restaurant industry essay

2024 State of the Restaurant Industry 

• Sales are up: The foodservice industry is forecast to reach $1 trillion in sales in 2024.
• Restaurants are hiring: The industry workforce is projected to grow by 200,000 jobs, for total industry employment of 15.7M by the end of 2024. 45% of operators need more employees to meet customer demand.
• Competition is strong: In 2024, 45% of operators expect competition to be more intense than last year. 
• Costs are up: 98% of operators say higher labor costs are an issue for their restaurant. 97% cite higher food costs. 38% say their restaurants were not profitable last year.
• Consumers are value conscious: Nearly half of consumers are taking a wait-and see stance when it comes to spending. Operators who offer a solid value proposition for dining out can nudge customers out of their holding pattern.
• Consumers love restaurants: 9 in 10 adults say they enjoy going to restaurants. Restaurants allow them to enjoy a favorite meal that has flavor and taste sensations they can’t easily replicate at home.

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How restaurants can thrive in the next normal

After weeks of quarantine and physical distancing, what does the future hold for US restaurants—and for the more than eight million restaurant workers across the country who have been laid off or furloughed since March? How quickly will US consumers feel comfortable eating out again?

COVID-19 has not only been a devastating public-health crisis; it has also been the restaurant industry’s greatest challenge to date. Never before have so many restaurants been forced to cease operations; some will never reopen. Early indications—from China and other countries where the pandemic seemed to be under control—suggest that consumer demand won’t immediately rebound when restrictions are lifted. However, restaurants that plan ahead to adapt and refine their restaurant model for the “ next normal ” will be better positioned to bring sales back to precrisis levels.

In this article, we describe COVID-19’s impact on the US restaurant industry to date and explore two likely scenarios for recovery. We then recommend a set of concrete actions for restaurants to return to stability and help shape the next normal.

The pandemic’s impact to date

COVID-19’s economic toll on the restaurant industry hasn’t been evenly distributed. Whereas pizza chains have maintained or increased sales during the pandemic, casual-dining and fine-dining restaurants have seen their revenues decline by as much as 85 percent (Exhibit 1). For some fine-dining establishments, revenues fell to zero.

Each restaurant’s performance during the crisis has depended largely on the following factors:

• Off-premise versus on-premise sales mix. Unsurprisingly, restaurants with high off-premise sales prior to the crisis are faring better than those that relied more on dine-in sales.
• Reliance on day-part occasions. With many people working from home, restaurants that generated much of their business from daytime eating occasions—such as people getting breakfast or coffee on the way to work—have been disproportionately affected.
• Urbanicity. There are large disparities in restaurant-traffic declines across states. Declines have been highest in densely populated states such as Connecticut and New York (Exhibit 2).
• Digital maturity. A strong online-ordering presence, digital loyalty programs, and robust customer-relationship-management (CRM) systems have been lifelines for restaurants during this crisis, as levels of digital engagement among consumers have soared. If trends in China  are any indication, consumers could remain more digitally engaged even after the crisis. Starbucks China, for instance, saw a 12-percentage-point increase in the share of digital transactions postcrisis—from 15 percent in January to 27 percent in late March (down from a peak of 80 percent in February).
• Role of value. Consumer perception of value and the prevalence of deals have buoyed some restaurants’ sales during the crisis, as customers—suffering financial losses and fearing continuing financial insecurity—increasingly look for ways to save money.

Just as the impact of the crisis isn’t uniform across restaurants and regions, the pace and shape of recovery will also vary, not least because states have different approaches and timelines for allowing restaurants to reopen.

Scenarios for the industry’s recovery

Although much remains uncertain about the pandemic’s effects, hopes of a quick economic recovery are fading. Our colleagues have developed nine scenarios  for the impact of COVID-19 on GDP, based on the extent of virus spread and the effectiveness of public-health and economic-policy responses (Exhibit 3).

As of this writing, the likeliest scenarios appear to be A1 and A3. While both assume partial to high effectiveness of economic-policy interventions, scenario A1 assumes resurgence of the virus across regions whereas A3—the more optimistic of the two—assumes rapid and effective control of virus spread. In a late-April poll asking more than 2,000 global executives which scenario they see as most likely, A1 was the most popular response, chosen by nearly one-third of respondents; A3 came in second, with 16 percent of the vote.

We modeled how quickly US restaurants might recover under these two scenarios (Exhibit 4). In scenario A3, restaurant sales return to precrisis levels in early 2021. In scenario A1, full recovery to pre-COVID-19 sales takes three years longer. The trajectories also differ by restaurant type, with pizza chains and quick-service restaurants  (QSRs) recovering the fastest.

These are grim projections. Many restaurants don’t have the financial means to endure such a prolonged downturn. Especially vulnerable are small franchisees (those with ten or fewer locations) and independent operators not affiliated with a chain. To survive, franchisees will need to receive financial assistance from franchisors and from the government, or drastically reduce their costs; independents could have an even harder time staying afloat because they don’t have access to the loans and rent deferrals that franchisors can offer.

We estimate that, of the 650,000-plus US restaurant locations that were in business in 2019, approximately one in five—or more than 130,000—will be permanently shuttered by next year. Independents will bear the brunt of the closures, both because of attributes that make most independents more vulnerable in this pandemic (minimal off-premise presence, limited digital capabilities, low emphasis on value-based menu items) and because of their unfavorable economics (thin margins and poor access to capital). Independents’ share of US restaurant locations could fall from 53 percent in 2019 to 43 percent in 2021.

That said, the situation across the country remains fluid. As states begin to lift restrictions and restaurants gradually reopen, the scenarios could change, depending largely on how well restaurants implement the necessary safety measures to prevent virus resurgence.

What to do next

Regardless of which scenario plays out, there’s no denying that the coming months will be difficult for most of the restaurant industry. For restaurant operators across the country, we recommend considering actions in two categories: those that can help you return to stability and those that can power you through to the next normal. With foresight and careful planning, you can equip your company to capture outsize value in the post-COVID-19 future.

Return to stability

In the recovery period, your top priorities ought to include updating operating procedures, reactivating customers to bring them back into restaurant dining rooms, adjusting menus to address shifts in customer habits and preferences, and enhancing your delivery capabilities.

Update operating procedures

As parts of the country ease restrictions on businesses, proactively create a reopening playbook. The playbook should include updated standard operating procedures that not only provide a safe store environment but also serve to reassure potentially anxious customers. In other words, simultaneously “go safe” and “show safe.” Ensure that new hygiene and safety protocols are highly visible throughout the restaurant.

In addition, adjust processes to improve labor efficiency and to align with shifts in customer behavior. An important part of restarting dine-in service will be bringing back furloughed staff in a way that matches the restaurant’s new needs with employees’ skills. You will likely need to be innovative to do this successfully—for example, by using talent-exchange programs or partnering with other companies to share labor.

Reactivate customers using a segmented approach

Over the past several weeks, customers have become accustomed to cooking at home more and ordering online—behaviors that will likely have some “stickiness” post-pandemic. To entice customers back to on-premise dining, tailor your approach to each customer segment:

• Loyal guests. Encourage loyal customers to return to on-premise dining by sending them personalized messages with critical information: when your restaurants will be open and why they can be confident that it’s safe to come in.
• Customers who spent their money elsewhere. Some fraction of customers may have shifted their spending entirely to your competitors during the pandemic—or made all their meals at home. Effective marketing levers for this segment could include loyalty-driven price promotions and just-in-time offers featuring the most popular items and personalized favorites.
• People who became first-time customers during the crisis. To retain these customers, look to initiate them into your loyalty program with a special offer. Also, make sure your digital presence is consistent across platforms: for example, the menu featured on your own app should match the menu on any food-delivery aggregators that these customers may have used during the shelter-in-place period, and should highlight the same family meals they ordered during that time.
• Potential customers. In a new dining landscape, some customers who previously patronized other restaurants will be “up for grabs.” It’s an ideal time to reevaluate your spending mix with a marketing-return-on-investment (MROI) simulator, which helps determine how to invest marketing dollars across email, social media, search, apps, local mass media, and other channels.

Align the menu to new consumer preferences

During the recovery, consumer preferences will have shifted toward value and off-premise dining—but consumers will also be longing to return to some semblance of normalcy even as they remain concerned about health and safety. These new consumer behaviors and preferences will require restaurants to make menu and pricing adjustments. Start by reintroducing your full precrisis menu items such as breakfast, alcohol, and fresh produce, then emphasize core items and comfort foods. Reprice items to ensure they’re competitive under the new market conditions. Build traffic by focusing on value items first, then upselling.

Optimize your delivery business

Though the percentage of off-premise sales post-COVID-19 won’t be as high as it was during the crisis, a portion of the shift to off-premise dining will probably endure indefinitely. Many brands that treated third-party delivery as a low-margin afterthought before the crisis found that it suddenly became a primary pillar over the past two months. Take the time to step back and develop a strategy for managing—and deepening your commitment to—third-party aggregator relationships: think through the specifics of markup rules, access to end-user data, cost-effective packaging, and streamlined processes to make pickup as efficient as possible.

Shape the next normal

Instead of simply reverting to business as usual, seize the opportunity to innovate in the next normal, thus shaping not just your own company’s future but that of the industry as well. Priorities should include rethinking restaurant design, reinventing the menu, assessing the store footprint, and digitizing the customer experience.

Rethink restaurant design

To achieve post-COVID-19 growth, most restaurants will need a redesign. Think about whether to change your restaurants’ physical layout to benefit from the shift to off-premise dining. Layout changes might include the addition of drive-through and pickup lanes, for example. Traffic flow into and out of these zones will need to be carefully thought through.

Also, consider investing in advanced analytics and automation, both to drive efficiencies and to enable contactless services. Advanced analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) can improve your ability to accurately forecast daily consumer demand and changes in consumers’ eating habits. Labor automation can increase the productivity of restaurant processes as well as provide contactless solutions that address consumers’ health concerns. Some restaurants are already piloting a range of technologies—such as robots that hand out takeout orders, pulley systems at registers to facilitate transactions with customers while maintaining physical distancing, and smartscreen-controlled shelves for storing pickup orders.

To explore ways to shift to contactless services and solutions, the four-step IDEA framework can be useful:

• Identify interactions. Identify the type and nature of each in-person interaction (for example, employee to employee, employee to customer, customer to customer) in employee and customer journeys.
• Diagnose and prioritize risks. Use a risk-scoring system that incorporates the intensity, frequency, and duration of interactions along the journey to inform the prioritization and development of solutions (Exhibit 5).
• Execute solutions. Implementation should proceed in an agile way, addressing immediate needs while also investing in distinctive long-term solutions.
• Adapt and sustain. Collect learnings and ideas from teams to rapidly iterate and refine solutions based on customer feedback.

Reinvent the menu

Menu reinvention can be one of the most powerful tools to change a restaurant’s long-term performance trajectory. As consumer behavior and sentiment continue to evolve, adapt your menu accordingly. Closely monitor emerging food trends, such as “clean” food, paleo diets, plant-based protein, and others. Introduce menu items to capitalize on these trends, price those items competitively, and market them to consumers.

Optimize your footprint

As you emerge from the crisis, you will need to evaluate your store footprint and make tough decisions about entering or exiting certain geographies or shifting your strategies at a local level (for example, converting a restaurant to delivery/pickup only). Set up a footprint-optimization task force: a cross-functional team that uses real-time internal and external data and field observations to assess the health of specific locations, then decides whether to enter, expand in, or exit a market.

Digitize customer engagement

As mentioned, a shift toward off-premise dining options and physical-distancing behaviors will probably outlast the crisis. The digital customer experience will be critical to retaining current customers and capturing next-generation loyalty, and the best way to enhance the digital experience is through deep personalization. Engage customers with personalized offers across multiple digital channels; use customer data to make decisions about merchandising, pricing, and promotions.

The restaurant industry has faced severe challenges during the pandemic, including sharp declines in revenue and tremendous labor losses as well as some permanent closures. However, at some point, dining in restaurants will once again be a pleasure that people across the country can enjoy. The actions that restaurant operators take now will go a long way toward preserving their business through the crisis and equipping their restaurants to serve customers, not just during—but also long after—the recovery.

Stacey Haas is a partner in McKinsey’s Detroit office; Eric Kuehl is a consultant in the Chicago office, where Kumar Venkataraman is a partner; and John R. Moran is an associate partner in the Boston office.

The authors wish to thank Kayla Williams for her contributions to this article.

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132 Restaurant Research Topics & Essay Titles

Are you looking for the best research title about restaurants for your paper? On this page, you’ll discover plenty of topics related to food and beverage service! Read on to find a perfect qualitative or quantitative topic about restaurants, including research ideas about the challenges faced by the hospitality industry during the pandemic.

🏆 Best Research Topics for Restaurant Industry

🌶️ hot restaurant essay topics, 👍 good restaurant research topics & essay examples, 📌 easy restaurant essay topics, ❓ restaurant research questions.

