By some measures, restaurant workers have gotten more productive
By some measures, restaurant workers have gotten more productive
There are somewhere around 15 million people in this economy who work in restaurants and food service. And those workers have gotten about 15% more productive since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This means the value of restaurant sales per employee is way up.
That’s the finding from a study out this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants.”
“Curious,” because the surge followed decades of basically stagnant productivity among restaurant workers.
Jonathan Fox has owned Fox Bros Bar-B-Q in Atlanta for two decades.
“We were one of the original spots in Atlanta to start serving smoked wings, and, you know, Atlanta is a big wing town, so our smoked wings really took off,” said Fox.
When the pandemic closed their dining room, Fox had to figure out how to keep those wings fresh all the way to customers’ homes. He wrapped them in foil, insulated the takeout boxes.
“We would do test orders where we deliver to ourselves, find the quality and just try to ensure that it arrives in a quick manner,” said Fox.
There were benefits for restaurants that figured this out, because takeout hasn’t gone away.
“Americans have gotten used to doing takeout and delivery. We like it,” said Chad Moutray, chief economist at the National Restaurant Association.
He said some restaurants have even retooled their staffing. The most extreme are so-called “ghost kitchens,” “where there really is not a front of the house, right, it’s really just an operation to cater to takeout and delivery,” said Moutray.
For sit-down spots, too, takeout allows the same number of staff to produce more meals, said Robert Byrne, director of consumer research at Technomic.
“That’s great incremental business. You know, guest counts can go up without having to actually service them in your dining room,” said Byrne.
That’s why the study said restaurants are more productive lately.
“It’s a complete shift in labor from hospitality to fulfillment,” said Byrne.
But Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan, said it’s hard to really compare the restaurants of today with their pre-pandemic counterparts. With takeout, consumers don’t get table service, and they have to clean up themselves.
“It’s just, we’re sort of buying a different product,” said Stevenson.
She said restaurants are just meeting a different set of customer needs these days — needs that apparently include a plate of smoked wings consumed on the couch.
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