A casual dining restaurant lives on family and group traffic at lunch and dinner. It needs a cheerful floor team and a steady kitchen, mostly young, some new to the work, and at risk of leaving after a season.
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Share your requirementsA casual dining restaurant seats families, friends and office groups at moderate prices, in places such as malls, high streets and food streets. The team is a mix of line cooks, a kitchen head, waiters, hosts, a cashier and a floor captain, led by an outlet manager. Footfall peaks at weekends, in the evening and on festivals, and drops on weekday afternoons. Some staff are in their first or second job and live in shared rooms, so they move readily if a friend finds a better offer. Several owners run two to six outlets and move people between them. The food and beverage sector page and the restaurants and cafes hub set out what the whole trade shares.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in casual dining restaurants. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
With no time to teach, a new server learns the menu from a table of unhappy guests, and the captain pays for it.
Rushes on Friday and Saturday nights find a short team because weekday staff are given offs on weekends.
Staff leave every few months, and each exit means interviews, a thin shift and a fresh trainee, though nobody has counted it.
A good captain is made manager and left to handle rosters, cash, stock and staff quarrels with no preparation.
Where tips go and who receives a share is local custom, and it is a common cause of complaints.
Wrong orders, slow dishes and cold plates are argued at the pass, and the manager is stuck in the middle.
Without simple measures, a waiter is praised or scolded for what happened last night, not what happens over a month.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; Retention and Attrition Management; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for food and beverage, not in general.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a casual dining restaurants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Menu tasting, tray and table basics, shadowing and a short test before solo service.
Menu tasting, tray and table basics, shadowing and a short test before solo service. The onboarding process lays it out.
Peaks get the strongest team, offs fall on quieter days and part-timers are booked for weekends.
Peaks get the strongest team, offs fall on quieter days and part-timers are booked for weekends.
A simple list by outlet with the date, the role and why they left, reviewed each month by the owner.
A simple list by outlet with the date, the role and why they left, reviewed each month by the owner.
Rosters, cash checks, giving feedback and handling complaints, repeated for each new manager.
Rosters, cash checks, giving feedback and handling complaints, repeated for each new manager.
Who shares, in what way and who explains it.
Who shares, in what way and who explains it. Agree it with staff representatives and display it.
Order accuracy, time to table, guest comments and attendance, reviewed monthly.
Order accuracy, time to table, guest comments and attendance, reviewed monthly. See performance management.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A first week that gets new waiters and cooks ready before they meet a full house.
Simple measures for waiters, cooks and outlet managers, with fair recognition.
A steady flow of candidates for peak seasons and new outlet openings.
A clear route for complaints between kitchen and floor, and for lateness and conduct issues.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in food and beverage, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Kitchen, service and outlet staff leave quickly in food and beverage. How to ask what lies behind the first answer, compare outlets and act on what you learn.
7 min readRead article
A first-week plan for bringing in an outside specialist: what access to give, how to protect client data, and the confidentiality steps to settle on day one.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Start by counting who leaves and why. Then fix the common reasons: the first week, fixed offs, unclear tips and a poor boss. Small changes there pay back faster than a pay rise.
Give them a menu tasting, a short checklist of steps of service, a buddy and a few practice tables before solo service. A week well planned beats a month of confusion.
Let them act as manager for a few shifts, teach rosters, cash and feedback in short sessions, and name a senior to call. A planned step is safer than an overnight promotion.
Hold a brief meeting before service each day to share specials and issues, agree who decides at the pass and settle disputes the same day. Treat both groups as one team.
It can be, if the rule is clear and fair across roles. Decide the split with staff input, write it down and review it every year. Hidden rules cause the most trouble.
First we would count leavers by outlet and role, look at a week of rosters against your busiest hours and ask an outlet manager about the first week of a new waiter. A first-week plan with a leaver tracker is a natural first job, scoped in writing.
All 8 business types in restaurants & cafes · Find another business type
See all HR topics for food and beverage, or another industry.
Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
