You can’t grow your restaurant alone—hiring restaurant staff that are the right fit for your business is key to scaling it. And whether it’s your first employee or you’re looking to add to an existing team, hiring staff for your restaurant is easier said than done. After all, the restaurant industry is known for historically high turnover rates (averaging 83.4% as of 2022).
In a tight labor market, staffing can be among the top challenges when managing a restaurant. Here, I take you through the essential steps and tips for successfully hiring restaurant staff you’ll love.
Key Takeaways
- Create a hiring strategy to ensure you’re not in an endless recruiting cycle.
- Know what you need, and don’t be afraid to verify candidates to ensure they meet your standards.
- Set accurate expectations to boost employee satisfaction and retention.
Step 1: Assess Your Staffing Needs
Understanding your restaurant’s unique staffing requirements is the first step to building a successful team. Conduct a thorough evaluation of your current staff, identify gaps, and anticipate future needs. Consider factors such as peak hours, seasonal fluctuations, and special events to determine your team’s optimal number and roles.
Who Are the Key Employees in a Restaurant?
The key employee positions in a restaurant will vary based on your restaurant type. You’ll also want to consider key staff in the front of house (dining room) and back of house (kitchen).
Typical key back of house (BOH) restaurant staff include:
- Executive chef: The executive chef designs the menu, creates recipes, and is essentially the most senior manager in the kitchen. In independent restaurants, the owner may also be the executive chef.
- Sous chef/Kitchen manager: Sous chefs are the mid-level managers of the kitchen. They are responsible for keeping the kitchen running in place of the executive chef. Casual and chain restaurants may use the title kitchen manager instead of “sous chef.”
- Line cook: You’ll likely have at least a few line cooks; these cooks work individual cooking stations to keep your kitchen running quickly during meal services.
- Prep cook: Prep cooks typically work during the daytime hours, chopping vegetables, portioning meat, and making base ingredients like salad dressings and sauces that are needed to stock your line.
- Expediter: The expediter communicates between the BOH and FOH during service, to keep orders flowing and ensure that orders go to the correct table or customer. Expediters are a little bit BOH, a little bit FOH, and are typically included in FOH tip pools.
- Dishwasher: The dishwasher cleans and sanitizes dishware, cookware, cutlery, and glassware during prep and service hours. They also typically take on cleaning and sanitizing tasks (like cleaning bathrooms) to prevent the cross-contamination that could occur from cooks or food servers performing them.
In the front of house (FOH), most restaurants need:
- Front of house (FOH) manager/ Dining room manager: FOH or dining room managers are the main point of guest service and FOH staff support during meal services. Your FOH managers may also perform specialized tasks like booking parties, writing schedules, or organizing catering services.
- Server: You’ll likely have more servers than any other employee. Servers sell your menu, ring in orders, process payments, and typically have some set up and break down tasks (like folding napkins) for every shift.
- Bartender: A bartender is just like a server but with the added responsibility of making drinks.
- Cashier/ Counter staff: A quick service restaurant typically has cashiers or counter staff in place of servers.
- Food runner: In full service restaurants, food runners literally run prepared food from the kitchen to tables or waiting customers.
- Busser/ Server assistant (SA): Bussers clear and reset tables and are typically responsible for water service. Some restaurants call bussers “server assistants,” or SAs for short.
- Host: A host organizes reservations and walk-in customers, seats guests, answers phone calls and may have additional responsibilities like handing takeout orders.
Depending on your service style, you may also need specialty staff like baristas, sushi chefs, pastry chefs, or bakers. If you don’t have enough hours to employ a full-time salaried management team, you may have hourly shift supervisors instead of managers in both the FOH and BOH.
There’s also a key restaurant position that straddles both the FOH and BOH—the general manager (or GM). In many independent restaurants, the owner acts as the GM. But if your restaurant is successful, you may make enough profit to justify hiring a GM so you can step away from the day-to-day operations. The GM is typically the final word on all business decisions and acts in lieu of the owner signing contracts and checks, and other high-level functions.
Step 2: Find Candidates
Restaurant staff recruitment requires some key strategies. Think of it this way: similar to attracting patrons to dine at your establishment, you want to attract high-quality workers to staff your establishment.
Write Compelling Job Ads
Recruiting restaurant employees requires compelling job ads and job descriptions. Craft engaging job posts that describe the position and convey your restaurant’s culture. Clearly outline job responsibilities and expectations, highlighting any unique perks or opportunities.
