I can’t tell you how many grocery store cashiers I’ve come across in the last few months and when I ask them where they worked before, many tell me that they were in completely different careers or have been retired for years and simply searched “grocery store jobs” online to make a little extra cash….so if you have an IT or web design team - tell them to hit that SEO…and if not, keep business cards on you and keep your eye out for engaging & friendly personalities at the super market!
But if you’re not seeing that on the west coast yet, consider finding that person who wants to be a line cook (with the possibility of becoming a chef) in non-traditional outlets….and start re-imagining what your team might look like - e.g., Maybe they’re in their late 50’s instead of in their early 20’s. Maybe their working their way back into the workforce after being incarcerated. Maybe they’re women who are escaping domestic violence… or at-risk youth enrolled in non-profit based learning programs. Maybe they’re working in an auto repair shop or supermarket until “the right opportunity comes along”. You get the idea. Once you dispense with “traditional profiles” of what your workforce used to look like - you might realize there are places other than indeed that you can go to recruit people. (NB* Don’t forget about employment agencies in nearby cities)
But the way to attract and retain talent goes far beyond scouring non-traditional outlets for human resources.
You need to offer the following (and get the message out that you do on social media):
Association with other talented professionals that lend legitimacy to their own skill sets / position
An engaged culture where people are having fun and offer a sense of belonging to new team members.
An attractive / beautiful place to be and where other people want to be.
Access to leadership / mentorship via transferrable skills training and upward mobility
Geographic transferability (this is a tough one for most one off operators but see above and sell that!)
Some sort of sponsorship / leveraging the businesses profit or credit worthiness to help employees (e.g., healthcare, transportation, continuing education, etc…)
There are lots of other related articles in the HH Library in the “LABOR” section which I strongly recommend you read.
If you’d like to talk about best practices for finding, vetting, training, evaluating or incentivizing employees - please don’t hesitate to reach out directly.
Regards,