What's The Hardest Thing About Running A Restaurant? The Answer May Surprise You

A Cautionary Tale – Or Two Or Three – For Potential Restaurateurs

I was catering a small event recently. A young man struck up a conversation as I worked and at one point asked me what the hardest part of running a restaurant or food service business was. My answer was immediate and emphatic: finding and keeping good help.

Oh, there are a million things that will kill you in a restaurant operation. Finances and budgets aside, something is always breaking down: AC, heat, walk-in, reach-in, ice machine, sandwich unit …something. Building codes, fire codes, safety codes and especially food codes and health regulations will drive you insane. Licenses are another headache. There's one for just about every circumstance you can think of and probably some that you never imagined. And if you're serving liquor, that's a whole 'nother animal. But all these things pale in comparison to the difficulty involved in the recruiting, hiring, and maintaining of anything near a decent staff.

“What's so hard,” you ask? “I'm offering people a chance to work and make money. How can that possibly be such a problem?” Oh, my dear lambs! Allow me to reveal to you the slaughter you're about to face.

The labor pool for the restaurant industry today is so shallow you can walk through it and barely get the soles of your feet wet. I don't care if you are the proprietor of a suburban fast-food eatery or the owner of the hottest downtown restaurant, the employee mill will churn and turn like a revolving door. A motorized door that spins like a centrifuge. Oh, sure, you'll find a good cook or server now and then; one who loves his or her job and enjoys working for you. An Italian friend of mine has as couple of cooks and servers who have been with him since he opened his doors more than a dozen years ago. I know of a waiter at another local place who has been there for more than twenty years. But believe me, employees like these are the statistically insignificant exception to the revolving door rule. In fact, recent statistics show that three in ten restaurant operators cite adequate staffing as a major issue. Another stat says that turnover in the restaurant industry is currently at an all-time high of seventy-five percent. According to Restaurant Insider, forty-two percent of front-of-house employees walk within the first three months.

Almost every candidate you're going to encounter in your search for a reliable employee is somebody who is not seeking a career but rather looking for a job. This means you hire them today and they find “something better” tomorrow and you won't see them the next day. No thanks, no notice, just no-show. It's called “ghosting” and it's a big thing among millennials and Gen Zers. Young people just take a job and then don't show up. Or they quit a job and don't let their employer know. According to the Randstad 2020 U.S. Compensation Insights survey, half of millennials and Gen Zers have ghosted an employer for a higher paying job opportunity elsewhere.

With increased demands for higher minimum wages becoming more and more commonplace, people new to the job scene expect to just walk in and be paid a whole lot of money for very little work. When they figure out that the job isn’t going to be a cakewalk (usually after the first ten minutes or so on the clock), a lot of them won't hesitate a second to find something “better.” And to leave you holding the bag.

Many of the ones that do show up and stick around do so because they can't find “something better.” The transient nature of restaurant work is legendary. While there are many, many, many dedicated, hardworking folks in both the front and back of the house, there are also a disproportionate number of, shall we say, “hard-luck cases.” These are people who are barely functioning in life due to alcohol, drugs, mental or emotional impairments, criminal records, educational deficiencies, or just plain laziness and lack of motivation. And they flock to kitchens like flies to – sugar.

Another bunch that the business seems to attract are the ones who have unrealistically high opinions of themselves and their abilities. They're just working for you because they never got the breaks that would have made them the next Bobby Flay or Wolfgang Puck or somebody. Believe them, they're doing you a favor by deigning to grace you with their presence. Don't try to tell them anything; there isn't anything they don't already know. They are legends in their own minds.

And, of course, as I alluded earlier, nearly every waiter or waitress you're likely to employ is literally waiting – for something else. They're “really” students, actors, models, social media influencers – any of a million things and they're just cooling their heels with you until their big break comes along or until they can get “a real job.”

You start out looking for bright, attentive, motivated people and I promise you in most cases you will end up settling for warm bodies. And the saddest part is you're going to get chapped lips and a permanently brown nose from all the ass-kissing you'll have to do in order to keep them.

Sure there are exceptions. My son is one of them – sort of. He started in fast food at age sixteen and over the next twenty years he worked his way up to management in a fairly high end place. The route took him through waiting tables, tending bar, and even doing a few turns in the kitchen. He was dedicated, hardworking, and good at what he did. And now he owns his own place. It's a retail craft and gift shop. He's out of the food business.

