Despite nearly one-third of hospitality workers losing their jobs during the pandemic, many reports indicate workers don’t seem to be returning to the hospitality industry.

Without sufficiently trained labor to fill in the gaps in hospitality establishments like travel, casinos, cruise ships, restaurants, tourism, and hotels, the entire industry could suffer from a global shortage of qualified workers, but what does this mean?

Causes for Hospitality Industry Labor Shortages

There are many different variables to consider that impact the hospitality industry and the loss of experienced workers.

A major factor is wages. In working roles where tips are a significant source of pay, such as with restaurants, employees may leave to find higher-paying jobs with consistent paychecks.

Consider, too, how quickly technology has become part of our daily lives, including our jobs. In some industries, like hotels, older employees may be forced out if they are not familiar with new technology.

Another variable includes an aging workforce with years’ worth of skills opting to retire from the hospitality industry.

Temporary Actions to Seal the Gap

While some hotels and other industries are trying to fill the gap with technology, for example, using cooking technology like sous vide and pre-portioned vacuum-sealed meals, others are assigning extra duties to available employees.

Still, these are stopgap measures that can only go so far. The best solution is training the new workforce appropriately.

There has always been a high turnover rate in the hospitality industry due to demands like working during holidays, nights, and weekends, difficult or angry customers, and high-paced work settings. However, we see the industry’s current struggle to fill essential roles that provide service and amenities to customers.

The Effects of Labor Shortage on Hospitality

While it’s difficult to predict the future, it’s highly likely that luxury and high-end hotels, restaurants, and services are on the verge of experiencing a monumental change. For example, over the next ten years, hotel rooms might decrease their number of rooms but increase in size to cater to the 1%. This will likely result in extremely expensive and sophisticated hotels, with fewer value-oriented hotels for those with a limited budget.

Still, this depends on a rejuvenated workforce, which likely might rely on the reformation of immigration laws. The hospitality industry is experiencing a record scarcity of employees, mostly due a drop in foreign-born laborers (source: Immigrants, the Economy and the COVID-19 Outbreak).

Guests might find themselves in long lines waiting for front desk assistance, room service, and more. Many hospitality executives are now calling for immigration reform to resolve these issues.

 

The Value of Customer Service Skills

Customer service skills are integral when offering a positive restaurant guest experience. These often include interacting with customers, maintaining a positive and cheerful attitude, and multitasking.

This is why it’s important to have a robust training program that includes standard operating procedures, accountability checklists, and proven methods in place, to enhance the capability of your staff. Our training platform—Synergy Sync— can help you with this. It promotes best practices throughout your restaurant, so training is a breeze. It’s also smartly priced, so you don’t have to worry about cost per user! For $350 a month, you get unlimited users per location and a wealth of industry expertise at your fingertips. Fully trained employees often translate into more satisfied employees. There is no better time than NOW to enhance and invest in your current and expanding team through a comprehensive training program.

By: Shane O’Brien, Culinary Consultant

 

Expanding your customer contact is a tried and tested way of not helping your business but responding to a pre and post-Covid landscape’s growing demand.

How can you be more accessible with changing customer behavior?

Church’s Chicken has developed a method with eye-popping results. 85% of their guests interact with the company using their mobile device, so they poured resources into beefing up their digital storefront.

 

“A new website, channel strategy, and mobile welcomer (location finder) were rolled out to help guests go from first impression to desired action within three clicks.”

Return business is an elusive dynamic with many factors affecting why guests return. But having an appealing, fun, and ultimately easy-to-use digital experience can vastly improve your chances. Dictating the ease of use within digital interactions is highly effective at driving return business.

In addition to their freshly overhauled web experience, Church’s took steps to develop their mobile app and email platform.

Along with a loyalty program upgrade, Church’s “launched a new customer database in order to create more personalized and dynamic communications.”

Important to note that in addition to all of the benefits that Church’s saw with their digital renaissance, “Church’s saw an uptick in adoption among GenZ and Millennial audiences, particularly following the launch of the new Church’s Chicken Sandwich.”

Digital development can help capture existing guest’s appreciation, but a large portion of the market is already fluent in social media and virtual business experiences, so it’s a win-win.

