The restaurant and food service industry is expected to continue to grow in 2024. Experts predict that it’s going to reach a profit of $1 trillion for the first time and create 200,000 job positions, pushing the total number of industry workers to almost 16 million people. 

However, such impressive growth comes with a price, unfortunately, mostly for employees. And the high turnover in the food industry proves this. Data shows a staggering rise in this rate of around 75% - a number that has been growing since the pandemic. This percentage is more than one and a half times higher compared to other sectors. 

Because of such high turnover, restaurant owners said that recruiting and retaining employees were among their top business challenges in 2023.

Chances are, you’re now wondering why so many workers are leaving positions in this sector. Well, ironically, one of the main reasons is that businesses are short-staffed. 

A 2022 survey has found that 90% of food service employees have worked overtime, double shifts, or extra ones. Of those, 75% said they had to do so because of a lack of staff.

Bruce Tracey, a professor of HR management at Cornell, commented on workers' dissatisfaction with the industry, saying, “Hospitality jobs, especially front-line, are notoriously known for low-wage, low-skill kinds of work — it’s associated with working conditions that are not necessarily conducive to adequate life-work balance.”

Another factor contributing to high turnover is low pay. The effort to provide higher wages is there. However, it doesn’t seem to be enough. In the last few years, wages have driven up by 23%, and at the end of 2022, the minimum hourly pay was $17.30, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Unpredictable hours also add to the fact that people are leaving. A 2021 report found that 64% of workers received their schedule with less than two weeks' notice, more than a third had one week of heads-up, and a quarter said they had only 72 hours’ notice.

“For an hourly worker, their pay is determined not just by their wage, but by the number of hours,” Kristen Harknett, co-founder of The Shift Project, comments. “You can’t create better conditions for workers by only having the one side of the equation.” 

Additional challenges for restaurant industry workers include poor communication, physically demanding tasks, and difficult customers.

What can be done to improve the situation for staff is to increase technology in the workplace, which can take orders and payments and even bring food to customers. This way, the demanding workload is not as challenging for real human beings. 

John Quinn, one of the heads of Bank of America also recommends offering workers additional employee benefits. “Even if those benefits introduce some incremental day-to-day operating expenses, the reduction in employee churn rates can give owners a very compelling and financially beneficial reason to invest in benefits for their employees,” he says.

Extra suggestions that restaurant owners may want to consider include a lifestyle spending account, tuition reimbursement, or health savings account. “Another valued benefit is a dependent care flexible spending account to allow workers to pay, using pre-tax dollars, for daycare, preschool summer camp, before- or after-school programs, or adult care,” adds Quinn.

Trying to foster a healthy workplace culture is very important too. Establishing restaurant values, and communicating standards and expectations allows everyone to be on the same page and achieve shared goals. Allowing people to make mistakes and kindly approaching them is also crucial, as it boosts morale. Meanwhile, training to detect burnout, showing appreciation, and giving feedback helps to develop sustainable careers in which people aren’t overworked and unhappy.