My grandparents owned a little place back in the '50s. He cooked and she served. No staffing problems there. No staffing problems at my uncle's eatery either; I had a big family and most of them worked for Uncle P at one time or another. And as far as my own involvement in the industry, I'm a personal chef these days. I have a full-time staff of three – me, myself, and I and I never have any problems with any of them.

So with four generations of idioti in the restaurant business, let me share a few stories from my own experience that illustrate why I tell people what I tell them about finding and keeping good help.

I could write a book about the fast-food employees who have screwed up my orders over the years. I'm sure you could, too. It seems almost de rigueur anymore. I never leave a drive-thru without checking my order. And the attitudes of most fast-food counter people! Uffaaaaa! Have you ever walked up to place your order and felt like you should apologize for doing so because you're intruding on the counter person's personal time or interrupting their social activities? I have. The only exception seems to be Chik-fil-A. Their employees are unfailingly efficient, polite, and attentive. I don't know what they do differently there, but they're obviously doing something right.

Unlike the careless kitchen employee at one of my favorite fast-food joints that I won't identify but its name comes from the initials of the Raffel Brothers who started it. I ordered a ham and cheese slider onto which some inattentive “cook” slid a little something extra: the plastic wrap from the cheese. I know. How did I know the difference, right? And yes, the manager apologized profusely and brought me a fresh one without the extra ingredient.

My own staffing luck was usually not so good. I once hired a cook who had attended Le Cordon Bleu in Los Angeles. Wow! Here I am with a little hole-in-the-wall place and I score a classically trained chef! Woo-hoo! But two problems immediately surfaced.

Problem number one was that the man couldn't make all the dishes in an order come out at the same time to save his life. He was a decent cook and he was great if he could focus on one thing and one thing alone. But that ain't the way the business works. My wife was on expo duty his first night and he almost walked because she was “so hard” on him. Just because I kept hearing her repeat the word “urgently” in regards to every dish he was not making that was not hitting the pass......He could muddle through a deuce okay but the “deer-in-the-headlights” look set in when he was confronted by a four-top and anything more than that had him so deep in the weeds he needed a machete to whack his way out.

Second problem: he may have learned to read a thermometer in culinary school but he had a little difficulty with a clock. He was never on time for his shift. Even though he lived a five or six minute drive from the restaurant, he had neither a car nor a license. So if he couldn't bum a ride, he usually hoofed it. And he was always late. This was especially problematic when he was the opening breakfast cook. The servers were there, the coffee was made, the doors were open and.......no cook. I mean, the opening cook needs at least a half hour prep time to light the oven and the flattop and the grill and to set up the breakfast mise and what have you. And this clown walks in five or ten minutes after the start of service. Che cazzo?!

So I told him one night, “I'm gonna pick you up in the morning. You be ready.” And I was in his driveway at the appointed time. No cook. I called his cell. His sleepy voice answered and said, “I haven't had my shower yet. Go on and I'll call a cab.” “Okay, bucko,” I said, “you've got thirty minutes.” “I know. I'll be there,” he replied.

Thirty minutes passed and no cook. I called him. “I'm the cab right now.” “Okay.” Fifteen minutes more go by. Remember, he lives five minutes down the street. And now he's not answering his phone. Another fifteen minutes and another phone call. Now he says he's in the cab and on the way. “From where?” I exploded, “CANADA?! An hour ago you told me you'd get a cab. A half-hour ago you said you were in the cab and now you tell me you're still in the cab when you only live five minutes away. You know what? I suspect you're lying to me.” He started stammering some excuse. I pressed on, “Are you lying to me?” “Ahhhhhhh.....ummmm......I was just trying to buy myself a little more time is all.” “GUESS WHAT, DUDE? YOU'VE BOUGHT YOURSELF ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD,” I roared, and then I hung up.

I saw him on the line at a Waffle House a couple of weeks later. A little while after that he was gone from there, too.

There's often a bit of friction between front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house. Everybody's got a job to do and frequently cooks have issues with how servers are doing their jobs and vice-versa. Usually it's fairly benign, although sometimes it can be intense to the point of being toxic. I think that point had been reached when I had to fire a cook who threatened to kill a waitress and a customer who had had the temerity to complain about something. I don't mean some off-hand “I'm gonna kill her” comment. No, this anger management dropout went into graphic detail. He was one of those “I am God's gift to the culinary industry! How DARE you question me?” types that I mentioned earlier. I put up with his posturing, I put up with his ego, I even put up with his adding his “personal touches” to our established recipes. But I wouldn't put up with his threats to customers and staff. Bye-bye.

