Employee turnover in the restaurant industry can be devastating if not managed properly—the cost of losing good talent and reintroducing new talent into your restaurant is high. Losing consistently trained labor also yields poor products and inconsistent customer experience. In this article, I break down the best ways to reduce restaurant employee turnover as well as how to calculate the rate of turnover you face in your restaurant.
Restaurant employee turnover is the rate at which employees leave a position of employment and are replaced in a restaurant.
1. Train Your Staff Properly
The first major mistake I see among restaurant leaders in retaining staff is a lack of proper training—a crucial part of managing a restaurant. The restaurant industry requires quick results in a demanding environment, and one of the most daunting parts of any restaurant job is getting up to speed and being capable of producing the highest quality work. A lack of proper and engaging training is a major detriment to your employees, end product, and customer experience.
You get one shot to instill the core fundamentals of your business into your employees; proper training schedules and comprehensive training documents are important. Plenty of resources are available on how to train employees. Proper training reduces frustration and gets employees up to speed quicker, offering more buy-in and a better ability to become successful in their work environment.
Increasingly, restaurant software brands offer video training and comprehensive online knowledge bases to help you and your employees learn how to use their systems. Ask your software and point of sale (POS) providers what training documents they have available. Then use them. – Mary King
Staff Writer – Retail and Restaurants at FitSmallBusiness
2. Offer Competitive Compensation
In an industry where margins are so low, labor is always a major cost. However, competitive pay is something you must consider when trying to attract talent. While pay can be a hot topic, it doesn’t need to be an emotional one. Every person is trying to work on a wage that better suits their lifestyle and those who depend on them. That is why it should not be a shock when employees leave for a better pay opportunity.
In 2024, the restaurant industry as a whole is very competitive. On average, a worker gets a 7.7% raise in pay when they decide to pursue a new opportunity. Offering not only competitive wage but a plan for wage growth over time is key to retaining talent. Higher wages can seem like a bigger burden, but constant turnover due to lack of pay is much worse for the business in terms of financial impact.
3. Provide Quality Management
Another driver of turnover in restaurants is poor management. A hostile work environment almost guarantees a high turnover rate. If an individual’s work environment is aggressive, undermining, and unsupportive, there is no incentive for that worker to stay there. Focusing on good business practices, creating an inclusive environment, and providing positive feedback to workers will help employees buy more into the mission of your business and reduce turnover.
There has been a longstanding moral debate on how kitchens should be managed in the last decade. With movements toward better overall conditions in restaurants, gone are the days of workers priding themselves on insane workloads and long hours only to wear a badge of perceived honor. Today’s workforce expects professional, competent management—and it is integral that your business offers this if you want to retain talent.
4. Manage Large Workloads
High restaurant staff turnover creates a vicious cycle of overloading your remaining staff with additional work, leading to more turnover. When you lose an employee, the work they are accounting for does not simply go away. That work is redispersed back across the rest of the team, creating longer and more intense work weeks for your employees. It is especially problematic when you lose upper-level management, such as sous chefs or executive chefs.
The restaurant industry is also notorious for having 60- to 70-hour work weeks, with six out of seven days a week. This quickly leads to employee and managerial burnout, which also perpetuates turnover. Because this constant turnover stresses the rest of your team, it is nearly impossible to catch up and lead a balanced life outside of the kitchen.
First, building a culture with a “team-focused” attitude is central to managing workloads. Being able to call on your staff to disperse their workload is key. There can be a lot of tribalism for just working one station, but cross-training your staff on multiple stations is one way to reduce workloads.
Another important aspect is monitoring prep lists and relative task ownership across a team. If your saute station has an inordinate amount of prep one day, consider pulling someone from a station with a light workload. Investment in training, detailed management, and smart scheduling all help alleviate high workloads.
5. Offer Long-term Growth
Another strategy for successful restaurant staff retention is offering a growth plan and a goal to work toward. A recent 7Shifts survey found that one of the top reasons employees leave is a lack of growth within that business. Some employees work for you because they need the job, need the wage, and have a life to take care of. But over time, everyone wants to grow, take on more, and try to better their career and financial standing. And one of the great opportunities for a business is creating those opportunities in turn for those in the community.
There is a trap many restaurants fall into—the idea that everything is running the way it should, so, therefore, no changes need to be made. Over time, this can build resentment, as most cooks aim to learn more and advance throughout their careers. If your restaurant is just a place of employment where jobs become stale, then it will be hard to keep top talent in your restaurant.
If you don’t have a lot of room for staff to grow in your restaurant, you can instead develop a reputation for connecting talented cooks and managers to more advanced restaurants. This may seem counterintuitive; why would you want to encourage your staff to leave? Restaurant employees talk; if you have a reputation for supporting your employees’ development, you’ll always have cooks and managers clamoring to work with you. – Mary King
Staff Writer – Retail and Restaurants at FitSmallBusiness
6. Acknowledge & Manage Burnout
In recent years, mental health awareness has become a key focus for many restaurants. While the risk of poor mental health has always been associated with working in the restaurant industry, the last decade has shown a demand from workers for mental health to be taken more seriously. This comes in the form of a positive and safe working environment, fair workload, and proper load management.
The challenge with burnout is that it is not going away. A study showed that mental health stress claims were the highest they had ever been in 2021. This makes sense, as 2020 saw the largest turnover rate in decades in the food industry. As we mentioned earlier, poor management of turnover can lead to burnout. But so can hostile leaders, uneven workloads, long hours, lack of time off, and constant demands to be “on” even when off the clock.
