Nearly 100% of our clients operate within the restaurant vertical. We hear (and see) firsthand the challenges that many restaurant and hospitality groups are facing regarding recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated ongoing employee concerns, such as feeling undervalued or lacking incentives for hard work. While the labor gap is a significant pain point for restaurants, it brings about an opportunity for the industry to create more permanent workforce solutions. Restaurants have the chance to reinvent themselves as progressive employers who cultivate quality of life for their employees,” says QSR Magazine’s Kelley Emrey Clark and Jill Danieli.
The hiring crisis in the restaurant industry expands beyond front and back of house restaurant workers; it’s also impacting finance and operations. The aftershock of the pandemic hiring crisis in an industry notorious for slow-moving change is providing an extra serving of The Great Resignation.
The past year-and-a-half has brought countless challenges for restaurants. Since early March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed (and nearly decimated) the restaurant and hospitality industry. An estimated 90,000 restaurants shut down and 5.9 million workers lost their jobs. 2020 was an incredibly hard year for restaurant groups. Restaurants have had to reinvent and pivot countless times – some might argue that the technological shift to modernizing operations was in dire need. 2021 became about rebuilding and revitalizing the restaurant industry. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2021 State of the Industry report, most restaurant operators plan to keep some of the changes they made to their operations during the pandemic.
Now that we’re in 2022 it feels like one step forward with the technology updates and two steps back with the ever-constant hiring crisis looming over the restaurant and hospitality industry.
Restaurant operators confirm labor challenges intensified in the first half of the year. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2021 State of the Restaurant Industry Mid-Year Update, 75% of restaurant operators surveyed reported that recruiting and retaining employees was the top challenge facing their business. In January 2021, that number was 8%. The mid-year number represents its highest level in nearly 20 years of the Association’s monthly tracking survey.
Tablespoon has been servicing restaurant groups for over a decade and in that time, we’ve seen a lot and helped countless restaurant and hospitality groups. We understand that while you are working hard to build your staff back up, you need to keep running the business. Aligning finance and operations to do more with less is essential. This requires investment in new practices, technologies, and learning new skills.
From a finance and operations perspective, adopting new technologies and outsourcing your accounting are two ways that you can easily do more with less.
The restaurant business has a unique set of challenges and opportunities. The same can be said for running a restaurant’s accounting and finances. If accounting isn’t one of your core competencies, then it can be hard to work on your business while trying to work in your business. It’s important to partner with a firm that understands the restaurant business to provide the unique insights that will impact your bottom-line.
A best-in-class cloud-based accounting solution allows your finance staff to do more with less by utilizing automation and other best-in-class applications. On-premises solutions often don’t provide real-time fully accessible reports. This can be challenging to restaurant managers who are incentivized based on financial statements. With a cloud-based solution, managers can access information that matters to them 24/7, which leaves less questions for accounting team members at the end of the month.
By outsourcing your accounting and/or implementing a modern best-in-class finance solution, you can do things faster with fewer people and retain talent. Implementing new processes and technologies delivers automation and eliminates manual and repetitive work so that your staff can focus on higher value work.
There’s no doubt that attracting and retaining staff needs to be addressed in all areas of your business. However, with increased technology and outsourcing some core functions you can do more with less when it comes to the finance and operations function of your business.
Learn how Tablespoon helped Innovative Dining Group save time and resources to do more. Click here for the case study >