• Pizza Hut Restaurant’s Products and Services
• Target Audience of Fast Food Restaurants’ Web Sites
• Fast-Food Restaurants’ Popularity and Its Causes
• McDonald’s Restaurant Chain’s Organizational Structure
• Service Design Approach for Restaurant Industry
• Social Media’s Influence on the Restaurant Industry
• Training Needs Analysis in the Restaurant Industry
• Having a Lunchtime Meal in a Restaurant The size of the restaurant is immensely appealing. It is exceptionally spacious. It has the capacity to accommodate large crowds of people.
• Jumbo Seafood Restaurant Audit and Strategic Plan The main objective of this report is to present a full situational audit of Jumbo Seafood and develop a strategic plan for the next 3 years.
• Super Greens Organic Food Restaurant’s Business Plan ‘Super Greens’ restaurant is a new medium-sized restaurant to be located in a busy locality of Westminster in the neighbourhood of some aristocratic areas.
• The Lake Side Restaurant Business Plan The Lake Side restaurant has several advantages since it will recruit trustworthy staff, including waiters, who will connect with clients.
• Small Business: Restaurant Case Analysis This work focuses on the tertiary business sector by studying a small restaurant situation and providing them advice on best practices that can strengthen their positions.
• Ma’s Family Restaurant: Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses Ma started her restaurant on route 7 in Millville, by the name of Ma’s Family Restaurant. Presently, the restaurant is run by her daughter, the general manager, Jane Stanley.
• The Local Café and Restaurant’s Cocktail Menu In the Local Café and Restaurant, every drink can provide a sense of home and a cozy summer evening despite their variety.
• Gusto 54 Restaurant: Analysis and Report Gusto 54 is a Global Restaurant Group and which story begins with Janet Zuccarini, whose Italian father, an award-winning chef, carried on his dishes to her German mother.
• Sociological Theories for Improving Restaurant Services Sociological theories are applicable for understanding people’s behavior in general and for an improvement of commercial services, for example, restaurant services.
• Simmers Restaurant Service Experience Simmers Restaurant observes the principles of satisfactory customer service and therefore can win customer loyalty.
• Job Analysis in the Restaurant Industry Job analysis remains a critical element for most Human Resource (HR) functions. A job analysis is a list of behaviors and skills required to do a job.
• Long John Silver’s Restaurant’s Marketing Analysis Long John Silver’s is a business in the United States struggling to make sales with poor reviews. The company is a fast-food restaurant making losses due to marketing problems.
• Financial Ratio Analysis of the Restaurant The ratios would help users to get an in- depth understanding of the restaurant’s profitability, financial stability and efficiency with which it is utilizing its assets to generate sales revenue.
• Leadership Style and Performance in UK Restaurants This research paper explores leadership behavior orientations within the restaurant sector in the UK in terms of their relationship to employee motivation.
• Social Media in Crisis Management of Restaurants Various firms are considering the use of social media to manage the crisis, especially if this involves rebuilding the image of the firm destroyed by negative publicity.
• Yalla Momos Restaurant Business Plan in Dubai The analysis of the Yalla Momos restaurant’s issues, as well as the evaluation of possible interventions using the right marketing strategies, can help the owners to solve some problems.
• The Fine-Dining Restaurant Project The fine-dining restaurant project at Thompson Rivers University is designed to meet the TRU’s five strategic priorities and to address the dinner services needs of the immediate community.
• Sangria Restaurant: Business Proposal Sangria Restaurant will capitalize on being completely aware of consumer needs and pricing strategies during the inception stages of the business organization.
• Restaurant Staff Training Plan for 2020-2021 The proposal covers a training plan for all restaurant employees, to train the personnel following the demands in the hospitality industry of 2020 and the following year.
• Service Marketing in Restaurant Business Service sector is different from manufacturing sector. Service sector involves a wide variety of services including restaurant services. This study focuses on the factors to be considered while opening a new restaurant.
• Dunkin’ Donuts Restaurants’ Organizational Design In this scenario, the author has been assigned as a district manager for five new Dunkin’ Donuts locations that will open within the next two years.
• Indian Culture and Food in the Raaga Restaurant Before visiting Raaga, a restaurant of Indian cuisine, I tried to consider what I knew about this culture and whether I would eat what I would be served.
• McDonald’s: The Most Popular Fast-Food Restaurant McDonald’s is one of the most popular fast-food restaurants, and its success is defined by compliance with the needs of the present-day business world.
• Green Apple Restaurant: Project Business Plan The business plan of Green Apple restaurant is going to focus on the nook and corners of introducing a new organic food restaurant at Al Khalidiyah mall location in Abu Dhabi, UAE
• Small Pizza Restaurant’s Inventory Management This paper aims at analyzing various factors affecting inventory management and the most efficient inventory management methods in a small pizza restaurant.
• The Organizational Change of a Small Restaurant This paper is aimed at a theoretical understanding of the adjustment of the applied forms, methods, and management tools of a small restaurant.
• A Caribbean Restaurant’s Marketing Plan The restaurant will have to start small, but there is always the potential for expansion, either through targeting a broader demographic or opening new locations.
• Eddies Southern Barbecue Restaurant’s Business Plan The article presents a business plan for the opening of a southern-style Bar-BQ restaurant with a description of the menu, slogan, pricing and general marketing strategy.
• Restaurant Management: A Career Perspective The job of a restaurant manage is one of the most varied careers in existence. It is the manager’s responsibility to offer service, food and drink to the public at a price they are willing to pay.
• Dining Etiquette for Restaurant Managers The point of Dinner Etiquette rules is to make you feel comfortable – not uncomfortable. Table manners play an essential part in creating a favorable impression.
• Technological Advancements in the Restaurant Industry As restaurants modify their practices to not only exist but also flourish in this emerging digital and cashless world, technological innovation has helped them to grow.
• Family Table Restaurant’s Mass Media Advertising Television is one of the media that will be used by the advertising firm to ensure that Family Table customers know about the changes made to the usual menu.
• A Restaurant Menu: Case Analysis The restaurant in the case study has a challenge concerning customers who are unable to experience the same dish twice due to daily menu changes.
• Smoking Ban in Bars and Restaurants The smoking ban in bars and restaurants law took effect in New York in the year 2003. The law stated that there was no one who was supposed to smoke in a café, restaurant or bar.
• Measuring and Improving Quality in Restaurants The management is in search of a plan through which to collect data regarding the restaurant’s current situation, which will later lead to improvement in its overall performance.
• McDonald’s Restaurants’ Marketing Strategy McDonald’s is considered the world’s largest of fast-food chains. The organization is considered a multinational and serves more than 47 million customers daily.
• Akdar Restaurant: Basic Marketing Plan Upon a careful market study in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was clear that there was no vegan restaurant that could meet the needs of those practicing veganism.
• Blue Ridge Restaurant and Terralumen Partnership This paper develops a plan to dissolve partnership between Blue Ridge Restaurant and Terralumen and analyzes the cross-cultural values in United States, Spain, Finland, and Greece.
• Ritz Carlton Hotel and The Room Mate Restaurant: Companies Analysis The Ritz Carlton is a competitive hotel ensuring that every customer is contented. The Room Mate Restaurant is a three-star chain of hotels offering quality service.
• Zizzi’s Restaurant: Job Satisfaction and Behavior Zizzi has acquired major problems with its staff because of a close focus on the production process, which ensues from the company’s mission and vision.
• Ruth’s Chris Restaurants SWOT Analysis Ruth’s Chris steak house is a worldwide series of chic restaurants. Diverse schedules have positioned Ruth’s Chris in the midst of the greatest restaurants in the United States.
• Local Restaurant Closing Down Elbistro hotel and restaurant will close its doors at the end of this week after 20 years of service due to the effects of COVID-19.
• Workplace Ethics: How Restaurants Design Menus This essay will analyze an article published in The Globe and Mail on the way restaurants design menus to make their clients spend more money.
• Organizational Change in the Restaurant Industry Many stressful situations may occur in the workplace in the restaurant industry stemming from the changes in an organization.
• Fields Critical for a Typical Restaurant Chain Database For a restaurant chain database, it is important to integrate data on the location of restaurants, specific customer information, financial needs, and guest management issues.
• Restaurant Business During COVID-19 The COVID-19 virus led to terrible consequences for restaurant owners, reducing the number of visitors and employees, as many were laid off due to crisis circumstances.
• Operations Management and Production System: Case of Olive Garden Restaurant The presented paper is devoted to the discussion of operations management and production system using the case of Olive Garden restaurant
• Organisational Communication in the UK’s Restaurant Industry This paper discusses the research methodology of the degree to which different management styles influence the quality of organisational communication in the UK’s restaurant industry.
• Subway Restaurant Evaluation The restaurant Subway located near CCSU serves a healthy alternative to fast-food. This article shows why Subway should be considered by learners attending CCSU.
• Strategies to Improve Waste Management in Qatar Restaurants The paper employs a qualitative strategy that includes conducting several interviews about food waste management with managers of Qatar restaurants.
• Improper Food Handling Practices in Kansas City Restaurant Having many difficulties curbing the handling of improper food practices in Kansas City restaurants, they have come up with the program of training.
• Decoration of Space in Independent Restaurants The restaurant industry is a sphere with a high level of competition, and business tries to find all possible solutions to increase their profits and popularity.
• Little Chef Restaurant’s Just-in-Time Implementation The paper highlights the just-in-time principles that Little Chef, a roadside restaurant, is applying to enhance quality and maximize profits.
• A Chinese Restaurant’s Cultural Taxonomy Taxonomy is how names relate to each other and are grouped. Cultural taxonomy can be alluded to as the small related groups called taxa that form a culture.
• A Bank, a Grocery Store, and a Restaurant: The Cultural Features This paper analyzes the available cultural features of a bank, a grocery store, and a restaurant to determine the distinctive features of these public places.
• Technologies in Restaurant Business It should be noted that only recently cafes and canteens have begun to actively introduce innovative technologies to modernize their production.
• The Wage System in the Restaurant Industry Waiters in cafés and restaurants have a particular type of minimum wage for tipped employees, which is significantly lower than the standard federal minimum wage.
• The Restaurant Portobancos Service and Design The Restaurant Portobancos provides food orders and reservations, saving time for visitors. At the same time, the general quality and speed of service deserve a grade of five.
• Legal Issues of Opening a Restaurant Business Joseph, who is opening a small restaurant business, needs to be conversant with the local, state, and federal laws that govern his business enterprise’s operation.
• Start-Up Restaurant Marketing Opportunities A start-up restaurant should choose its marketing outlets carefully, avoiding financial and staffing limitations, direct marketing, and advertising.
• Specific Features of the Opening a Restaurant Business A start-up restaurant business should take into account a wide range of elements, such as marketing campaigns and the calculation of profits for the first-time of work.
• Domino’s Pizza Restaurants’ Marketing Critique In 2009 Domino’s Pizza’s famous pizzeria brand experienced a severe crisis. Preparing a marketing campaign for a pizzeria has become a difficult time for its leaders and employees.
• Food Facility Design: Sustainable Kitchen for Delight Restaurant A sustainable kitchen should be eco-friendly which means the design should be developed to ensure there is no wastage of resources such as electricity, water, food, and time.
• Market Structure of Limited-Service Restaurant Industry Pure competition is found in the limited-service restaurant industry, and this essay presents specific evidence to prove that there is credible reasoning behind this statement.
• Two Vietnamese Cuisine Restaurants: A College Student’s View Two of the Vietnamese restaurants we visited were Quy Nguyen (QN) Vegan Living and Maison Umami, both located in the city center and differed by a number of points, however.
• The Blossom Restaurant as Inspiration, the Freedom Tower as Art This paper aims to describe the inspiration piece, which is the Blossom Restaurant, and an art piece, which is the Freedom Tower in Miami, Florida.
• Saving Energy in a Restaurant Enterprise The paper discusses design of the restaurant is capable of appealing by its appearance to the realization of the importance of the coexistence of man and the environment.
• Hiring Criteria for a Restaurant Server The primary method to hire a decent waiter is to use paper applications since they are logically structured and allow an employer to see all information about a potential worker.
• Restaurant Business During The Pandemic The critical condition for the effectiveness of the restaurant business is the requirement to follow social responsibility.
• Yolk-ay and Expansion of the Menu of the Restaurant Yolk-ay is a restaurant chain in the United Arab Emirates, which specialization implies the dishes based on unpopular, but delicious and unique Indian recipes.
• Diversity and Discrimination in Restaurant Industry This paper addresses how diversity is important for an organization and how companies can reduce allegations of discrimination at the workplace.
• Fast Food Restaurants in the US Convenient locations play a critical role in the success of fast-food kiosks. These points include the busy commercial strips, shopping malls, and high-traffic areas.
• Restaurant Types for Private Dining in Ireland Fun and cool restaurants can be suitable for parties and events, where the restaurants facilitate the interaction between different individuals through unusual settings.
• Restaurant Business Environment and Management The document highlights the business environment with an indication of the challenges faced by the restaurant owner throughout the operation.
• Pop-Up Restaurant Chef: Career Interest This paper presents the research into the job of a pop-up restaurant chef and the interview with a person who already works this way.
• Fast Food Chain Locations, Non-Chain Restaurants and Bars As discussed in prior sections of the report, the competition for Moma Monaz can be distinguished into three categories: fast food chain locations, non-chain restaurants, and bars.
• Sigmund’s Gourmet Pasta Restaurant Marketing Plan Sigmund’s Gourmet Pasta is developing a popular consumer brand and expanding its customer base. The restaurant has created a signature line characterized by innovative pasta dishes.
• Peter’s Pizza Restaurant: HRM Overview This paper gives a short overview of the current state of employees at Peter’s pizza and gives recommendations on how to improve and retain the human resources at the restaurant.
• D&D London Restaurant Company: Internet Strategy Promotion of the internet business will make the company realize a number of advantages over the physical-contact methods between the seller or agent and the buyer.
• Carrying Out an Investigation on the Customers’ Satisfaction Level and Individuals’ Performance Level of the Restaurants There are two approaches that are available for this research which is qualitative and quantitative approaches. These approaches give positivist and anti positivist results.
• Restaurant Manager: Functions, Factors, Performance As a store manager, the key is to have good forecasting sense and ability to lead a team. The store manager has to motivate a team consisting of employees at all the levels.
• “Chinese Restaurant Food” : The Article Review The article ‘Chinese Restaurant Food’ educates the general public about the hidden dangers and harm of eating too much Chinese food.
• Olive Garden Restaurant Chain Olive Garden is an untailored restaurant chain mainly situated in America and Canada and concentrates entirely on Italian-American meals.
• The Fast Food Restaurants History in the United States Fast foods are often associated with recent times but when one reads Nicholas Howe’s “Fast Food America” it is easy to see that fast food joins have existed since the early 1990s.
• Pittsburgh Firm’s Support of Ted’s Hot Dog Restaurant Pittsburg wishes to carry out the business expansion, and they have targeted Ted’s Hot Dog Restaurant as one of the investments.
• Taco Bell Restaurant’s Target Market in Queensland The expansion of Taco Bell to Queensland, Australia is a viable solution to attract more customers. It is possible to choose students as the target audience.
• Snooze Restaurant’s Sous Chef Training The following Snooze Thesis represents the overall experience of training for sous chef position in the Snooze restaurant.
• Salt Restaurant’s Design and Landscaping The design of the Salt Restaurant was created with two major goals: to develop a welcoming image and make the design convenient in implementation and use.
• The Management Styles in the UK Restaurant Sector This study attempts to explicitly review the management styles in the UK restaurant sector and their impacts on the quality of organizational communication.
• Interview with Aldo’s Restaurant and Bakery Owner This paper presents an interview with Aldo Olivieri, who, with his family, immigrated to the United States and opened a small family business, restaurant and bakery.
• Hospitality and Restaurant Management in Singapore In Singapore, the hospitality industry has for a long time performed well and made considerable market gains. The restaurant industry is a component of the larger hospitality industry.
• Outback Steakhouse Restaurant’s Selection Process Outback Steakhouse has managed to enhance its internal capabilities through a thorough employee selection that attracts the right people for the job in the company.
• McDonald’s Fast-Food Restaurant’s Analysis The management at McDonald’s would view the SWOT analysis as being partly exhaustive of the internal strengths and weaknesses of the company.
• Remington’s Restaurant: Performance and Satisfaction The purpose of the research project is to explore the research methodology of Remington’s Restaurant, assess how patrons perceive the performance, and determine customer satisfaction.
• Fast-Food Restaurant’s Capacity Increasing Options The fast-food restaurant is experiencing a booming business and looking for ways to increase its capacity to serve more customers. The management has come up with two options.
• Big Bone BBQ and Wicked Wings Restaurants’ Operations Management The current system of Big Bone BBQ is successful, but it does not realize its full potential due to a lack of automation that leads to imprecision and considerable wastage.
• Einstein Bros Bagel Restaurant’ Quality The following study examines the quality of a product “Thintastic Buffalo Chicken Bagel” which is produced and sold in Einstein Bros. Bagels, a bagel, and coffee restaurant chain.
• Hospitality and Restaurant Management: Singapore The hotel and hospitality industry in Singapore is doing well at the moment; and both the political and economic environment for the restaurant business remains favourable.
• Russian Restaurant in the UK Macro Environment The primary purpose of this work is to see whether opening the Russian restaurant in London is feasible based on the macro-environment analysis.
• McDonald’s and Burger King Restaurants Contrast The essay examines the contrasts that exist between McDonald’s and Burger King Restaurants using culture and service quality.
• Hardees Restaurant’ Commercial Marketing The Hardees Restaurant commercial with Katherine Webb is eating the Buffalo blue cheese burger widely appeals to the targeted audience using logic, credibility, and emotion.
• Subway Restaurant in the US Subway is a restaurant which operates within the US restaurant industry. In its operation, the firm intends to be established as the best fast food restaurant in the US.
• Staff Turnover in Restaurants: Causes and Effects Staff changes within the small and medium business result in lost revenue. Causes of staff turnover are errors in recruitment strategy and personnel management.
• What Is the Most Important Thing in a Restaurant?
• What Kind of Questions Are Asked in a Restaurant Interview?
• What Are the Costs After the Acquisition of the Pasta Restaurant?
• Does Franchising Pay? Evidence From the Restaurant Industry?
• What Are Marketing Strategies for the Restaurant Business?
• What Is the Green Responsibility of the Restaurant Business?
• What Is the Current Market Situation of Chinese Restaurants?
• How To Write a Restaurant Business Plan for a Private Limited Company?
• Why Would You Think Twice About Ordering From a Restaurant?
• What Is the Marketing Plan for an Italian Flower Restaurant?
• What Are the Differences Between the Benihana Production Process and a Typical Restaurant?
• What Makes Our Restaurant Season?
• What Are the Factors Influencing Customer’s Restaurant Choice?
• What Are the Reasons Not To Dine at the Cherche Midi Restaurant?
• What Is the Economic Activity of a Pancake Restaurant in Japan?
• Can Customer Service Affect the Business a Restaurant Has?
• What Are the Three Important Management Functions That Restaurant Managers Are Performing?
• What Are the Factors of Customer Satisfaction at Chor-Bazar Restaurant in London?
• Why Should Open Burger Restaurant in Germany?
• What Is the Requirements Specification for Restaurant Automation Software?