Utilize keywords relevant to your restaurant type to enhance visibility on job boards. For example, if you are an upscale restaurant looking for cooks, lead with your chef’s credentials and cutting-edge menu items. A bar in a college town might highlight its fun atmosphere and the ability to make tips.
Post to Relevant Sites
Choose platforms frequented by industry professionals. Popular industry job boards, culinary schools, and local community forums are excellent places to find candidates passionate about the culinary arts.
Tap Into Existing Networks
Leverage your personal network to find candidates. Your personal and professional connections might help you meet your next hire. Recommendations from trusted sources often yield committed and reliable candidates.
Step 3: Conduct Interviews
Conducting effective interviews is crucial to evaluating a candidate’s fit for your restaurant. Know which questions to ask for each role, and how to assess the candidates’ responses.
Schedule interviews thoughtfully. Use calendar invites with notifications to help make sure no one forgets or misses an interview. Also be sure to schedule interviews with several candidates. I know many restaurant owners who have experienced an uptick in interview “ghosting.”
A “stage” (rhymes with “dodge”) interview is also increasingly popular—it is one where a candidate works all or a portion of a shift in your restaurant as a sort of practical assessment. Stage interviews give you the best opportunity to determine if a candidate has the necessary skills and if they are fit with your team. But they can be tricky legally and with your worker’s comp insurer. So check with your local labor laws to see if you need to compensate someone during a stage interview and make sure these candidates are covered by either your worker’s comp or general liability insurance policy on the off-chance someone gets injured while staging.
Even if not using a stage interview, you have some legal considerations during the interview process. Many questions are illegal to ask in a job interview, so make sure you know how to stay on the right side of the law. Some examples of illegal interview questions that you should avoid asking are:
- How old are you?
- Have you experienced any serious illnesses in the past year?
- Are you male or female?
- How many kids do you have?
- What type of accent do you have?
- What is your religion?
Don’t forget to screen candidates outside of the interview as well. Verify any claimed credentials, follow up on references, and look into previous employment history.
Step 4: Make an Offer
Once you’ve found your chosen candidate, it’s time to make a compelling offer. Make it official and ensure you are both on the same page by composing an offer letter. The offer letter outlines the terms and conditions of employment. It should clearly state the job title, duties, compensation, and any relevant policies. Here’s some information you might want to include:
- Restaurant name
- Your contact information
- Recipient’s contact information
- Date of the offer
- Offer expiration date
- Rate of pay
- Desired start date
- Terms and conditions of employment and termination
- Your dated signature
- Space for the recipient’s dated signature
Send the offer letter promptly, and be prepared to negotiate terms if necessary. You can send the offer letter via email, physical mail, or even text message.
Step 5: Schedule Onboarding
Hiring is just the beginning—successful integration into your restaurant’s operations requires a smooth new employee onboarding process. If your candidate accepts the offer, it’s time to kick off onboarding. This includes tedious paperwork.
You’ll need to request necessary documents during this phase to ensure compliance with legal requirements, possibly including:
- Contact information
- Emergency contact information
- I-9 Form
- Social Security number (SSN)
- W-4 Form
You’ll also need to train them on your brand, processes, rules, timekeeping, payroll, and other aspects of working for your business. You might even schedule a new employee orientation, especially for making multiple hires at once.
Step 6: Create a Training Schedule
A critical part of onboarding that’s frequently overlooked is the training schedule. The new hire should leave onboarding knowing exactly when they’re expected to return, and what tools, resources, or uniform pieces they’ll be expected to have.
As far as the training itself goes, consider using different types of employee training methods. You might require new hires to learn the menu and pass a quiz, as well as incorporate on-the-job training while they shadow under a trusted staffer.
Hiring Restaurant Staff Challenges
Hiring was the top challenge restaurants faced in 2023. Another survey found that 15% of businesses say hiring employees is the most difficult aspect of their business to manage. Nearly four in 10 restaurants had difficulty hiring in 2023. Not to mention the difficulties restaurants face when trying to retain those new hires. These are some of the most common challenges you could face when hiring a restaurant staff.
Employee Retention
Employee retention was a major challenge restaurants faced in 2023. Improving employee retention is a top goal for restaurants in 2024 (just after boosting employee productivity). While retention isn’t a hiring-specific challenge, it’s certainly relevant.
