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Black Box Intelligence hosts quarterly State of the Industry webinars for executives from some of the nation’s leading restaurant chains. These webinars are valuable for their actionable data and insights from top brand leaders. In the most recent webinar, attendees were asked to list their major initiatives for the coming year. Their responses provide a look into the health and direction of the industry.
Employee retention is the top initiative for restaurants in 2023. The restaurant industry has lost the most workers of any US industry, and as of February, there were 1.3 million unfilled jobs in the Food Service and Accommodations sector. Limited-service restaurants are operating with 1.7 fewer hourly employees on average per location than they did in 2019, while full-service restaurants are operating at 3.7 fewer front-of-house hourly employees, according to GuestXM Workforce data.
Here is the Top 5 list as collected by Black Box Intelligence. Clearly, employment troubles and inflation are on their minds.
Top 5 Initiatives Restaurants are Working on This Year:
- Increase Employee Retention (55%)
- Improve Service (53%)
- Reduce Operational Costs (46%)
- Improve Value Proposition (40%)
- Improve Food Execution (36%)