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StudyCorgi. (2021, September 9). 132 Restaurant Research Topics & Essay Titles. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/restaurant-essay-topics/

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This essay topic collection was updated on June 24, 2024 .

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The Case for Letting the Restaurant Industry Die

In late March, not long after the coronavirus brought America’s restaurant industry to a tense and precarious halt, the writer, cook, and artist Tunde Wey posted, to Instagram, the first part of an essay titled “Don’t Bail Out the Restaurant Industry.” “We’re on the cusp of something… ordinary,” it begins. “We’re on the cusp of everything remaining the same.” The piece, which Wey released in ten installments in the course of a week (and later posted in full in his e-mail newsletter ), mounts a forceful, deliberately provocative case against the survival tactics that restaurants have turned to in the past two months. Wey, who is thirty-six years old, was born in Nigeria and moved to the U.S. as a teen; after his visa expired, he spent a decade as an undocumented immigrant before finally receiving his green card last year. He’s spent the bulk of his life in America working in and commenting on the restaurant industry; in his Instagram essay, he outlines its racial and economic segregation, its reliance on destructive agricultural practices, its central role in gentrification and community displacement—and argues that, after past destabilizing tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, the rebound of culinary culture only reinforced and deepened those inequities.

Wey punctuated his essay with a refrain: “Let it die”—a phrase that also serves as the title of a video that he released, on May 9th, to kick off what he hopes will be a series about the restaurant industry at a time of COVID -19-driven uncertainty. (“This is the first of a few episodes, or maybe this is the first and last episode,” he says in the opening voice-over. “We’ll see how this thing goes.”) In the eleven-minute video, shot by Wey and a producing partner, he visits the Oakland restaurant of Reem Assil , a Syrian- and Palestinian-American chef whose political activism has put her in a national spotlight. In virtually all respects, Wey and Assil are comrades in arms, both of them horrified by the injustices of capitalist white supremacy and passionately committed to fighting against it. But Wey hasn’t come to listen and nod—he’s come to fight. In front of the cameras, the pair argue about whether a rigged system can ever be changed from within, and whether the work of consciousness-raising is even work at all. Assil has faith; Wey is unconvinced: “If you … still can’t, within this framework, deliver anything more than important but incremental steps, then maybe is the whole project a wash?”

This sort of charismatic confrontationalism underscores all of Wey’s work. His multimedia œuvre comprises writing, videos, and an ongoing series of high-concept events and pop-up businesses that often blur the lines between commerce and performance art. A preferred medium is the price tag: in New Orleans, where he currently lives, he once ran a lunch cart that asked white patrons to pay more than double what he charged people of color, reflecting the city’s racial income disparities. In Nashville, he hosted a series of dinners where hot chicken was free for the neighborhood’s black residents, while white diners were asked to pledge a hundred dollars for one piece, a thousand dollars for four, and the deed to a property for a whole bird plus sides. Rather than provoking the ire of the culinary establishment, Wey’s events, writings, and criticisms have electrified and entranced them. In a 2019 GQ profile of Wey—a story that is currently a finalist for a James Beard Award—the writer Brett Martin described him as running “an abattoir for food-world sacred cows.”

Wey spoke to me recently on the phone from a public bench in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. The city is a COVID -19 hotspot, where, as in so many other cities, infection and mortality rates are dramatically higher among black residents. “Right now I’m in a park and people are smiling and taking walks, they have their dogs. This is next door to the reality of folks who don’t have work, who can’t apply for unemployment, who need to to put themselves in positions that are dangerous and unhealthy so they can survive,” he said. “That difference is the shit I want to address in my work. Not because I’m Superman, but because if I don’t, I’m going to be affected.” This conversation has been edited and condensed.

The thesis of your essay is that the restaurant industry is so broken that it’s not worth saving. Did you already feel that way before the coronavirus shutdowns sent the industry into crisis?

I had never said those words explicitly—“let it die”—but I don’t think the sheer force of the idea is anything new.

I will say that with most of my work,  I’m always a little circumspect. So even though the sentiment has always been “let it die,” I had never said those exact words. And it wasn’t like I was super comfortable saying it! I have people who I care about who are part of that industry. So, in a way, the essay is euphemistic—only because I know it’s not going to happen, I know the restaurant industry is not going to actually die, so I have the space to be very forceful.

But it wasn’t just an essay about letting things die, it’s also about what can rise from the rubble. There is something better on the other side.

Is there something unique to the restaurant industry that makes it particularly deserving of death?

I don’t think there’s anything inherent about the restaurant industry that makes it more worthy of death than any other industry. But it’s an industry that manages to encompass all the different realities of United States life—and I say “United States” because “American” isn’t the right label to encompass all the folks who live here. I’ll be very specific: let’s say you walk into Momofuku at Hudson Yards. You have your transaction: you’re going to buy whatever they sell, and you’re going to leave. But your money is going to Momofuku, which is owned, in part, by David Chang, and owned, in part, by [the real-estate billionaire Stephen Ross’s investment firm] RSE Ventures, which owns multiple companies. The financing of Hudson Yards was done through private capital but also speculative capital, so there was debt involved. But not any kind of debt, a specific debt: commercial mortgage-backed securities. So, all of that is to say that what makes the restaurant industry possible is maybe different from, say, the airline industry, or mining, or some shit. It’s at the intersection of capital, finance, social life, food production, sustenance. It’s all those things. So I think it offers a very important lens to examine the choices that we make.

It makes me think of something the Minneapolis restaurant critic Dara Moskowitz Gruhmdahl tweeted in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, which has been on my mind a lot: she wrote that restaurants are the closest thing the United States has to a social safety net. If you lose your job, you try to find work in a restaurant. If you’re formerly incarcerated, you can get a job in a restaurant. If you’re undocumented, restaurants will hire you.

I don’t know if I like that. There’s a conflation there of a safety net with employment—and with precarious employment, at that. It’s sort of like saying that because we don’t have socialized mental-health care in this country, that prisons and jails are the closest things we have to that, and so if we close down prisons and jails, we’re leaving these folks no option but to be on the street. I’m not equating restaurant work to being in prison, but I think the biggest issue with employment in general—anywhere in the world, but especially in the U.S.—is lack of choice. The existence of precarious jobs is not the same as security. On the face of it, that perspective sounds like an excuse to keep an industry going that’s problematic. It sounds terrible. It’s like somebody saying, “Stay in this marriage, even though you are suffering terribly. Stay in it for your children.”

I think she meant it critically—critical of America, as well as sort of hand-wringing about the state of restaurant employment.

Oh, well, in that case—as long as it’s not being used as an excuse to save the industry, then I agree with her. I don’t think we should save anything that causes pain and destruction. I want to be clear that I’m only talking about the pain and destruction that restaurants cause. I don’t think they cause pain and destruction to the exclusion of everything else. They do contribute value.

In your hypothetical rebirth of the industry, are there affirmative ways you think we can lessen the pain and destruction, and increase the value?

There are things restaurants can do, but it’s hard to do them in a system that doesn’t already, to use your word, affirm those values.