The more employees you can retain, the fewer you’ll need to hire. With the whole restaurant industry experiencing a multi-years-long staffing shortage, competition is fierce for the best candidates. If you can’t outspend your competitors by offering higher wages, health benefits, or perks, you could focus on your workplace vibe. Most restaurant workers I know will stay with a restaurant for years if they like the work environment.
Offering a daily shift meal to your employees costs pennies and is a great way to use up food that you might otherwise throw away. Giving your employees set schedules costs you nothing, and many people appreciate it. Some restaurant employees are enticed by training opportunities (like wine classes with your wine representatives) or access to high-end food (like the produce you get from the farmers market). Find things that incentivize your specific employees and your retention should go up.
Labor Costs
The cost of labor is the third-biggest overall staffing challenge restaurants faced overall in 2023. Many restaurants have to pay well above minimum wage to attract quality talent. In fact, wage increases are one of the top investment areas for restaurant developers.
And as concerns around rising interest rates and economic hardship, cause consumers to spend less and eat at home more, it can be hard for restaurants to strike the balance of paying staff an attractive wage without raising menu prices too high.
Team Communication
Once you hire workers, it’s important to integrate them into your team. Otherwise, you’ll be in an endless cycle of hiring and recruitment. Unfortunately, though, “staff communication” is the number three staffing challenge full-service restaurants, specifically, faced in 2023.
How can you tackle this challenge head-on? Create clear communication processes and workflows, keep it simple and approachable, and encourage over-communication. You can use scheduling apps to communicate staff availability and shift swaps. Add messages to your point of sale (POS) clock-in screens, and hold a pre-shift meeting for every single shift.
I always printed a few hard copies of pre-shift notes to post on the kitchen line and to hand to staff with staggered clock in times. This enabled my staff to all start on the same page (literally). Daily manager logs are also indispensable. Most restaurant POS systems nowadays support digital manager logs that are searchable, so there are a lot of communication tools available.
Hiring Restaurant Staff: Tips for Success
Consider the following tips and best practices when learning how to recruit restaurant staff for your small business:
Create a Hiring Strategy
As many as 62% of restaurants are understaffed—so, there’s room to improve the hiring approach. Rather than reactively hiring when a need presents itself, create strategies to anticipate your needs and have a funnel of qualified candidates to choose from when the time comes.
All a hiring strategy means for small, independent restaurants is planning ahead, creating a systematic approach to attract, select, and retain qualified and motivated employees. Each restaurant has unique needs, so your hiring strategy will likely be different from neighboring restaurants.
So what exactly does a hiring strategy look like? Here are a couple examples: A fine dining restaurant might rely heavily on personal referrals and private recruiters for hiring new chefs, while a fast food chain restaurant might simply tap into its local network of high schools and colleges to get a stream of applicants. Any type of restaurant may time hiring to sync with seasonal booms in business (such as summer tourist season or winter holiday party season). Your strategy will depend on your restaurant type and your busy seasons.
The beginning of the new fiscal year is a good time to design your hiring strategy. After holiday party season and before Valentine’s Day, take a look back at the previous year. When were the times you were most understaffed? Put the dates on your calendar for the current year, and start looking for employees at least a month before you’ll need them.
Verify Credentials
If you are looking for candidates with certain credentials—like a food safety manager’s certificate or safe alcohol service training—make sure to verify the documents your employees provide.
This is especially important if the credentials are legally required (as in the states and counties that require food handler’s licenses). You don’t want your business to end up in hot water because you hired an employee without the required licenses.
Related: Ultimate Guide to Permits & Licenses for Restaurants
Use a Detailed Job Description
While your job ad might be short and punchy, you should also have a detailed job description readily available. This is a more comprehensive write-up of the specific role, related responsibilities, required qualifications, and other detailed information.
If you don’t know how to write a job description, there are many templates available. Check out these resources to help you get started:
- How to Write a Restaurant Manager Job Description + Template
- Line Cook Job Description: Expert Guide [+ Template]
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Learn about the basics of hiring restaurant staff in these frequently asked questions.
Bottom Line
Hiring restaurant staff is a pivotal point in growing or starting a thriving restaurant. If you follow the steps and advice in this post, you won’t just fill positions; you’ll curate a team that will contribute to the success and reputation of your business. Embrace the journey of building a winning team, one hire at a time.
