Help Wanted! Start Today!

Autonomy, Complexity, and a relationship between Effort and Reward. These are the critical elements needed for your team to engage and compete at their best. And if one of these elements is missing, you will always be searching for staff.

Not that long ago, a cook at even the most rudimentary diner was just that, a cook. They were required to use all their senses to produce something as simple as a chicken salad sandwich. Chicken had to be poached, cooled, the meat pulled then chopped up. Boiling the chicken would toughen the meat and make the subsequent task harder. Seasoning the water with aromatic vegetables, peppercorns, herbs, and salt turns the cooking liquid into a stock that becomes the backbone for chicken soup. Dicing the celery and onions appropriately can be the difference between chicken salad, and celery salad. Seasoning with flaky kosher salt (not table salt), fresh black pepper, chopped parsley, fresh lemon juice, and using the proper mayonnaise has the capacity to elevate the seemingly ordinary into the extraordinary. As a young cook at a TGI Friday's many years ago, I cut onions for onion rings, sliced mushrooms for grilled steaks, peeled thousands of pounds of shrimp, and poached chicken for chicken salad. My job was complex, every shift was a challenge and required a sense of timing, knife skills, physical stamina, and a bit of Spanish. At the beginning of my shift I was given a list of tasks, shown how to organize those tasks to make the most of my day, and my expectations increased almost weekly. My kitchen manager proudly shared my progress in our staff meetings and recommended me for raises. Today the amount of actual cooking at a TGI Friday's is probably little to none.

Since late July we've driven across the US from Phoenix, AZ to the fringes of Upstate South Carolina and at practically every diner, fast food joint, C-Store, and fast casual restaurant we've seen Help Wanted signs. And I lay the blame at our industry's quest for homogeneity, and our reliance on convenience items. Too many of us have long given up on making chicken salad and instead prefer to have our front line staff open five-gallon buckets of chicken salad. Years ago, the typical fast-food establishment removed numerical keys on their registers and replaced them with photos of each item. Burger patties are pre-cooked, lettuce and cheese is pre-shredded, smoked brisket just needs 30 minutes in the oven, chicken soup can be bought in a #10 can, a frozen cube, or a shelf-stable bag. Our reliance on convenience has created an industry with a reputation for grinding staff into hamburger meat while also denying them opportunity for advancement while paying a pauper's wage. As a young cook, I worked many 12 hour days for thin wages, yet I was there for an education and at the time I considered it part of my salary. So what is the value of showing someone how to open a 5-gallon bucket of chicken salad? Where will that skill be of use? If your food & beverage operation is going to survive and possibly thrive, you'd best take a good look at your menu, dig up your grandmother's chicken salad recipe, and make a commitment to actually cook, to teach, to mentor, to promote, and to share the rewards of your team's hard work.

If you're not encouraging your team to explore their own creativity, to revel in the job's complexity, and rewarding them accordingly, you're going to live on that merry-go-round of constantly searching for staff.

864-616-7171 and I'm always happy to talk.