How about this one? It's a Saturday evening and I'm in the kitchen doing prep work. I've only got one cook to begin with and he's working behind me prepping some chicken. I turned to ask him something and he's gone. Not only is he gone but ten pounds of raw chicken is sitting open and uncovered on his board. I deal with that potential health code violation and then go off to find him. And he's out on the patio smoking and laughing it up with some buddies. “Hey, man”, I tell him, “it's not break time. You need to get back in there and finish that chicken.” He's kind of sullen about it but he does it. And ten minutes later, he's gone again. Back on the patio with his pals. My wife goes out and tells him he needs to get back to work. He tells her, “in a minute.” I give him “a minute” and five or six more, then I go out and tell him, “I'm not paying you to smoke and talk. Get back to work.” Unreasonable, right? He must have thought so because he took off his apron, slammed it on a table and stalked off across the parking lot. Leaving me without a cook on a Saturday night. And five minutes after he's gone, a rush starts. So my wife puts on an apron and hits the flattop, I take the fry station, and a waitress works the grill. We got through it. Oh, and did I mention that I had already taken this guy back once because I felt sorry for him?

Then there was the master chef who cost me two points on a health inspection because he apparently didn't know how to cook a chicken breast. We had a grilled chicken sandwich on our menu. Our meat vendor kept us supplied with very generous-sized boneless chicken breasts. I mean, if these hens were human, I'd suspect they had had work done, you know? BIG ol' chicken breasts. And, of course, any idiot could figure out that you had to cut these monster breasts down before you cooked them. For a couple of obvious reasons. In the first place, you could get at least two sandwiches out of one breast. In the second place, there was no way in hell you could cook that enormo-breast whole on a grill or flattop. Common sense would tell you that the outside would be toast long before the inside cooked to a safe temperature. The problem with common sense is that there are so many uncommonly senseless people walking around. My cook was one of them. And, wouldn't you know, the health inspector was there to witness his brilliant display of chicken cookery. When the inspector stuck his thermometer into that breast, I knew I was screwed. He “suggested” the cook start over and then he dunned me points with the notation “suggest serving smaller portions.” Ya THINK??!! How about “suggest you get another cook” instead? Because I did.

I was helping out a friend who was really struggling with his place. His biggest problem was that he was an absentee owner who only came around on Fridays to hand out the checks. The rest of the time, the inmates ran the asylum. The biggest “inmate” was a cook who probably should have been an inmate for real. He was selling drugs out in the back parking lot during his shift and he let all his friends eat for free whenever they came in. Guess who I fired first?

And the waitress my friend had making the schedule and “managing” the place hadn't a clue about restaurant management. For instance, she was buying cleaning supplies at the Dollar General across the street. When they ran out of ground beef, she'd just nip over to Walmart and buy twenty pounds or so. My friend used 80/20 in his burgers. His “manager” bought 73/27 because it was cheaper. He was using 60 or 70 count potatoes for his hand-cut fries. She found little golf ball-sized spuds at some kind of retail discount store and bought those instead. She thought doing all that was saving my friend money. His diminishing customer base definitely noticed the drop in quality. And his bottom line was headed for the toilet because his “manager” was stocking his restaurant with inferior product at retail! Oh, and she had worked a deal with my friend whereby she got paid extra to “manage” on top of her waitress wages and she also negotiated a “bonus” for running errands. And she would run to Walmart or somewhere six or eight times a day, hitting him up for her eight-dollar fee for each and every trip. So she was waiting tables for wages and tips and tacking on “manager pay” on top of it and then piling on her “errand fee” to ice the cake. In short, she was milking my buddy like a cash cow while driving his business into the ground. I didn't fire her; I just demoted her back to waitress and she quit.

I was traveling and stopped for lunch at a little place in Knoxville, Tennessee one day. The owner was behind the counter and it was little slow, so we started chatting while I waited for my order. He took a phone call. After he hung up, he looked at me and, shaking his head, said, “I just hired that kid day-before-yesterday. He's worked one shift. Today he's calling me to see if he can get tomorrow off. Where do these kids come from?” For the answer to that question, reread the paragraph about “ghosting.”