It’s not like I care about restaurants or workers more than a restaurant owner or a chef, but I do think they are loath to see a future other than what already exists. That’s because of their investment in the current system, which benefits them. I don’t mean to say that the benefit they accrue is so large and so bountiful that they’re consciously trying to keep workers down, though I’m sure that’s true for some corporations. What’s more true is that privilege and power become invisible when you have them. Even restaurant owners who may care about their workers ultimately care more about themselves. Workers care about themselves, too, but they don’t have the power to act on that care. I’m losing my point. What was the question?

Are there affirmative things restaurants can change to create a more equitable system?

The options available to workers are limited when this larger system exists as it does. It’s super strange right now to see all this energy around organizing for the benefits of owners and the ownership class. If there’s anything I think should be done, it’s that restaurant owners should abandon entirely their pursuit of a bailout specific to the industry, and focus on policy and government programs that support people generally. If everyone had access to health care, housing, leisure, education for their children, education for themselves—all these things I think are rights—and if all these things they had access to were of high quality, I’m sure some business owners wouldn’t even return to ownership.

The only truly affirmative and sustainable response is a governmental response—one that’s universal, that’s agnostic of industries, at least initially, and that focuses on developing a really robust social safety net, so we don’t have to rely on unfortunate, fake safety nets like poor restaurant jobs.

The “Let It Die” video was based on footage you’d shot pre- COVID -19, for a different series. What was that originally supposed to be?

It was going to be a show—the working title was “Hard to Swallow: A Food Show Not About Food”—where we wanted to show the consequences of the production and consumption of food. Our first episode was going to be about New Orleans: how it’s a black city, the food is black, the folks that visit there come for all that black shit, but black chefs don’t get the attention. They don’t get the awards. They don’t get the same recognition as white chefs, which they are due.

But then COVID -19 happened, and it’s such an overwhelming story, it touches everything—this is, in essence, what our show would have been about anyway. So we decided to re-cut some of what we’d already shot to tell a story about COVID -19—one which is about more than the “resilience,” and I’m using scare quotes there—of the restaurant industry but instead is a larger story, one that’s historically grounded in other disasters that have affected communities and industries. What came from that? Who can we expect to win, who can we expect to lose? Spoiler: it’s the same people who win, the same people who lose.

Why did you choose to focus on Reem Assil—a Syrian-Palestinian chef based in Oakland, California—for the first episode?

I think Reem is interesting . Now that I think about it, in a way, she parallels Barack Obama. She’s an organizer, she’s someone who is an idealist and doing radical work, but who also thinks that the way to actualize her vision of the world is by working within a more conventional system. She thinks about it like, if she’s on the inside, she can change things from there. The first half of the episode, which we shot before COVID -19, is the two of us dancing around that question: Can you renovate a burning house? Can you renovate a single room in a burning house?

I do think, after that conversation, I had convinced her to be less optimistic about working within the system. But, as she says in the show, she believes that you can have a dual existence, that you have to occupy multiple lives. One of the lives she occupies is running a business that sustains her and her family, and one of the lives pushes for a future that is abundantly equitable.

But then, for “Let It Die,” we interviewed her again—this time after the pandemic hit—and she’s now like, “This shit is crazy, and I can’t continue to do the work that I said I could do. You can’t make concessions, because any concessions you make will help you forget or ignore that a radical system can hardly exist in a conventional space.”

That’s interesting, to me. That’s a level of complexity, in a person, that’s hard to find.

In the video, after your initial conversation, you do say you think you’ve made her more cynical, but you also say that you might be a little more open to her belief in changing things from within the system.

I don’t think I was converted, though. There’s a difference between cynicism and pragmatism. With cynicism comes a certain dourness, and with pragmatism comes a more concerted choice to act. I guess what I was saying was that after our conversation I felt less sad. Not that I was any more convinced that what she was doing could work.

I definitely believe in making money so you can survive, and I would like to think that the work I do is grounded in numbers and lives. What I believe and what maybe Reem could believe—but she didn’t exactly say this—is that I don’t think money is a solution. I do believe that not having money is a problem. But the part where money is not a solution is so important. It takes us back to the idea of restaurants as a safety net: not having money is a fucking problem, and that’s why people need to work. But having money is not a solution, especially when you don’t have enough.

Money has been a subject of so much of your—what do you consider your work? Events? Installations? Public performance-art commercial actions?

My mom’s always like, “How you gonna make money?” and I’m like, look, bro, God will help us all. You can call my work whatever you want.

Let’s just stick with “your work,” then. Your most recent event, in December, involved asking hospitals to buy packaged food at a high mark-up, and you’d give the profits to the communities they served.

It’s interesting, because it dovetails with what we’re seeing right now with the pandemic, because it was about racial health disparities. It was born from a conversation I had with a medical doctor who does social-justice work, Michelle Morse. Infant mortality in the black community is higher than white infant mortality, and one of the places where this disparity is especially noticeable is Kalamazoo, Michigan. So that’s where the work began—we called it BabyZoos, because of Kalamazoo.

If you look at what’s being done to address these disparities, all of the efforts are focussed on medical solutions, with a lot of urgency around improving access to care, improving delivery of health services. But the doctors working on these problems, at least in Kalamazoo, they’ll all tell you the issue isn’t just that, it’s a broad range of factors, the so-called “social determinants of health.” Housing, income, education—all these things actually impact the health outcomes of black folks. So what I wanted to do was focus my efforts on the most direct health-correlation factor I could, which is income. It’s about resource transfer to address racial health disparities.

That was the plan. What I found out was that hospitals didn’t care. Hospitals and health organizations didn’t care.

What will you do next?

I figure it’s easier to focus on individuals, so I’m going direct-to-consumer. I’m launching a pantry-staples brand in the next couple of months that does the same thing I was trying to do with BabyZoos: sell food products, and distribute the bulk of the profits to black communities. We’re not asking questions, we’re not putting folks who get the money on camera, we’re not asking for testimonials. There’s a tendency among folks who are engaged in charity work to trot out the beneficiaries of the charity, and I think that’s fucked up. We’re just going to say, “ Hey, take this money, and use it. ”

We’re going to be selling salt. The salt is going to be called Lot.

After Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt?

Yeah, you got it. I’m also working with [the sustainable spice company] Burlap and Barrel on a condiment brand, Disappearing Condiments , which isn’t up and running yet. We’ll be selling fermented locust beans, which are indigenous to West Africa.

Will you be offering asymmetric pricing—charging more to white customers, for example—like you’ve done at some of your events?

No, not with the fermented locust beans. There are some things we’re thinking through with the salt, but I’m not sure if this is the right avenue for it. The idea is just to have a competitively-priced, high-quality product that competes with the more conventional condiments and pantry staples.

Like, it’s just a really good salt, and people buy it because it’s good salt—not because they’re going out of their way to buy it in order to exorcise a sense of white guilt?

What I’ve realized with the work I’m doing, hosting dinners, doing these—what did you call them? Public-performance actions? You have to convince the customer of your ideology before they divest of their resources. With the salt, I wanted to try to decouple the two. If you need salt, buy the salt. You don’t need to believe that you are anti-racist, or believe that you are racist, or even believe that the world is fucked up. You can just buy the salt.

I want to create viable products that can compete in the marketplace, so I can extract as much resources as possible and redirect them to communities that need them the most.

Isn’t this the same approach that you’re so skeptical of in “Let It Die”? That seems like exactly what Reem was trying to convince you of in the first half of the episode.

I guess! This is not an ideological question, right? It’s a material question. When you can’t buy malaria medicine, or you can’t put food on your table, it becomes about more than ideology. It’s a concrete, material battle. I mean, people are dying. Right now, people are dying. A month ago, in Lagos, where my parents live, there were young, able-bodied men going into neighborhoods demanding food from people under threat of violence. There were other people who formed a militia to encircle neighborhoods to keep those men away. This is reality. That’s not a consequence of Africans or Nigerians being incompetent or unprepared, it’s a consequence of a global system that extracts more and more from Africans, people of color, black folks, working-class folks. That needs to be addressed. If that means running a conventional business, I guess that is what it is. I’m conventional in that sense. I don’t want people to die.

Last year, you were profiled by Brett Martin in GQ —and now that piece is a finalist for a James Beard Award. That must feel strange, to see someone be rewarded for observing you closely.

It’s a mindfuck, on a couple levels. A friend pointed out that I myself write about my own life—and now somebody else is being recognized for writing about my life, even though I already do this. Her example—and I thought it was great—was that it’s like somebody going to [the legendary New Orleans chef] Leah Chase’s kitchen, watching her make fried chicken, working with her, taking her recipe, tweaking it, and then winning an award for that recipe. I was like, Shit, that is incredible .

But also Brett, who wrote the essay, is a friend, and he had become more of a friend in the course of the writing of the profile. As we started developing our relationship, I was very critical of his coverage of white people—white chefs, specifically. I remember saying to him, “Brett, this exploration of the minutiae of whiteness is problematic.” I was like, man, we don’t need to read another Sean Brock profile. The shit he’s doing is cool but, with all due respect, we don’t need to hear about him again. Can we get some other people on the books?

Do you hope your profile wins?

I hope Brett wins because I like Brett. But it doesn’t matter to me. I actually got e-mails and texts congratulating me, and I was, like, “No, dude, that’s not me, that’s not me at all.” I have a book coming out about my actual life, so maybe people can tune into that.

When is that coming out?

I’m still writing it. My editors are being very kind to me.

I do want to say, about the profile, that I’m ambivalent about media, but I also crave it. I need it, because my work is not tangible, and it’s small in scope. So I need these media milestones as reminders of my work, to myself and to others. It’s also my calling card. It lets people know what I’m about. When I introduce myself in an e-mail, I say, “My name is Tunde, I’m a Nigerian immigrant, artist, cook, and writer.” And then I hyperlink to the GQ article and something I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle . People click on GQ ’s Web site and they see my fucking oily face on there and they don’t even need to read the thing, they just know I’m for real and they give me a chance. I need that.

But I also recognize that GQ didn’t write the essay. It was a person. Brett Martin wrote it. By that, I mean that GQ is a network of people. Brett made the case for me, and then there’s an editor who is also a person—they put the piece together, and it came out. People made that choice. A lot of the time, when some article comes out about me—and I’m sure when this interview comes out, it will happen—people will be like “congratulations,” as if this came by divine force. But it’s people. Helen Rosner woke up one day and was like, “Let me talk to Tunde,” and that’s it: you make decisions, you have the imprimatur of The New Yorker . But The New Yorker is made up of people, and they’re people who are mostly white. So my ambivalence toward these institutions is my ambivalence toward the institutions of whiteness.

My work is no more or less worthy because it’s written about, but I’m so glad it is, because otherwise I would be more disposable than I am.

I wouldn’t say you’re disposable.

Shit, Helen, we’re all disposable. You’re disposable, too. The New Yorker could be like Helen, we’re downsizing because people aren’t advertising anymore. That’s how this works. Same with me. We all have to find ways to keep ourselves indispensable, for the time being.

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Managing a Restaurant in the Hospitality Industry Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

The problem, plan of action & strategies, making the restaurant effective & efficient and productive.

The restaurant and dining industry comprises many types of players from cafes and restaurants to luxury hotel-based restaurants. The largest percentage of share of the restaurant industry however is taken up by the restaurants and the cafes. The restaurant and dining industry in the world is estimated to have a market value of $1,367 billion as of 2008 (Global Restaurants Industry Profile’ 2008). In the year 2007 alone, the industry grew by 4.2 per cent.

The industry has the variant type of business pertaining to restaurants, bars, pubs as well as fast-food restaurants. The leading company managing the restaurant industry worldwide is the McDonalds Corporation. “The global restaurant sector remains fragmented and made up predominantly of small and medium-sized enterprises, which suggests a high degree of competition. Restaurant operators are the main market players.

End-users are the buyers and they are generally highly price sensitive. It is possible to enter the market on a small, independent scale. However, to compete successfully with the strong, diversified brands, a significant investment outlay is required. The strong intensity of rivalry is mitigated by market growth and product differentiation.” (Global Restaurants Industry Profile’ 2008)

It is not easy to enter the restaurant industry, however, when a restaurant is able to survive the initial few years after its establishment, it needs to be spectacular in order to be able to attract and retain the attention of its customers and clientele while making a mark for itself. For this two strategies are available. One pertains to catering to a broad market and providing a variety of foods. On the other hand, the second strategy pertains to creating a niche market for the restaurant by creating the required theme around the restaurant and its food for providing the customers and clientele with a customized and differentiated experience.

The restaurant industry is part of the hospitality and service industry; therefore it is crucial to acknowledge that quality is presentation, service as well as in the management of the restaurant is very important. In the restaurant industry “staff costs are significant, as success in the restaurant industry is strongly influenced by the quality of the service provided. The leading companies have focused on expansion through acquisition or franchising in recent years rather than building new outlets, which are more costly, e.g. a majority of McDonald’s restaurants are operated by franchisees.” (Global Restaurants Industry Profile’ 2008)

Australia is one of the most diverse countries with a rich culinary industry providing a blend of different cultures and different tastes. Moreover the cosmopolitan nature of the city Sydney is the perfect background for high a five-star restaurant to cater to the different tastes of its clientele with excellent cuisines supported by excellent service. Restaurant Lebaen is one such restaurant, however, the personnel at Lebaen have taken their excellent food quality and the quality of their service for granted.