The word restaurant comes from the French verb restaurer, meaning, “to restore oneself.” As early as 1100 A.D. in China, public eating establishments began to come into existence in densely populated areas. Serving tradesmen who were traveling through the area, eating establishments offered ethnic foods and demonstration plates for patrons to sample before ordering. Waiters would take orders and sing them out to the pot masters in the kitchen and then carry multiple trays to customers with one hand. Even then, eating out could be about entertainment as much as it was about food.

Eating at a restaurant, became popular in America in the 19^th century. With the large influx of people living in New York, the first fine dining establishment in the United States opened in 1837. Delmonico’s, in Manhattan, offered an impressive wine cellar and popular dishes. They became known as the first restaurant in America to use tablecloths and to offer ordering a la carte from their menu. These personal touches added to the dining experience of the time.

The dining experience has much evolved since then with new technology! And today, especially because of Covid, making use of online ordering and delivery through businesses like Uber Eats and DoorDash has protected the restaurant industry. Eliminating touchscreens and manual ordering has improved order accuracy and reduced labor costs.

 

 

Helping with Point-Of-Sale (POS) integration, ItsaCheckmate connects restaurants with over 100 third-party delivery and ordering systems. Restaurant Operators can sign up for this platform which includes menu adjustments, pricing updates, and order flow management.

Digital ordering and payment is here to stay, even for time sensitive orders like ice cream. Handling orders 24/7 Cold Stone Creamery managers can update menus and store information easily on the OLO Dashboard. They have also been able to enjoy higher volume and after-hours support. Ordering through the web, mobile, kiosk, or in-car the digital experience is safe, convenient, and accurate thanks to the technology.

The GoParrot platform automates digital order and delivery while mimicking the restaurant’s brand and marketing. Fonts, logos, colors, and images are “parroted” for the user to order the way the restaurant intends for them to order. This restaurant technology tool also includes cart recommendations, loyalty programs, coupons, and promotions.

Yumpingo, a restaurant intelligence platform, uses real-time customer feedback to develop data analytics for restaurant POS systems. This information is used for operations, product development, and marketing for delivery and pickup.

Analyzing data between the multitudes of digital platforms is of interest to most restaurant operators. Keboola is the platform to use for large scale business comparisons like this. The single-integrated platform uses data from the ever-changing landscape to inform decisions about customer preferences, inventory management, and better staffing and planning.

Although the days of singing waiters may be over, technology has a lot to offer the restaurant process. Our restaurant training program can help streamline training and improve the restaurant experience. For less than a daily cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks you can take control of your business with Synergy Sync.

We all know a warm smile and courtesy go a long way in the hospitality industry. There’s no underestimating the power of person-centric service. But in today’s day and age, customer service is so much more than training your staff best practices. In the restaurant space, guest satisfaction is dependent on a multitude of things, from the speed of service to quality and taste of food. 

You can have the friendliest and most skilled staff on hand, but if the systems you have in place aren’t up to date with consumer expectations and preferences, you won’t score high on the customer satisfaction scale. Luckily, technology for the restaurant industry exists to help operators increase efficiency and visibility. Let’s look at how modern restaurant tech can assist you with elevating the customer experience.

Mobile-ordering and delivery: Convenience is at their fingertips, literally, when people are able to order food online. You can build an app like Dominos or Burger King, and if that’s not in your budget, you can sign up for third-party delivery services like UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub. Make sure to have an area in your restaurant that indicates where to pick up phone and mobile orders, too.

Kiosks: Self-ordering in-storae via kiosks can significantly speed up the ordering process. According to recent research from Tillster, more than 65% of customers said they would visit a restaurant more often if self-service kiosks were available. The benefits not only include shorter wait times but heightened order accuracy, reduced labor costs, more upselling opportunity and of course, improvement of the guest experience. Moe’s Southwest Grill is planning to open all-digital, kiosk only locations in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville, Virginia. Denver restaurant chain, Birdcall, exclusively uses kiosks for ordering at their locations. If kiosks don’t fit your budget, you can offer tablets for table-side ordering—guests will still enjoy a self-service experience.

