1. Promote what it’s like to work at your restaurant, specifically from employee perspectives and not management’s.
2. Go live on social media with your employees talking about what it’s like to work there. Emphasize what working at your restaurant will do for people’s lives and skillsets.
3. Spiking wages seems like the easy fix, but throwing money at the issue will only create problems down the road. $20 an hour for dish washing is a dangerous precedent.
4. Instead, use that money to keep your current employees happy. Retention is cheaper than acquisition.
5. Work with suppliers to reduce your need for labor. For example, ordering pre-cut produce removes the need for an employee to chop away.

6. Emphasize what you can do for job candidates in job postings rather than what you’ll get out of them. That’s what they care about.

7. Look for new processes to make up for some of the deficits in labor.

8. Look for technologies that can augment, enhance, and even replace employees when needed. Even if you can’t hire more, you can make more out of the employees that you do have.

9. Create a company culture where employees love, serve, and support each other. That will attract employees more than anything else.

10. Ghost kitchens are a great way to operate with lower staff.

11. Look at finding staff as the sum of 100 easy things: pay fairly, treat everyone well, give flexibility, etc., and you won’t have an issue finding staff.

12. Job boards will be very saturated. Instead look for talent in your customer base and local communities.

13.Make the hiring process easy for applicants by using text-to-apply and even skipping interviews if necessary.

14. Talk to other restaurant owners. They may have met good candidates that they didn’t have a fit for.

15. Temp services are a great way to find talent but can also serve as a trial run for candidates. You can see how they work in your kitchen before hiring them.