This paper explores how the service quality and the operations at the restaurant Lebaen can be improved while training the staff to work their parts cohesively in making the restaurants a success.

The problem that is faced by the Lebaen restaurant is that the restaurant has been a high performing, five-star restaurant operating in the rich cosmopolitan city of Sydney. People have come to consider the restaurant as one of the best in its class and there expect their every visit to be excellent to the point of perfection. However, the staff of the restaurant has major issues specific to taking their excellence and the quality of the food and the service for granted.

Their attitude of the food and service as being a given has made the restaurant suffer in the recent months with a dramatic decrease in the quality of the food, the quality of the service as well as the hospitable environment of the restaurant. This has resulted in a change in the customers’ and clienteles’ perception about the expectorant from being a high profile, and high performing five-star restaurant to a restaurant with mediocre food and service quality.

This has decreased the traffic coming into Leben and in order to retain the stars, the reputation, as well as quality of the food and service, dramatic and immediate action, has to be taken by the management at the Leben. “At one level, regarding foodservice as a theatrical performance encourages managers to ‘put on a show– to use staff (actors), processes (scripts) and physical evidence (props and sets) to enhance the customer experience.

If, however, the metaphor is applied in a deeper way where the customer is seen not as the audience but as a participant in the show, then the managers’ role becomes one of providing the space in which the experience is co-created; a stage on which the customer is the star, and the staff the supporting cast. An analysis of the service encounter as a drama can reveal the role the customer is playing, the super-objective behind their visit to the restaurant, and the unspoken subtext behind critical incidents. The restaurant itself needs to remain in character, presenting a consistent message, for example of hospitableness and generosity” (Morgan et al., 2008)

The areas that need to be explicitly targeted in order to increase the quality at the restaurant pertain to the staff, who are the backbone of the service sector industry, the food which is the main product of the company as well as the service standard, which needs to be established and maintained in the long run. Aside from this the kitchen operations, as well as the reception counters and attendant service, needs to be revamped from a business process reengineering point of view. The following sections present the actions plans and the specific strategies that would be employed in increasing the quality and the level of service at the restaurant to rebuild the restaurant reputation.

Before embarking on making any changes, the entire current process flow of the restaurant and its reception, dining area and kitchen operations need to be evaluated. For this, the regular operating day needs to be observed from a third-person perspective to determine which operations are having backlogs and where the service starts falling apart. However, in order to carry out this exercise, the staff needs to be unaware of the observation to provide a realistic result.

The second step that needs to be taken is to take the results from the observation exercise and sit the staff of the restaurant down for a business meeting. The staff needs to be told about the results of the observation and their feedback specific to their reactions as well as their reasoning for the poor service and quality needs to be heard out. However, it must be stressed that in the restaurant business the service quality that is delivered to the customer is all dependent on the product and the person presenting. This takes into account the attendee, the kitchen staff as well as the reception staff all of who come together to create an experience for the customer.

The staff of the restaurant, similar to that of a hotel is the backbone of its service and quality which can drive the standards up or bring them down with their performance. “The results indicate that front desk, housekeeping, and parking employee performance have significant effects on perceived quality, whereas front desk and room service employee performance have significant effects on perceived value. The only performance cue having a direct effect on word-of-mouth intentions is the performance of housekeeping employees. Both quality and value increase word-of-mouth intentions; however, the effect of value is large relative to the effect of quality.” (Hartline & Jones, 1996)

In order to change the attitude of the staff, proper training needs to be provided where while delivering them the results of the observation-based study (‘How to treat your staff’, 2005). This would provide them with a holistic and real picture of their food and service quality standards as perceived by the customers. The training that would be provided would pertain to evaluating the personal performance of each individual member of the staff as well as their teamwork performance to provide a healthy competition which would increase the determination level of the staff to excel at their profession.

In order to increase the quality of the food, tough criticism, as well as restrictive training of the chefs, needs to be undertaken so that no mediocre quality dish is able to pass out through the kitchen doors. Moreover, the ingredients that go into creating a dish need to be ensured of being the best quality available. For this, a proper logistics management system needs to be set up in collaboration with local markets (Simchi-Levi et al., 2004) whereby a guaranteed purchase deal can be made for the best quality orders offered by the wholesaler.

This would benefit the restaurant as well as the wholesaler in terms of increasing business. The eight success factors for operating in the restaurant industry pertain to “single-unit operations, standard operating procedures, multi-unit strategic planning, interpersonal and social responsibilities, travel and visiting units, human relations, effective leadership, and unit level finances, which explained 75 per cent of the variance among the individual items” (Di Pietro et al., 2006)

Therefore in order to increase the service quality, the commitment of the management, as well as the management and development of the human resource at the restaurant, is important. “Organizational commitment exerts a strong positive influence on the service recovery performance of frontline staff as does empowerment and rewarding them for service excellence. When frontline staff are performing service recovery effectively, they are less likely to resign and report higher levels of job satisfaction” (Boschoff & Allen, 2000).

One of the best tools to train and develop the staff as well as to improve their performance and service quality is to call regular meetings before the opening time and discuss the performance of the individual staff for creativity, readjustments as well as consistent delivery of high-quality performance. The regular staff meetings “ensure effective staff communication in response to the growing ethnic diversity of the foodservice workforce.

Language barriers are tough to overcome in the foodservice operation, from staff communication and delegation of responsibilities, food safety and security to preparation instructions and customer interaction” (Riel, 2006) The meetings are a “place to share information, sharpen skills and build staff enthusiasm. Tom Miner, a principal at Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based food and restaurant consulting firm, says that communication is key to a healthy culture, and that is what these meetings are all about.

Effective meetings don’t just happen. They call for careful planning and creative thinking.” (Gerst, 2004) At such meetings, new recipes can be discussed and the feedback of the customer can be discussed with the staff. Moreover, any issues being faced by the staff can also be highlighted and brought to light for open discussion. A show and tell approach can be used whereby every staff member can be asked to act their roles as per their excellent performance and build on it for the business hours.

The strategic decisions that would be required in order to ensure impeccable delivery of service quality ad food to the customer pertaining to determining which staff is able to perform in which capacity under variant environmental conditions. The successor chain needs to be built and an internal competition on a weekly or a monthly basis needs to be put in to ensure the attitude of the staff is to keep on growing in terms of their service quality and performance. Another decision that needs to be made pertains to retain and train which of the staff, and to let go the staff which is not able to perform up the level of service quality that is required by a five-star high profile restaurant.

The main factors that make the restaurant operations efficient, effective, as well as productive, include careful planning for the goals and objectives of the restaurant, strategy development and implementation of the strategies as well as a strong monitoring and development system which uses customer feedback (Gomes et al., 2007) to improve the operations of the restaurant.

In order to make the restaurant effective the efficiency with which the restaurant operates as well as its performance in the industry/ market needs to be taken into account. “For effective managerial planning in the restaurant industry, the planning procedure should derive: a forecast that predicts types of meals that will be served; a recipe or bill of material that calculates the ingredients needed for each menu item; a labour standard for preparing each menu item to develop the capacity requirements plan; and the hourly wages and burden costs for estimating the cost of material, labour, and capital equipment plan.

With this information, a weekly schedule of labour and materials can be derived to efficiently plan needed resources in relation to the planned output.” (Wacker, 1985) Aside from this, a detailed plan of operations for the restaurant including the specific roles and the job descriptions of the staff can be drawn up which would provide a comprehensive and practice plan for the operation flow of the restaurant.

The efficiency of the restaurant deals with the productivity of the staff by taking into account the inputs that are being employed in terms of the human resource, the material, the equipment etc, and the outputs that are being generated in terms of the reputation and the revenue of the restaurant, the performance of the human resource in terms of their service quality, the critical acclaim that the restaurant is able to achieve through its excellent food and service.

“A linear programming-based approach, data envelopment analysis (DEA), can be used to evaluate the efficiency of hotel and restaurant companies” (Sanjeev, 2007) However in order to improve the efficiency of Lebaen close attention needs to be fused on the costs and expenses of the restaurant for controlling the cost efficiency as well as training the staff to improve their attitude and increase their service quality.

Productivity is a direct result of operational efficiency. The increase in efficiency leads to increased productivity, however, capacity management needs to be employed to deal with the increase in customer and traffic coming into the restaurant as a result of improved service quality.

Managing a busy operation like a restaurant in the hospitality industry is highly competitive and requires extensive work and precision in terms of setting targets and strategies to above the goals and objectives of the company. In order to improve the situation of the service quality as it is depicted at the Lebaen restaurant, it is required that the human resource needs to be trained in terms of their delivery of food and service. moreover, the attitude of the staff needs to be adjusted which can be facilitated through internal healthy competition and regular meetings to discuss customer feedback as well as any staff issues. I addition to this the productivity as well as the efficiency of the restaurant needs to be monitored so the restaurant is profitable and effective in terms of achieving its stated objectives.

2005, ‘How to treat your staff’, Caterer & Hotelkeeper , Vol. 195 Issue 4398, p60-61, 2p, 1 color. Web.

2008, ‘Global Restaurants Industry Profile’, Datamonitor Reports , p1, 27p, 11 charts, 8 graphs. Web.

Boshoff, C., Allen, J., 2000, ‘The influence of selected antecedents on frontline staff’s perceptions of service recovery performance’, International Journal of Service Industry Management , Vol. 11 Issue 1, p63-90, 28p, 5 charts, 2 diagrams. Web.

DiPietro, R.B., Murphy, K. S., Rivera, M., Muller, C.C., 2006, ‘Multi-unit management key success factors in the casual dining restaurant industry: A case study’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , Vol. 19 Issue 6/7, p524-536, 13p, 2 charts. Web.

Gerst, V., 2004, ‘THE TEN-MINUTE MANAGER’S GUIDE TO… Effective Staff Meetings’, Restaurants & Institutions 4, Vol. 114 Issue 19, p20-21, 2p. Web.

Gomes, C.F., Yasin, M.M., Lisboa, J.V., 2007, ‘The effectiveness of hospitality service operations: measurement and implementation concerns’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , Vol. 19 Issue 6/7, p560-573, 14p, 2 diagrams, 2 graphs. Web.

Hartline, M.D., Jones, K/C., 1996, ‘Employee Performance Cues in a Hotel Service Environment: Influence on Perceived Service Quality, Value, and Word-of-Mouth Intentions’, Journal of Business Research , Vol. 35 Issue 3, p207-215, 9p. Web.

Riell, H., 2006, ‘Talking the Talk’, FoodService Director , Vol. 19 Issue 10, p54-54, 1p. Web.Sanjeev, G., 2007, ‘Measuring efficiency of the hotel and restaurant sector: the case of India’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , Vol. 19 Issue 5, p378-387, 10p, 1 chart. Web.

Simchi-Levi, D., Xin Chen, Bramel, J., 2004, ‘The logic of logistics: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications for Logistics’, Springer Business logistics.

Wacker, J.G., 1985, ‘Effective Planning And Cost Control For Restaurants: Making Resource Requirements Planning Work’, Production & Inventory Management , Vol. 26 Issue 1, p55-70, 16p, 11 charts, 5 diagrams. Web.

Watson, P., Hemmington, N., 2008, ‘Drama in the dining room: theatrical perspectives on the foodservice encounter’, Journal of Foodservice , Vol. 19 Issue 2, p111-118, 8p. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2021, October 16). Managing a Restaurant in the Hospitality Industry. https://ivypanda.com/essays/managing-a-restaurant-in-the-hospitality-industry/

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IvyPanda . 2021. "Managing a Restaurant in the Hospitality Industry." October 16, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/managing-a-restaurant-in-the-hospitality-industry/.

1. IvyPanda . "Managing a Restaurant in the Hospitality Industry." October 16, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/managing-a-restaurant-in-the-hospitality-industry/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Managing a Restaurant in the Hospitality Industry." October 16, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/managing-a-restaurant-in-the-hospitality-industry/.

Report | Wages, Incomes, and Wealth

Low Wages and Few Benefits Mean Many Restaurant Workers Can’t Make Ends Meet

Report • By Heidi Shierholz • August 21, 2014

Briefing Paper #383

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The restaurant industry is a large and fast-growing sector of the U.S. economy. It currently employs 5.5 million women (accounting for 9.9 percent of all private-sector employment among women) and 5.1 million men (accounting for 8.4 percent of private-sector employment among men). The restaurant industry includes a wide range of establishments, from fast-food to full-service restaurants, from food trucks to caterers, from coffee shops to bars. While there are certainly employers in the restaurant industry who provide high-quality jobs, by and large the industry consists of very low-wage jobs with few benefits, and many restaurant workers live in poverty or near-poverty.