I was eating a late lunch in a nice little place that had decorative Tiffany-style lamps suspended over the booths and tables. As I said, it was late and the place was pretty quiet. Probably no more than a half-dozen other diners in the dining room. So the waitress was taking advantage of the lull to do some side work. And that's fine. That's what she's supposed to do; roll silverware and fill ketchup bottles and such. What she's most assuredly not supposed to do is climb up on a stool and dust the decorative Tiffany-style lamps while the customer's food is on the table! The manager apologized and comped my meal.

I don't do restaurant cooking anymore, but I still do a bit of restaurant consulting. I signed on with a guy a couple of years ago who wanted to open a place with a big city “high-end” vibe in a small, rural Southern town. He was a businessman with zero restaurant experience and I didn't think much of his concept from the beginning. And the very first thing I cautioned him about when he asked for my advice was the condition of the local labor market. But he had lots and lots of big ideas and piles and piles of money, so I watched as he funneled over a million dollars into his personal fool's paradise, spending tens of unnecessary thousands of dollars on every sparkly gadget and gee-gaw he could get his hands on. I told him to forget all the fancy toys like the $2,000 glass froster he bought for his bar. I advised him against the genuine top-grain white leather banquettes he was planning to install. I tried to tell him a lot of things, but the single biggest thing I hammered on was the potential employee base, or lack thereof. But I was whistling in the wind. “Oh, don't worry so much about that,” he pooh-pooed. “I'm going to pay higher than anybody in town. I'll have only the best people.”

Opening day approached and he hadn't even begun taking applications. I kept nagging at him to start developing his staff. We were less than a month out without the first employee on the payroll. Two weeks before opening, he finally took time from cavorting in the ludicrously expensive kitchen that had become his personal stainless steel playground and started interviewing for cooks and waitstaff. “Sei pazzo!,” I told him. “These people need at least two weeks to learn the menu and to train on procedures!” But he just looked at me like the bothersome nuisance I had no doubt become and continued to ignore me, believing his money would solve all his staffing problems. And the chickens came flocking home to roost when he opened the doors to admit the local labor pool and only a few drips trickled in.

High school kids. Tons of high school kids. None of whom we could hire because of labor and liquor laws. A bunch of people showed up whose only restaurant experience was eating in one. The first question nearly everyone who came through the door asked was “how much do you pay?” Sometimes that was the lead-in right after they gave their name. Now, you shouldn't judge on looks alone and it's illegal to refuse to hire on that basis, of course, but considering we were trying to staff a “high-end” establishment, we fielded more than a few applicants whose basic hygiene and, let's say, “sense of style,” made them low-end candidates for “high-end” employment. We had some applicants who couldn't read the application. One guy listed his cooking experience as “jail.” And then there were those who filled out applications and accepted positions and when we called them a day or two later for follow-up had already taken jobs elsewhere. Yep. We got “ghosted” a lot.

My client was badly understaffed when the place opened and the staff he had was untrained and unprepared. And the reviews reflected it. Not that I was there to experience those negative reviews. Having long since tired of being superfluous, I fulfilled my obligation to get his doors open and then I waded out of the deep end of the pool and onto dry land.

“Decent food, horrible service.” “Nice atmosphere, horrible service.” “Horrible management, horrible service.” The litany went on and on. But I didn't just read the online reviews. I also checked his health department inspections. Month after month of the same violations and infractions, nearly all perpetrated by careless and/or untrained staff. So much for his money buying “only the best people.”

Actually, even less-than-the-best people can cost money. Industry figures place the average cost of recruiting and training an hourly employee at anywhere between $2K and $3.5K. That's an enormous investment in somebody who is going to walk out the door seventy-five percent of the time.

So if you're still thinking of opening a restaurant, don't! Go soak your head or take a cold shower or run headlong and face first into a brick wall until the urge passes. If you still persist in pursuing folly to its inevitable conclusion, don't pretend you didn't hear the voice crying in the wilderness; the one that said “the hardest thing about running a restaurant is the difficulty involved in the recruiting, hiring, and maintaining of anything near a decent staff.”

And when you came to that conclusion, look me up. I'll be over here comfortably basking in the sunshine of “I told you so.”