Executives from restaurant brands discussed growing with a leaner team at the Fast Casual Executive Summit in Louisville, Kentucky.
Restaurant labor shortages have become a pervasive issue, affecting both corporate and store-level operations.
At the corporate level, executives face challenges in recruiting and retaining top talent for key roles in marketing, supply chain management and finance, among others. This shortage disrupts strategic planning and hinders growth initiatives.
At the store level, restaurants struggle to find and keep skilled kitchen staff, servers and hosts. This leads to reduced operational efficiency, longer wait times and compromised customer experiences.
Factors contributing to these shortages include pandemic-related workforce disruptions, increased competition for talent, and changing employee preferences for better work-life balance. These challenges demand innovative solutions to ensure the industry’s sustained success.
During a breakout session titled “Growing with a Leaner Team” at the Fast Casual Executive Summit in Louisville, Kentucky, held Oct. 8-10, 2023, a panel discusse how recruitment and retention — with a boost from technology — doesn’t have to be a brand’s most pressing problem. The summit was sponsored by platinum sponsors Botrista, SUPERORDER, Evocalize, Upside, Lunchbox and Workstream.
The panel session, sponsored by Lineup.ai, featured panelists David Bloom, chief development and operating officer for Capriotti’s and Wing Zone, Bill DiPaola, president/CEO and co-owner of Swamp Dawg and Jami Bond, VP of franchise development at Goodcents. Sam Gerace, CEO at Lineup.ai, moderated the event.
Working in versus working on the business
“Having a strategic management platform helps you run your business, set your goals if you have a 10-year plan, three-year goals, one-year plan or quarterly progs,” Bloom said. “Having that disciplined structure to make sure that what you’re actually doing is in line with where you want to go — most importantly annually and longer term – is critical.”
Bloom said building a high-performance team is step one for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is used by 10,000 companies around the world, including his brands. He added it takes a year to get an EOS in place and two years to get good at it. The EOS is not inexpensive and takes a lot to implement.
“Make sure you have a disciplined approach about building your strategy and executing against it and then building high-performance teams that can help you grow,” Bloom said. “Lastly, for brands that have aspirations of being national or multi-national — I’ve worked in 33 countries to date — you’ve got to invest ahead of growth.”
DiPaola said there are ways to invest in that type of thinking for less money. “It does absolutely work if you are committed and you spent that time — I literally will push anything and everything out of the way in order to get my teams together to commit to the times that we all agreed to to attend to the business,” he said, adding, “because if we don’t and we’re not really, really harsh about that line then we’re always working in the business in some way, shape or form and we never find the time.”
DiPaola likened it to having children. There’s never a right time to have children, just as there is never a right time to work on the business.
At Goodcents, said Bond, everyone gets to be hands-on. The founder of the company is still involved in the process, which she says has been “incredible” for the brand.
“Just being able to come together as a team and getting the right people in the right places is something we’ve really worked on the last three years,” Bond added, “and getting the right seats at the table so we can get our franchisees reengaging for support. We lost track of that for a while, quite frankly, and we’ve reengaged with a brand ambassador board and just getting those franchisees who are in the restaurants every day back in giving us their opinions on what’s working (and) what’s not has just be instrumental.”
Attracting and retaining the right people
Swamp Dawg has several full-service concepts as well as some fast-casual brands. Gerace asked DiPaola how he keeps the teams lean while operating such diverse concepts.
“People are singularly the most important piece to anything I’ve ever been able to be successful with,” DiPaola said. “That is why when I realized how little my vision would allow me to see the right things and people to learn what their talents actually were, that’s really where my issue was.”
Swamp Dawg has some “significant personnel challenges,” he said, adding he’s actually been on the line cooking side by side with kitchen employees.
If the guests only transact with employees, they can do that anywhere, including the competition. There’s a “why” involved with their transaction with your restaurant, and the external guests — the customers — transact with the internal guests — the employees. Cooking alongside employees from time to time lets employees know you understand the challenges they face every day.
“That’s how I’ve been able to keep people and been able to learn about their strengths and weaknesses and promote the right people,” DiPaola said.
Bloom said “the right people” always want to be challenged, want to grow and learn, and they’re looking for opportunity. “If that’s who you are as a company, whether a technology company or a restaurant company or an operator, it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “If that’s who you are, then you’re going to attract that kind of talent.”
Goodcents is about to expand into state No. 10, and when asked what advice to give someone moving into new markets, Bond said spending time with franchisees can be critical. “There’s nothing that can take away from literally walking in that trade area (or) driving in that trade area,” she said. “We actually go with our founder. He did a great job growing the brand.”
Seven of the brand’s first original stores are still in business today. Spending that time, shoulder to shoulder with franchisees, helps the team understand why they love a location and what they love about their new potential customers.
“Counting cars, all of the things (the founder) did in the old days when he started 30 years ago, are still important today,” Bond said. “Yes, technology can do it for us as well, but there’s nothing that takes away from being in-market, and the franchisee feels incredibly important and special when the founder takes a day out of their schedule to go spend hours with them in a car.”
The Fast Casual Executive Summit is owned by Networld Media Group, publishers of Fastcasual.com, QSRweb and Pizza Marketplace. The company’s next event is the Self-Service Innovation Summit Dec. 4-6 in Miami, Florida.