Tips on How to Deal with High Turnover in Quick Serve and Fast Casual Restaurants in Summer

Summer is upon us, and with it comes the challenge of recruiting and retaining top-notch seasonal talent. This talent often skews on the younger side, with students in particular looking for work that will earn them some money without impeding too much upon their summer fun.

“I think it’s tough to get people to work in fast food restaurants because they may view that as not having a purpose, and they want a job with a meaning or purpose so they look for more aspirational roles,” Sean Fitzgerald, Chief Brand Strategist for 1851 Franchise.

Here are tips for franchisees on recruiting — and retaining — summer talent.

Start your search early

June is far too late to start looking for summer talent, so franchisees would do best by starting the hiring process no later than March.  

“If you’re getting college kids, they’re probably already committed in the early spring, so I would say employers should start their search in March because they start getting out of school in early May and they’ve already got things lined up,” Fitzgerald said.

Create incentive programs

Different age groups might have different motivations. High school students and college students, for example, might have different objectives in mind when seeking summer employment.

“If you’re attracting college students, then creating internships or anything that helps them from that perspective would be best,” Fitzgerald said. “If it’s high school kids who aren’t even thinking about going to college, I would think any type of bonus structure would work. For example, if you start in May and finish through August, you get a bonus, or if you finish out the end of the year the owner will take everyone out to the nicest restaurant - ideas to get people to want to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Fitzgerald also recommends that franchisees get creative and come up with ways to make the work fun for summer employees and encourage them to refer more talent.

“Connecting the company with the culture of the employees is important, especially at that age,” he said. “It humanizes the work environment so that it’s almost like a mini-community versus a place of employment where people just punch in a clock and get a paycheck.”

Recruit smartly

Franchisees should consider where their centers and restaurants are located and the community demographics. Searching for talent in a large, urban area is going to be different from recruiting talent in a small college town. Businesses based in small college towns, for example, may find the area drained of talent for the summer due to students returning home, so Fitzgerald recommends that franchisees hit up community colleges, since those students live local.

Also, having a referral program in place can be a huge help in recruiting new talent.

“Word of mouth is going to be huge in small, rural communities so that’s where having an employee referral program is going to be extremely critical,” he said. “They probably all know each other, so if you have a good reputation you won’t have a problem finding talent. If it’s a bad experience for young people it’s going to get around and you’re going to have a hard time.”

Students who live in larger, urban areas will have more work and internship options available to them.

“You might have to pay a little more to get good talent because you’re going to have a lot more competition,” Fitzgerald said.

Remember: You’re working with humans!

Understand that you’re hiring individual, living, breathing, human beings. Fitzgerald cautions franchisees against treating the hiring process as filling in blank spaces on a checkerboard.

“In the service industry the human interaction is critical,” he said. “The employees are your product. The more you can get them to do things that are more than just checking items off a list, the better it’s going to be for the consumer. If you show them that it’s more than just showing up for work, you’re going to have a successful business.