This paper examines the restaurant industry and the workers who hold restaurant jobs, including how much they earn, what jobs they do, whether they receive benefits, and whether they and their families are able to make ends meet. Key findings include:

• The median hourly wage in the restaurant industry, including tips, is $10.00, compared with $18.00 outside of the restaurant industry. After accounting for demographic differences between restaurant workers and other workers, restaurant workers have hourly wages that are 17.2 percent lower than those of similar workers outside the restaurant industry. This is the “wage penalty” of restaurant work.
• The largest restaurant industry occupation is waiter/waitress, which makes up nearly a quarter (23.3 percent) of all restaurant jobs, and has a typical wage, including tips, of $10.15 an hour. The lowest-paid occupation is cashiers/counter attendants, at $8.23 an hour, while the highest paid are managers, at a typical wage of $15.42 per hour—which is still lower than the overall median wage outside the restaurant industry.
• Unionization rates are extremely low in the restaurant industry, but unionized restaurant workers receive wages that are substantially higher than those of non-union restaurant workers.
• Women are much more likely than men to be cashiers/counter attendants, hosts, and wait staff, and much less likely to be dishwashers, cooks, or chefs/head cooks.
• Blacks are disproportionately likely to be cashiers/counter attendants, the lowest-paid occupation in the industry. Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be dishwashers, dining room attendants, or cooks, also relatively low-paid occupations. White non-Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be hosts/hostesses, wait staff, bartenders, or managers, which are among the industry’s more highly paid occupations.
• One in six restaurant workers, or 16.7 percent, live below the official poverty line. The poverty rate for workers outside the restaurant industry is more than 10 percentage points lower, at 6.3 percent.
• Twice the official poverty threshold is commonly used by researchers as a measure of what it takes for a family to make ends meet. More than two in five restaurant workers, or 43.1 percent, live below twice the poverty line—more than twice the 19.9 percent share outside the restaurant industry.
• By race/ethnicity and gender, poverty rates in the restaurant industry are highest for women, blacks, and Hispanics. Among workers in the restaurant industry, poverty rates are much lower for workers in a union.
• Just 14.4 percent of restaurant workers receive health insurance from their employer, compared with roughly half (48.7 percent) of other workers. Of unionized restaurant workers, 41.9 percent receive health insurance at work, substantially higher than the share among nonunionized restaurant workers.
• Only 8.4 percent of restaurant workers are included in a pension plan at their job, one-fifth the rate of pension coverage outside the restaurant industry, 41.8 percent. Of unionized restaurant workers, 31.6 percent are covered by a pension plan, substantially higher than the share among nonunionized restaurant workers.
• Increasing the minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage (a “subminimum wage” for workers who customarily and regularly receive tips), so that tipped workers—who are disproportionately women—receive the full minimum wage.
• Increasing the salary threshold below which workers are automatically covered by the overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act to $984 per week (which is simply the 1975 threshold adjusted for inflation). This will ensure that low-paid managers and supervisors in the restaurant industry receive “time-and-a-half” pay for each hour of work per week beyond 40 hours.
• Passing comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, which will make undocumented workers in the restaurant industry less vulnerable to exploitation.
• Passing legislation requiring all employers to provide paid sick days to their employees.
• Combating “just-in-time” scheduling, an enormously harmful trend where employers give workers little advance notice of their schedules, call workers into work during nonscheduled times to meet unexpected customer demand, and send workers home early when business is slow.
• Updating labor law and protecting workers’ right to organize.
• Cracking down on wage theft (which is when employers do not pay workers for the work they have done).
• The Federal Reserve keeping interest rates at their current low levels until real wages are growing at the same pace as productivity. This will help ensure that monetary policy continues to support the labor market, which in turn will benefit the job prospects and wage growth of workers—particularly low-wage workers, such as those employed in restaurants.

The restaurant industry is growing fast

Figure A shows the share of private-sector employment, along with the share of total employment, that is accounted for by the restaurant industry. In 1990, the restaurant industry made up 7.2 percent of private-sector employment, but that share has since risen to 9.1 percent. As the labor market strengthens in the current recovery, it is likely that the pace of growth of restaurant industry employment will slow somewhat. The labor market is still weak and job seekers continue to vastly outnumber job openings, which means many workers have no choice but to take low-quality jobs—like many of those in the restaurant industry—that they would not take if they had other options. When the labor market strengthens and job opportunities improve, fewer workers will have to make that choice. Even so, the restaurant industry—a major generator of low-wage jobs—will continue to be a significant source of job growth.

Restaurant industry share of employment, 1990–2014

The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel.

The data underlying the figure.

Note:  Shaded areas denote recessions.

Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics public data series

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Jobs in the restaurant industry

Table 1 shows the 11 largest occupations within the restaurant industry. 1 Together, these occupations comprise 91.4 percent of total restaurant industry employment. The table shows the share of restaurant industry employment by occupation, along with the median, or typical, hourly wage in the occupation. Wages are discussed in depth later in the paper. It should be noted that throughout this paper, hourly wages include wages earned from tips. 2 It should also be noted that salaried workers are included in all hourly wage measures (their average hourly wages are calculated based on hours worked, if necessary).

Most common restaurant industry occupations, 2014

Note:  The occupations in this table comprise 91.4 percent of total restaurant industry employment. To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata. Wage data include tips.

Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata

The most prevalent restaurant industry job is waiters and waitresses, accounting for nearly a quarter (23.3 percent) of all restaurant jobs, and with a typical wage, including tips, of $10.15 an hour. The lowest-paid occupation is cashiers/counter attendants, at $8.23 an hour, while the highest-paid are managers, at a typical wage of $15.42 per hour. In between, occupations run the gamut from dishwashers to bartenders.

Who works in restaurants?

Table 2 compares the demographic characteristics of restaurant workers and other workers. Slightly over half (52.3 percent) of restaurant workers are women. In addition, restaurant workers are mostly white non-Hispanic (55.9 percent), but restaurant workers are much more likely to be Hispanic than workers in other industries; nearly one-quarter (24.8 percent) of restaurant workers are Hispanic, compared with 15.2 percent in other industries.

Demographic characteristics of restaurant and non-restaurant workers, 2014

Note:  To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata.

The data used here (drawn from the Current Population Survey, or CPS) allow us to determine what share of workers are U.S. born, what share are immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens, and what share are non-naturalized immigrants. There are many kinds of non-naturalized immigrants, including permanent residents, temporary visa holders, refugees, individuals granted asylum, and undocumented workers, but it is impossible to distinguish among these groups of non-naturalized immigrants with our data; thus, we group them together. It should be noted that the CPS likely undercounts undocumented immigrants to some extent, meaning that the shares of non-naturalized immigrants are likely understated. The data show that the vast majority (78.4 percent) of restaurant workers are U.S. born. However, restaurant workers are much more likely to be non-naturalized immigrants than workers in other industries; roughly one in six restaurant workers (15.7 percent) are non-naturalized immigrants, nearly double the share outside the restaurant industry.

More than two in five restaurant workers (42.8 percent) have at least some college education, and the vast majority (77.2 percent) of restaurant workers have at least a high school degree. However, restaurant workers are less likely to have a high school degree than workers in other industries; slightly over one in five restaurant workers (22.8 percent) do not have a high school degree, compared with 8.1 percent of workers in other industries. Most restaurant workers (57.3 percent) are at least 25 years old; however, this is a lower share than in other industries, where 88.4 percent are at least 25. Finally, union coverage is very minimal in the restaurant industry, with only 1.8 percent of workers covered by a union contract, compared with 13.3 percent of workers outside the restaurant industry. 3

Table 3 provides demographic breakdowns within the restaurant occupations identified in Table 1. One thing that immediately becomes apparent is that occupations within the restaurant industry are extremely gendered. Women are much more likely than men to be cashiers/counter attendants, hosts, and wait staff, and much less likely to be dishwashers, cooks, and chefs/head cooks. There are also very strong racial and ethnic concentrations within the industry. Blacks are disproportionately likely to be cashiers/counter attendants, the lowest-paid occupation. Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be dishwashers, dining room attendants, and cooks, also relatively low-paid occupations. Asians are disproportionately likely to be chefs/head cooks. White non-Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be hosts/hostesses, wait staff, bartenders, and managers, which tend to be more highly paid occupations within the industry. See Bendick et al. (2010), Jayaraman (2013), and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (2012) for more on race and gender inequity in the restaurant industry.

Demographic characteristics of restaurant industry workers, by occupation, 2014

Note: To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata.

Source:  EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata

Unsurprisingly, younger workers are concentrated in the low-paid occupations; they are more likely to be cashiers/counter attendants and hosts/hostesses, and are less likely to be chefs, bartenders, and managers. Unionization rates are extremely low in all restaurant occupations.

Restaurant workers receive very low pay

Figure B shows median real hourly wages since 2000 for restaurant workers and all workers combined. One of the striking features of Figure B is that among both restaurant workers and all workers, wages have been largely stagnant over this entire period. For more on longer-run wage stagnation for most workers, see Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge (Bivens et al. 2014). Figure B also illustrates the large disparity between the hourly wages of restaurant workers and workers overall. The rest of this section investigates the disparity in wages between restaurant workers and workers in other industries.

Median hourly wages of restaurant workers and overall, 2000–2013

Table 4 shows median hourly wages of restaurant workers and other workers, both overall and for various demographic groups. The typical restaurant worker makes $10.00 an hour, including tips. Outside of the restaurant industry, the typical worker makes $18.00 an hour. This means that wages are more than 40 percent lower in the restaurant industry than in other industries.

Median real hourly wages, restaurant industry workers versus other workers, overall and by demographic group, 2014

Looking by demographic, we find that women within the restaurant industry typically earn $9.50 per hour, compared with $10.15 for men. Naturalized U.S. citizens make up a very small share of restaurant workers (5.9 percent, as shown in Table 2), but they have the highest median wage in breakdowns of restaurant workers by nativity, at $11.16. U.S.-born workers and non-naturalized immigrants in the restaurant industry have a median wage of $9.86 and $9.90, respectively. Blacks and Hispanics are the racial/ethnic groups typically paid the least among restaurant workers, with median wages of $9.14 and $9.67, respectively. Unsurprisingly, older workers and workers with higher levels of education typically earn higher wages than younger workers and workers with lower levels of education. Within the restaurant industry, workers covered by a union contract make almost 25 percent more than workers not covered by a union contract, $12.32 versus $9.92.

Table 5 shows median hourly wages within restaurant occupations, both overall and for various demographic groups. There are large disparities in wages among different restaurant occupations, but even the highest-paid restaurant occupation, managers, still has a typical wage ($15.42 an hour) that is lower than the typical wage for workers outside the restaurant industry ($18.00).

Median real hourly wages of restaurant workers, by occupation and demographic group, 2014

** Indicates limited sample size

Note: To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata. Wage data include tips.

Women make less than men in every restaurant occupation except for dining room attendants/bartender helpers, where they make roughly the same. What this shows is that women’s lower wages within the restaurant industry are not just due to the fact that they are in different occupations than men, as they make less within occupations. We see similar dynamics when looking by race/ethnicity, education, and age. Hispanics tend to make similar or slightly higher wages than white non-Hispanics in the lowest-wage occupations (occupations where the median wage is less than $10), but white non-Hispanics make more than Hispanics in most higher-wage occupations, including wait staff, first-line supervisors, head cooks, and managers. White non-Hispanics make more than blacks within the higher-wage occupations, i.e., among waitstaff, first-line supervisors, and managers. With few exceptions, within each occupation workers with higher levels of education make more than workers with lower levels of education, and older workers make more than younger workers. And within occupations, unionized workers typically make substantially more than nonunionized workers. For example, unionized food prep workers make 14.3 percent more than non-unionized food prep workers, unionized cooks make 29.9 percent more than non-unionized cooks, and unionized wait staff make 16.9 percent more than non-unionized waitstaff.

The wage penalty of restaurant work

Figure B and Table 4 show that restaurant workers have substantially lower hourly wages than workers in other industries. However, Table 2 shows that restaurant workers are more likely to fall into demographic groups that have lower wages on average (e.g., women, non-naturalized immigrants, those with a high school degree or less, racial and ethnic minorities, and young workers). In order to ascertain the true “penalty” of holding a restaurant job—the difference between the wages a restaurant worker receives and what she would get if she worked in another industry—it is important to account for the fact that restaurant workers have a different demographic profile than workers in other jobs. We thus turn to an analysis that controls for differences in demographics between restaurant workers and other workers. 4 In particular, this analysis controls for gender, nativity, citizenship, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, age, marital status, urbanicity, and region of the country. The results of this analysis provide not the raw difference in hourly wages between restaurant workers and other workers, but the difference between the hourly wages earned by a restaurant worker and those earned by a demographically similar worker in another industry. This is the “wage penalty” of restaurant work.

Table 6 presents the results. As noted previously, the typical restaurant worker makes $10.00 an hour, which is 44.5 percent less than the $18.00 an hour typical workers make outside of the restaurant industry. However, workers outside of the restaurant industry who are demographically similar to restaurant workers earn $12.07 per hour. That latter figure provides a better measure of what restaurant workers would earn if they worked outside the restaurant industry—namely, over $2 per hour more than what restaurant workers actually earn. That is the “wage penalty” of working within the restaurant industry. Percentage-wise, it is 17.2 percent.