Loyalty Programs: Sure, punch cards are still around, offering things like one free drink on your 10th purchase. But in 2019 it’s time to time to turn to technology to elevate your loyalty programs and get more people engaged with a great loyalty program to boost customer retention and guest satisfaction. Companies like Upserve, CandyBar and Fivestars offer automated loyalty programs that either connect to a customer’s credit card or phone number, helping to create a more seamless process in rewarding your loyal guests.

Technology will always have a hard time competing with great human customer-service, but when used strategically in conjunction with a well-trained staff, it can greatly enhance your guests’ experience.

 

If you believe AI (artificial intelligence) is limited to just the tech and health sectors, think again! AI has made its mark in the hospitality industry in major ways. Case in point: TGI Fridays—the popular, 53-year-old franchise has recently reported a doubling of sales in its off-premise business in the past year, driven by AI in its marketing model, according to Sherif Mityas, TGI Fridays’ Chief Experience Officer. The “off-premise business” referred to includes activities such as customers ordering food through the TGI Friday’s bot via Instant/Direct Messaging. The company’s AI machineLearning bot works across multiple platforms (think Facebook, Twitter, and Alexa) to present customized experiences and offerings to consumers.  More about TGI Friday’s AI can ­be found here.

Synergy Restaurant Consultants reached out to its community in the hospitality space and asked what technology has been helpful in streamlining and improving operations as well as cost efficiency.

Some insightful feedback was noted:

“OLO which is Online Ordering has helped increase takeout sales by 15%. LSR which is Long Range Systems has improved our service and sped up our thru-put by a minute. Also CTUIT (I would add what this acronym stands for) reporting software has been very helpful with reviewing trends and with labor management.”

Another comment highlighted using AI.

“Artificial intelligence using through KOT (Kitchen Order Ticket) Analysis report for managing steward, feedback for every customer…”

If you need help incorporating restaurant technology that will help increase restaurant sales, please contact us.

Milan is often regarded as the fashion capital of the world. However, every two years, professionals in the hospitality industry flock here to preview innovations in food and beverage. While attending the 2017 HOST show in Milan, Danny and I were able to check out the latest and greatest in restaurant technology and also traverse our way throughout Italy feasting our taste buds in delight.

 

Here at Synergy, we like to call ourselves the “pizza experts,” but that doesn’t mean we aren’t open to different methods of pie-making! To be successful means to have an open mind to new ideas and innovations. This brings me to our exploration of pizza oven technology at the HOST show.

 

Sure, we all know that a delicious crust typically comes out of a wood-fired oven, but… I had an amazing pizza that actually came out of an electric oven! The crust turned out beautifully and of course, the flavor was spot-on. In the spirit of good eats and ideas, I wanted to share all that you need to create a young, non-aged dough that delivers a great tasting and looking pizza.

Ingredients:

• Double O flour
• Water
• Salt
• Fresh Yeast

And by the way, there is NO sugar or oil required.

The moral of the story today? It’s amazing what is possible when you open your mind to exploring new and innovative ideas!

When you think of McDonald’s service (or any fast food restaurant service for that matter), you may envision a drive-thru window or perhaps ordering your food at the counter. Well, McDonald’s is aiming to change that image!

According to Restaurant Business Online, McDonald’s will be expanding kiosk ordering and table service to all of its 14,200 U.S. locations. The touch-screen kiosks are available for meal customization, allowing service to be streamlined through the convenience new technology. It’s clear that McDonald’s is aiming to shake things up, including the addition of craft burgers and new two additional Big Mac sizes.

More below:

E La Carte, a pioneer in pay-at-the-table technology, has just raised $35 million in new venture capital and debt financing. The company’s flagship product, Presto Systems, allows diners to order food and pay their bills from tablets installed at the table and is currently being used at restaurant such as Applebee’s and Genghis Grill.

The benefits of pay-at-the-table technology include:

* Consumers can view menu information as soon as they are seated

* Diners can play games and access other digital entertainment while they wait for their food

* Restaurants can turn tables, on average, 7-10 minutes faster

* The average tab has increased by over 5%

* Wait staff tips have increased by an average of 16%

Given the advantages to both restaurants and consumers, we’re likely to see more of this technology soon. Read more about the new technology here.