If you do not manage burnout, even the most loyal and resilient employees will leave, as everyone in the business has a limit.
7. Ensure Proper Communication
Restaurants are fast-paced, and communication can be flawed in such environments. Poor communication can lead to misinterpretation, key information being left out, and a lack of a cohesive team environment. If communication is either lacking or done aggressively (such as yelling or shouting), employees will lose interest and find employment elsewhere.
There are plenty of ways to communicate effectively to staff. Apps such as Slack are great tools that allow a space to communicate with your employees. Additionally, many POS systems offer the ability to send messages to staff before they clock in for a shift or through their phone app, enabling direct lines of communication to all employees. Having weekly, biweekly, or monthly meetings to discuss the state of the business and other key initiatives keeps everyone on the same page. Finally, maintain good relationships with employees so that they feel they can ask questions and be heard in your restaurant.
8. Schedule Smarter
One of the classic issues restaurant workers face is lacking work-life balance. Missing holidays, birthdays, special events, and other important life moments have been the norm for restaurant workers for decades. This is changing, as post-pandemic employees are more focused on taking the time to engage in their lives outside of work. That being said, scheduling in restaurants is very difficult, and the peak times employees are needed tend to be during holidays, weekends, and special events.
There are a few options for improving the schedule for restaurant workers. For starters, have open dialogue and take special requests into account. Furthermore, many restaurants are adopting “employee appreciation days,” in which, during slower periods, the restaurant is closed for a day or service to allow for rest and employee reset. Finally, offering paid time off (PTO) when applicable is a great way to help alleviate burnout and restrict the schedule restaurant workers work.
9. Offer Benefits
A challenge for smaller businesses—but still something all businesses can strive for—is offering employee benefits. A way around this for smaller businesses is to offer Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which can be a low-cost alternative to benefits. Additionally, if you have the funds, then offering health insurance, dental insurance, and child care support can help you stand out in the market.
These perks will incentivize restaurant employee retention and ensure growth and commitment to your brand. If you show your employees you care about their well-being, you will be rewarded. Restaurant management needs to be aware of what benefits are attractive to employees and implement them in order to attract, maintain, and retain top talent.
10. Recognize Why Turnover Occurs
When starting a restaurant, the focus is often on growth and opportunity. But as you become more established, the key is to retain and attract good talent. The last major piece, which may be obvious, is to figure out why turnover is happening in your restaurant. Harkening back to our communication point, you are less likely to address turnover if you don’t have a basic understanding of why it occurs. Factors that cause turnover can exist at any restaurant business, but there can be unique situations that are specific to your business.
Having exit interviews is a great way to start addressing this issue. Elicit feedback from those who are leaving your business and are willing to share. Also, having 1:1 meetings between managers and staff members on a regular basis can help you catch trends, understand pain points for employees, and allow you to better serve and manage your staff. Finally, by tracking the reasons employees are leaving, you can start building a game plan that you can implement or present to stakeholders to help improve your business’ turnover rate.
How High Is Restaurant Employee Turnover?
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the turnover rate for the restaurant industry was 73.9% in 2023. The rate can drop to as low as 65% and run up to 85%. Of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it skyrocketed to over 130%. The BLS tracks this rate annually by all industries in various ways, and often, the restaurant industry leads others by a wide margin.
With the cost of replacing one hourly employee estimated to be an astounding $5,864, you can see how managing profit margins can become so difficult in the food world. Turnover is a rampant issue, which everyone in the food industry faces. This is why it is imperative to know how to manage your team in a way that fosters long-term commitment.
How to Calculate Restaurant Turnover Rate
Finding out your turnover rate is simple, and the equation is actually quite simple when put into practice. The basic idea is to divide the total number of employees that have separated from your business by the total number of employees you have, then multiply by 100. The ratio to calculate this is as follows:
( # of Employees Separated / # of Current Employees ) x 100 = Employee Turnover Rate
For example, a restaurant that lost 10 employees out of 30 has an employee turnover rate of 33.33%. While this may seem low, note that if only a few more employees leave, the cost and percentage can go up drastically. This is why it is important to know your turnover percentage, as it is key restaurant metric.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Restaurant employee turnover is something every restaurant manager must face at some point in their career. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding restaurant staff turnover.
The average restaurant employee turnover rate sits between 65% to 85% and more in the 70% range. This rate is higher than most industries and is led by the very niche challenges amid a fast-paced industry in which restaurants reside. This rate can be managed with a quality work environment, better management, and more competitive positions in your business that offer long-term growth.
Restaurants have such a high turnover due to a few reasons. One is that pay is often low, and it may be hard to gain monetary raises over time. Second is that restaurant working conditions are difficult and can wear employees down quickly. The third reason is that the restaurant industry is competitive, and employees may find better opportunities elsewhere. Finally, poor management can lead to employees leaving if their work environment is not supportive of them or the work they conduct.
The broader hospitality industry employee turnover rate is around 70% to 80%, which is in line with the restaurant industry.
Bottom Line
Retaining staff is a fundamental need in the restaurant industry, especially for long-term success and financial health. High turnover is a top challenge in the restaurant industry. That being said, a high turnover rate is something you can reduce and have control over with the proper tools. Use the advice and data in this article to retain employees and create long-term employment opportunities for the valuable people working in your kitchen.