Wage penalty of restaurant work, overall and by demographic group, 2014

Note:  The wage penalty is the difference between the hourly wages earned by a restaurant industry worker and those earned by a demographically similar worker in another industry. To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata. Hourly wages include tips.

* See endnote four for methodology.

All groups face extreme wage penalties for restaurant work, with the smallest penalty being for workers without a high school degree, who “only” make 10.9 percent less in restaurant work than similar workers earn in other industries. The wage penalty for restaurant work is higher for men than women, for whites than for racial and ethnic minorities, for older workers than younger workers, and for workers with higher levels of education than workers with lower levels of education. This is due to the fact that these workers (men, white non-Hispanics, older workers, and workers with higher levels of education) are more likely to be able to secure higher wages in other industries. Thus, despite having higher wages than other workers within the restaurant industry, they face the largest discrepancy between what they make in the restaurant industry and what they could likely make outside the industry.

Many restaurant workers do not have incomes high enough to make ends meet

The very low wages typically received in restaurants means restaurant workers are much more likely to live in poverty or near-poverty than workers in other industries. When looking at these measures, it is important to note that poverty researchers generally do not consider the poverty threshold to be a good measure of what it takes to make ends meet, in part because the poverty threshold was set in the 1960s and has not evolved to reflect changing shares of spending on various necessities by low-income families. Due to such limitations, the “twice-poverty” rate—the share of people whose income is below twice the official poverty line—is often used as a more meaningful metric for determining what share of workers do not earn enough to make ends meet. For reference, in 2013, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $23,836, and the twice-poverty threshold was $47,672.

Table 7 shows poverty and twice-poverty rates for restaurant workers and other workers, both overall and for various demographic groups. One in six restaurant workers, or 16.7 percent, live below the official poverty line. The poverty rate for workers outside the restaurant industry is more than 10 percentage points lower, at 6.3 percent. More than two in five restaurant workers (43.1 percent) live below twice the poverty line, more than twice the 19.9 percent share outside the restaurant industry.

Poverty rates of restaurant workers versus other workers, overall and by demographic group, 2014

Note: For reference, in 2013 the poverty threshold for a family of four was $23,836, and the twice-poverty threshold was $47,672. To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata.

Looking by demographic group, more than 45 percent (45.9 percent) of women who work in restaurants live below twice the poverty line, compared with 40.0 percent of men. Among all the demographic groups in Table 7, non-naturalized immigrants in the restaurant industry are the most likely to be poor or near-poor, with 59.3 percent living below twice the poverty line. Blacks and Hispanics within the restaurant industry are also very likely to be poor or near-poor, with 55.6 percent and 56.5 percent living below twice the poverty line, respectively. Workers with higher levels of education are less likely to be poor or near-poor. Younger workers (under age 25) and “prime-age” workers (age 25–54) in the restaurant industry are both highly likely to be poor or near-poor, with 41.1 percent and 46.5 percent, respectively, living below twice the poverty line. Among restaurant workers, poverty rates are significantly lower among workers in unions. While 43.1 percent of non-unionized restaurant workers live below twice the poverty line, the share drops to 30.3 percent for unionized restaurant workers.

Table 8 shows poverty and twice-poverty rates for restaurant occupations. There are large disparities, but even workers in the most highly compensated jobs in the restaurant industry still have high poverty and twice-poverty rates. Managers in the restaurant industry are the least likely to be poor or near-poor, with 22.2 percent living below twice the poverty line, which is still higher than the 19.9 percent twice-poverty rate outside the restaurant industry. More than 50 percent of dishwashers, food preparation workers, and cooks live below twice the poverty line. Cashiers/counter attendants are also very likely to be poor or near-poor, as are workers in the largest restaurant industry occupation, waiters and waitresses. Nearly one in five waiters and waitresses (18.4 percent) live below the official poverty line, and nearly half (46.2 percent) live below twice the poverty line. For a more in-depth discussion of poverty rates of tipped workers, see Allegretto and Cooper (2014).

Poverty rates within restaurant occupations, 2014

Note:  For reference, in 2013 the poverty threshold for a family of four was $23,836, and the twice-poverty threshold was $47,672. To ensure sufficient sample sizes, this table draws from pooled 2011Q3–2014Q2 microdata.

Very few restaurant workers receive fringe benefits

The preceding analysis shows that the wages of restaurant workers are substantially lower than the wages of workers in other industries, and that many restaurant workers live in poverty or near poverty. We now turn to a comparison of the fringe benefits received by restaurant workers and those received by other workers. Table 9 shows the share of workers who receive health insurance from their job, along with the share of workers who have a pension plan at their job. 5 Just 14.4 percent of restaurant workers receive health insurance from their employer, compared with roughly half (48.7 percent) of other workers. And only 8.4 percent of restaurant workers have a pension plan at their job, one-fifth the rate of pension coverage outside the restaurant industry, 41.8 percent.

Employer-provided health insurance and pension coverage rates, restaurant workers versus other workers, overall and by demographic group, 2014

Within all demographic groups, restaurant workers are significantly less likely to have either type of benefit than workers outside the restaurant industry. Within the restaurant industry, women, non-naturalized immigrants, Hispanics, workers with low levels of education, and workers under age 25 are the groups least likely to have either type of benefit. Among restaurant workers, benefit rates are significantly higher among workers in unions. While 14.3 percent and 8.3 percent of non-union restaurant workers have health insurance and pension coverage from their job, respectively, 41.9 percent and 31.6 percent of unionized restaurant workers have health insurance and pension coverage from their job, respectively.

Table 10 shows that there is significant inequality in benefit coverage within restaurant occupations, but that even the most highly compensated jobs within the restaurant industry still have low levels of benefit coverage. Managers in the restaurant industry have the highest benefit coverage—35.6 percent have employer-provided health insurance and 20.3 percent have pension coverage—but that is still substantially lower than the benefit coverage outside the restaurant industry, where 48.7 percent have employer-provided health insurance and 41.8 percent have pension coverage. Less than 10 percent of cashiers/counter attendants, dishwashers, food prep workers, hosts/hostesses, dining room attendants, and waitstaff receive employer-provided health insurance, and less than 5 percent of cashiers/counter attendants, dishwashers, hosts/hostesses, dining room attendants, and waitstaff have a pension plan at their work.

Employer-provided health insurance and pension coverage rates within restaurant occupations, 2014

Conclusion: What should be done to improve restaurant jobs

This paper has documented the very low compensation received by restaurant workers—compensation that leaves many restaurant workers either poor or near-poor. The quality of restaurant jobs can be improved by reforming or enacting policies to give restaurant workers more bargaining power and raise their wages. This is what can be done:

• Increase the minimum wage and eliminate the tipped minimum wage. At the national level, the minimum wage should be substantially increased—to at least $10.10, as proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Higher-wage states and localities should further increase their minimum wage. The tipped minimum wage (a “subminimum wage” for workers who customarily and regularly receive tips) should be eliminated everywhere, so that tipped workers receive the same minimum wage as other workers. This is particularly important for women in the restaurant industry, who are disproportionately represented in occupations where tips make up a large share of earnings, namely waitstaff and bartenders. For more on why it’s time to give tipped workers the regular minimum wage, see Allegretto and Cooper (2014) .
• Increase the salary threshold below which workers are automatically covered by the overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act to $984 per week . To ensure the basic, family-friendly right to either a limited workweek or to extra pay for overtime, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that workers covered by FLSA overtime provisions be paid at least “time-and-a-half,” or 1.5 times their regular pay rate, for each hour of work per week beyond 40 hours. The salary threshold above which managerial and professional workers can be excluded from the overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act is $455. This threshold is not indexed to inflation, so its real value erodes each year, and it has been increased only once since 1975. The current threshold translates into annual earnings of $23,660 for someone who works year-round, which is currently less than the poverty threshold for a family of four. The threshold should be adjusted to $984 per week, which is simply the 1975 threshold adjusted for inflation. Half  (50.5 percent) of full-time, salaried managers and first-line supervisors within the restaurant industry earn between $455 and $984 per week, which means they aren’t currently automatically eligible for overtime protections but would be automatically covered if the threshold were increased to $984.
• Pass comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. According to 2008 data from the Pew Hispanic Center, there is a high concentration of unauthorized immigrants in many occupations in the restaurant industry. For example, they estimate that 28 percent of dishwashers, 20 percent of chefs and head cooks, and 19 percent of cooks are undocumented immigrants (Passel and Cohn 2009). Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrant workers. This would raise their wages and working conditions by making them less vulnerable to exploitation. Through positive “spillover” effects, this could also boost the wages of other workers—either authorized immigrant workers or native-born workers—who do the same jobs that unauthorized immigrants do.
• Pass legislation requiring all employers to provide paid sick days to their employees. This is especially important in food preparation and serving occupations, where access to paid sick time is low, but the risk of spreading foodborne illnesses (such as salmonella and norovirus) is high (JEC 2010).
• Combat “just-in-time” scheduling.   Low-wage service workers are increasingly subject to employers’ “just-in-time” scheduling practices, an enormously harmful trend where employers give workers little advance notice of their schedules, call workers into work during nonscheduled times to meet unexpected customer demand, and send workers home early when business is slow. Policymakers should pass laws that require minimum guaranteed hours per pay period and require compensation for a minimum number of hours when workers are called into work or sent home from work unexpectedly.
• Update labor law and protect workers’ right to organize.   Data in Tables 4, 5, 7, and 9 show the importance of unions to higher wages and benefits. Labor law, however, has not kept pace with dramatically increased employer aggressiveness in fighting unions, which has resulted in a growing wedge between workers’ desire to organize and bargain collectively and their ability to do so. The section of the National Labor Relations Act that authorizes “right-to-work” laws should be repealed, significant penalties should be legislated for unfair labor practice violations, and the National Labor Relations Board should make its election process more efficient by eliminating wasteful waiting periods (Eisenbrey 2014).
• Crack down on “wage theft.”   Wage theft is when employers do not pay workers for the work they have done, a practice rampant in the low-wage labor market, including the restaurant industry. Employers steal billions of dollars from their employees each year by working them off the clock, failing to pay the minimum wage, and by not paying the overtime pay they have a right to receive. Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been victims of wage theft, but the government resources to help them recover their lost wages are scant and largely ineffective (Bernhardt et al. 2009).
• The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates until real wages are growing at the same pace as productivity.  In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the labor market remains depressed, with unemployed workers vastly outnumbering job openings in every major sector. The weak labor market of the last seven years has severely depressed wages (Bivens et al. 2014). Though the labor market is healing, it has a long way to go, and the Federal Reserve Board should not raise interest rates until wages are growing at at least a 3.5 percent rate. This will help ensure that monetary policy continues to support the labor market, which in turn will benefit the job prospects and wage growth of workers—particularly low-wage workers, such as those employed in restaurants.

— This report was made possible by generous support from the Berger-Marks Foundation . For more information and news on working women and union organizing, visit the Berger-Marks Foundation website at http://www.bergermarks.org .

About the author

Heidi Shierholz joined the Economic Policy Institute as an economist in 2007. She has researched and spoken widely on the economy and economic policy as it affects middle- and low-income families, especially in regards to employment, unemployment, labor force participation, compensation, income and wealth inequality, young workers, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage. Shierholz is a coauthor of  The State of Working America, 12th Edition,  is a frequent contributor to broadcast and radio news outlets, is regularly quoted in print and online media outlets, and has repeatedly been called to testify in Congress on labor market issues. Prior to joining EPI, Shierholz worked as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

1. Throughout this paper, “food preparation workers” and “combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food” are combined into one category, “food preparation workers.”

2. In particular, hourly wages are the hourly earnings of wage and salary workers, including any tips, overtime pay, and commissions for both hourly and non-hourly workers. The hourly wage measure was created using the “hybrid” approach described in Schmitt (2003, 9–13).

3. Throughout this paper, union coverage is defined as workers who are either a member of a labor union or association, or are covered by a union contract.

4. We use the reweighting approach developed in Dinardo, Fortin, and Lemieux (1996) to determine median hourly wages outside of the restaurant industry for workers similar to restaurant workers. In particular, we reweight workers who are not in the restaurant industry so that they have, on average, similar characteristics—namely, gender, nativity, citizenship, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, age, marital status, urbanicity, and region of the country—to those in the restaurant industry.

5. Throughout this paper, “employer-provided health insurance coverage” refers to workers who are included in an employer group health plan from their employer, where the employer helps pay for at least some portion of the plan. “Employer-provided pension coverage” refers to workers who are included in a pension or other type of retirement plan (other than Social Security) from their employer.

Allegretto, Sylvia, and David Cooper. 2014. Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change: Why It’s Time to Give Tipped Workers the Regular Minimum Wage. Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper No. 379. http://www.epi.org/publication/waiting-for-change-tipped-minimum-wage/

Bendick Jr., Marc, Rekha Eanni Rodriguez, and Sarumathi Jayaraman. 2010. “Employment Discrimination in Upscale Restaurants: Evidence from Matched Pair Testing.” The Social Science Journal , vol. 47, no. 4, 802–818.

