I worked in and then managed restaurants for many years in my teens and into my twenties. It was always hard to find and keep the best workers.

But things were different. There were always plenty of people looking for that kind of work, and if you treated them well they would usually stick around.

When I speak to restaurant owners today, it’s a very different story.

After Covid lockdowns, a lot of hospitality staff decided not to return to the industry. It seems that, for many, after having a chance to step back, the value proposition just wasn’t right anymore. They moved on to other industries.

Of course, it’s not just hospitality that is suffering. McKinsey reports that 87% of global employers are having trouble acquiring the talent they need, or anticipate having these challenges in the near future.

But across the world today, hospitality may be the hardest hit industry of all.

It’s clear when you speak to restaurant owners that this is a genuine crisis.

The real question is, what’s the solution?

Some businesses are able to improve retention through higher wages, better benefits, and more attractive working conditions. But many simply cannot afford to do this. And if restaurants can’t find or keep enough staff, then they must find ways to run stores more efficiently, with less staff, while maintaining service and food quality.

We believe the simplest answer is to use technology to supplement and empower the workers you have to be more productive.

Automating lower-level tasks gives your staff freedom. Freedom to focus on creating a fantastic customer experience. Freedom to concentrate on delivering great quality food. It allows you to maintain your service level, extend your opening hours, and also remove some of the more repetitive and stressful tasks from your employees’ day, ultimately helping with retention.

Let’s look at three key areas where smart automation solutions can streamline your operation, expand your margins, and create space for your existing staff to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

 

1. Kiosks

One of the most popular forms of automation already being implemented across the restaurant industry, particularly in the QSR and Fast-Casual space, is order/pay kiosks.

Some of the key benefits are that they increase throughput, shorten wait times, and increase average check by up to 30%. Most importantly when it comes to the labour crisis, kiosks free up staff time. They allow you to serve more customers with less staff, keep the line moving quickly, and allow your workers to focus on higher-value tasks.

What’s more, customers like them. The Harris Poll in found in 2022 that 78% of QSR customers said they prefer to use kiosks over cashiers when ordering food, and 82% said they are more likely to visit a QSR that offers kiosks.

Of course, it’s essential that stores implement them with a customer-first approach. If the outcome is that there is not a staff member in sight, and the human welcome is completely lost, you are missing a trick.

Another key consideration is payment choice. Many people still prefer to use cash for small payments, and kiosks without cash automation can exclude or frustrate a lot of customers.

2. Cash Automation

The number of hours sunk into manual cash handling is often overlooked when it comes to unit economics. When you are short of staff, it can save you hours of labour every week that you no longer need to cover.

In QSRs particularly, cash payment is still very popular, and with all of the pressures on restaurant margins at the moment, it’s a great place to increase efficiency. It can also eliminate human error and cash shrinkage (which is all too commonplace in this industry), as well as counterfeit acceptance.

Not to mention saving your staff all of the stress involved in balancing tills, hunting down and resolving errors, and explaining discrepancies – often at the end of a long and tiring shift. I spent years doing this kind of work, and trust me, your staff will thank you for making all of this as simple as the push of a button.

 

3. Restaurant Operations

There are a few restaurant businesses around the world that are turning to actual robots in the kitchen. But for most, automation in restaurant operations simply means efficient display technology, communications, data analysis, and so on.

We could be talking about a better system to manage your drive-through, or something that will reduce errors in delivery orders. It may be table service, a programme to turn your mountains of unused data into actionable insights, or software that will connect the dizzying number of different channels through which customers order, pay for, and collect their food.

Whatever your need, there are a huge range of automation solutions that can bring new levels of efficiency in-store and help your operation to stay at peak performance – even with less staff on board.

It looks like this labour crisis isn’t going away any time soon.

But restaurants aren’t powerless to face it.

The solutions are here that can empower your staff – releasing them from low level tasks and giving them the freedom to deliver a customer experience you can be proud of. The kind of experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

Speak to GLORY’s team about our full suite of smart automation solutions that can transform your operation – from the front counter to the kitchen to the back office.

Or to learn more about the labour crisis and how restaurants can manage it, download the full Ebook.