Bernhardt, Annette, Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore, Douglas D. Heckathorn, Mirabai Auer, and James DeFilippis. 2009. Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities. National Employment and Law Project. http://www.nelp.org/page/-/brokenlaws/BrokenLawsReport2009.pdf?nocdn=1

Bivens, Josh, Elise Gould, Lawrence Mishel, and Heidi Shierholz. 2014. Raising America’s Pay : Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge. Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper No. 378. http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/

Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor) Current Employment Statistics program. Various years. Employment, Hours and Earnings—National [database]. http://www.bls.gov/ces/#data

Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata. Various years. Survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics [machine-readable microdata file]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.bls.census.gov/cps_ftp.html#cpsbasic

DiNardo, John, Nicole M Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux. 1996. “Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach.” Econometrica, vol. 64, no.5, 1001–1044.

Eisenbrey, Ross. 2014. Improving the Quality of Jobs Through Better Labor Standards . Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Path to Full Employment Initiative . http://www.pathtofullemployment.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/eisenbrey.pdf

Jayaraman, Saru. 2013. Behind the Kitchen Door. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Kitchen-Door-Saru-Jayaraman/dp/0801451728

Joint Economic Committee (JEC). 2010. Expanding Access to Paid Sick Leave: The Impact of the Healthy Families Act on America’s Workers. http://jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=abf8aca7-6b94-4152-b720-2d8d04b81ed6

Passel, Jeffrey, and D’Vera Cohn. 2009. A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States. Pew Research Center: Pew Hispanic Center. http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/reports/107.pdf

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC). 2012. Tipped Over the Edge: Gender Inequity in the Restaurant Industry . http://rocunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ROC_GenderInequity_F1-1.pdf

Schmitt, John. 2003. Creating a Consistent Hourly Wage Series from the Current Population Survey’s Outgoing Rotation Group, 1979-2002 . Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://ceprdata.org/wp-content/cps/CEPR_ORG_Wages.pdf

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Trends affecting the restaurant industry in 2022.

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Like many industries, COVID 19 greatly affected the restaurant industry. Since it was unable to operate normally for an extended period due to the lockdown and other restrictions imposed by the government, the industry faced a significant setback in 2020 that, for many, continued into 2021.

Lasting Restaurant Industry Trends in 2022

As we are coming out of the most significant pandemic in generations, restaurant owners still face many challenges operating their businesses. That said, I believe the most effective & positive trend in the industry is how restaurants of all sizes now embrace technology. Much of the technology, such as apps, third-party ordering, and direct online ordering, has been used for several years. Still, it took Covid 19 to force the industry to exploit its use to a fuller extent. This adaptability of technology is paving the way for recovery and growth in 2022. By the end of 2022, the food industry expects to reach $899 billion in sales.

Home Delivery System

Another trend carrying into 2022 is restaurant delivery. Food delivery services became immensely important but brought unique challenges. Trust of the food handling process, delivery methods, and demand for contactless transactions became front and center for those using restaurants for home delivery. Remembering that more than 900,000 people died in the U.S. makes the ongoing situation a long-term consideration for food service workers, field workers, and other employees related to the field.

Labor Shortage

From servers to cooks, and other restaurant workers to agriculture and the meatpacking production workforce, labor shortages still significantly affect the industry and the cost associated with running a restaurant—the number of employees willing to work is such a critical situation that many restaurants are forced to operate with shorter hours and fewer days. In addition, continuing trucker shortages and delays in delivery have created congestion in restaurants' delivery processes, causing some restaurants to modify their menu.

Supply Chain and Food Supply

Supply chain issues also raised multiple problems for restaurant owners, from fresh produce to meats to paper products such as coffee cups, straws, and takeaway containers. As a result, restaurant owners continue to experience shortages and increasing prices as we approach the second quarter of 2022.

Taylor Morabito, the owner of New York's famed Friend of a Farmer restaurant, said, "While labor shortages have begun to improve, I think the biggest challenge the industry currently faces is the drastic increase in food cost, specifically within the world of poultry, meat & fish.

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Products that used to cost $11 or $12 a pound have doubled &, in some cases, nearly tripled in price. Unfortunately, with the current supply chain issues & rising inflation, I believe that restaurant owners & management will be navigating around this particular challenge for quite some time."

According to the National Restaurant Association, Wholesale food costs were up 7.9 percent in 2021, and hourly labor costs were up 8.6 percent for the year.

"Vaccinated Only" Restrictions Lifted

The "No Vax, No Entry" restrictions are changing in major cities like New York. The easing of regulations resulting from vaccinations worldwide and people following social protocols has finally started to move the restaurant business towards the pre-pandemic normal.

Over 68% of the American population has received complete vaccination. The fact is; the vaccinations led the government to lift restrictions allowing people to sit and enjoy meals in a pre-pandemic style.

Digital Work Models

The past two years have completely changed the way people think and function. The pandemic has also altered people's expectations of the restaurant business. With contactless payment methods and online orders, people have become more dependent on technology than before. To survive during the pandemic and shutdowns, restaurants offered enhanced discounts as many customers shifted to online or app ordering. However, in 2022, many customers still expect restaurants to continue discounting, extra reward incentives, and other programs to connect to their favorite eateries.

Digitalization has helped all types of industries in different ways. Like other industries, the food industry gained numerous benefits by shifting to a digital working model. It helped them reduce costs and increase performance. With restaurant workers quitting jobs in significant numbers and business owners struggling to retain them, digital technology became helpful with recruiting, retention, and reducing the number of employees required to service the guest.

Regarding the data-driven trends in the industry, Fred Kirvan, the founder of Kirvan Consulting, a New Jersey based restaurant consulting firm, stated, "Now more than ever, it's vital that you analyze the data available to ensure your business is fully optimized. As an example, valuable information exists within your point of sale to help you determine what changes could streamline your menu offerings. Streamlining your menu offering could result in improved profitability, the need for less staff, and fewer items from your distributor, so you're using more of what you do use. But, so often, I find that business owners aren't using the data to drive the decisions that could help them navigate these challenging times."

The Restaurant Industry Impacts America's GDP

Since the restaurant industry contributes significantly to America's economy, one cannot ignore its difficulties for the past two years. Unfortunately, the food industry is still working to recover the losses. Still, unless there is a recurrence of Covid, restaurant sales in 2022 are trending in a very positive direction.

The United States Census report stated that the ongoing pandemic had damaged the sales of restaurants and bars up to $280 billion. Even though the restaurants, eateries, and bars managed to follow all protocols, the various mandates negatively impacted the entire food industry's economy. Therefore, restaurateurs look to 2022 as the turnaround year.

Technology became a crucial answer in addressing issues restaurants faced during the pandemic. The tech-savviest operators shifted their menu online and increased delivery, which allowed them to stay open. However, to continue the positive trend in 2022, we need to address inflation, supply chain, and labor issues. Overall the first quarter of 2022 is proving to trend in the right direction, demonstrating the resiliency of our industry.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Personal Experience — Reflecting on My Experience Working in a Restaurant

Reflecting on My Experience Working in a Restaurant

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Published: Sep 1, 2023

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Lessons in adaptability, overcoming challenges, cultivating a strong work ethic, conclusion: a recipe for personal growth.

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The Restaurant Revolution Has Begun

By Anthony Strong

Mr. Strong is the chef and owner of Pasta Supply Co.

Like so many other chefs, I was drawn to the restaurant business because it is exciting. I ignored its dysfunction and accepted that I’d forgo higher education, financial stability and holidays with family in order to share my craft with others.

All it took was a pandemic, an enormous wave of inflation and an impossibly tight job market to force me and many others to burrow to the very core of what a restaurant does for its guests, workers and community and redefine it from the ground up.

This is the silver lining of the pandemic and the never-ending economic uncertainty that has ensued: More places are finally figuring out how to make this business an actual business .

The start of my story is a typical one. I gleefully started skipping school to work in kitchens at 15, then shipped off to New York to experience all kinds of “character building” abuse, and by my early 30s, I had made it in San Francisco as an executive chef … which meant 80-hour workweeks while barely scraping by.

I eventually struck out on my own, deciding to play it safe by opening a restaurant with a normal business model. And as is usually the case, normal sucked . Our 80 seats were full every night, employing great folks and serving great food and cocktails — and sweating our $11,000 rent and roughly $90,000 payroll each month. Structurally, our mission to price affordably had landed us in the death zone: full service yet unable to charge fine-dining prices. The anxiety was weapons grade.

The standard model for a business almost all of us engage with regularly, the one we frequently post our own reviews about , has barely worked for a majority of the more than 12 million people it employs. The restaurant industry accounts for some 4 percent of the G.D.P. in the United States but has been stuck in a deeply flawed business model with sadly outdated practices. The pandemic only brought this reality to the center of the plate and made it something we couldn’t push aside anymore.

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The restaurant of the future: KFC builds the first restaurant in the world where the number of contact points is minimized

KFC’s ‘restaurant of the future’ may begin a new chapter in the digital development of the Russian restaurant industry

June 10th, 2020, Moscow – In response to the new challenges of the time, KFC is preparing to open its first ‘restaurant of the future’ in the world – a restaurant based on the concept of minimizing all possible indoor contacts. Contactless service is made possible by switching the traditional cash desks with cashiers into digital kiosks, as well as through the use of a new contactless automated zone for picking up orders and a biometric identification system for the payment and receipt of orders. The new restaurant will also become an incubator of innovative ideas and digital solutions, the most successful of which will be implemented in other KFC restaurants in Russia, thus transforming it completely.

The restaurant, located near the Butyrskaya metro station in Moscow, is operationally ready and will be able to start receiving guests as soon as the restrictions on public catering restaurants are lifted.

Pic 1. An automated order issuing system

Ordering dishes

Pic 2. The order hall and beverage station

All orders in the new restaurant will be made through digital kiosks. To simplify and speed up the procedure, KFC has additionally implemented a biometric identification system in every device in the restaurant. The system converts a face image of the customer into an individual digital code and makes it possible for the customer, once registered, to not only eliminate the need for a card or mobile phone to pay for orders during every subsequent visit to KFC, but also to order their favourite dishes faster than ever, as the system remembers and suggests the order during future visits. The guests can also place an order without registration.

The restaurant is equipped with a Click & Collect function when a guest places an order via the mobile app and picks it up at a specified time from the corresponding cell in the restaurant.

In order to improve safety and security inside the restaurant, the restaurant minimized cash circulation, so the guests can choose between a biometric identification system, a credit card or a phone which supports Apple Pay or Android Pay technologies. If a customer requires help, they can contact a hostess or call the restaurant Manager via a special SOS kiosk. Those who wish to pay in cash can still do it using a special terminal.

Pic 3. Self-service kiosks with a biometric identification system for persons with reduced mobility

Preparing and delivering the order

Pic 4. A special Robo-hand puts the order into a cell

Pic 5. A visitor picks up an order from the cell

Pic 6. Contactless automated zone for picking up orders

The kitchen in the "restaurant of the future" is partly open, allowing guests to watch the preparation process of their order as it is being assembled and transported along the conveyor belt. A special Robo-hand then moves the order into a cell, where it is stored for no longer than 10 minutes. The cell opens automatically with the help of the face recognition system, which is also installed in automatic hot drink filling machines. Thus, the first hands that touch the freshly prepared chicken are the guest's own hands.

The restaurant will feature a full KFC menu with the exception of ice cream in a cone, beer, and Chef lemonade.

The digital transformation of the largest player in the fast-food industry in Russia could impact the entire industry, contributing to its further development in line with modern digital trends.

“The digital transformation of KFC in Russia has been going on for the past few years. We implement innovations not only in our internal business processes but also work to make ordering meals directly in the restaurant and outside even more convenient and fast for millions of KFC chicken lovers. Together with our guests we will test the most advanced and interesting ideas and decide which of them will be implemented in other restaurants of the chain, thus transforming it as a whole,” said Raisa Polyakova, KFC's CEO in Russia and CIS. “In addition, our ‘restaurant of the future’ will serve as a response to the challenges of the new reality, where ensuring security and reducing the number of contacts become the key to success and a guarantee of maintaining business stability. ”

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the restaurant of the future, as well all of the chain’s 930 restaurants, will implement increased sanitary and hygiene measures to ensure the safety of guests and employees. Special markings will be placed on the floor in the digital kiosks area to help remind visitors to keep a social distance. Special signs will also be placed in the common areas of the restaurant and on the chairs, reminding visitors to keep a distance of 1.5 meters and offering them any other available space. Tables will be disinfected after each guest leaves, and, every 30 minutes, self-service kiosks and other surfaces that are often touched by guests. Guests of the restaurant can also use antibacterial soap in the bathrooms and disinfect their hands with a sanitizer.

KFC, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM.), is a global chicken restaurant brand with a rich, decades-long history of success and innovation. It all started with one cook, Colonel Harland Sanders, who created a finger lickin’ good recipe more than 75 years ago, a list of secret herbs and spices scratched out on the back of the door to his kitchen. Today we still follow his formula for success, with real cooks breading and freshly preparing our delicious chicken by hand in more than 23,000 restaurants in 140 countries and territories around the world. For more information, visit www.kfc.ru

For media inquiries: [email protected]

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