Forbes Article: The Foodservice Worker Shortage

The Foodservice Worker Shortage Impact on the Industry

As a strategic marketing specialist in the food sector, I spend a lot of time speaking with foodservice, catering, and hospitality food and equipment suppliers. So naturally, the foodservice worker shortage is one of their top issues.

The foodservice business is an essential aspect of any community in today’s society, where convenience is in great demand. Restaurants, schools, caterers, hospital cafeterias, and enterprises that prepare meals outside of the house for these institutions to serve their consumers with ease are all included.

Foodservice workers are driving just one of the many issues plaguing the restaurant industry today. From the Covid-19 shutdowns wage hikes to labor shortages, supply chain stoppages, and inflation pressure, restaurants are squeezed on all sides.

Food processors and equipment manufacturers know that a lack of operational staffing hampers the foodservice industry’s sales. Therefore, the top suppliers will see the business’s current situation as a catalyst, a chance to innovate around the foodservice worker scarcity to boost sales and profits across the board.

In a recent Forbes article, I dial into the foodservice worker issue first by looking back at an industry shaped by entrepreneurial innovation and lay out an argument that although there may be some attrition suppliers and foodservice institutions—from restaurants to schools, or hospitals to prisons or cafeterias—innovation will lead to a new era of success.

Here are snippets of the article:

Foodservice Meal Innovation To Drive Consistency And Profit

…foodservice suppliers have developed pre-prepared meals that restaurants can resell to customers to heat and eat in their own homes. Convenience is a huge factor in the foodservice industry, and these types of advancements make it easier for customers to get what they are looking for more efficiently and quickly.

What’s Old Is New Again?

With common meal-prep practices already in place, the market ripe for innovation appears when the consumer orders and receives the meal. This may look like Automats — meal vending restaurants — that were very popular from the early 1900s to the 1950s.

Foodservice Equipment Development

…food equipment suppliers are developing automation for certain aspects of foodservice production by minimizing the staffing required to run conventional equipment or substituting manual labor with robotics.

The Role Of Marketing In Innovation

Research and development (R&D) efforts are shaped in large part by marketing. Foodservice meal innovation, for example, has been a study issue for numerous years, even though the labor scarcity trend is recent.

R&D is essential to success: a 3D printer company whose technology can print foods such as ham and quiche.

As a strategic marketing specialist in the food industry, I spend a lot of time speaking with foodservice, catering, and hospitality food and equipment providers. One of their main concerns—and I’m sure we’ve all seen the news—is a shortage of foodservice employees.

Please out the full article here: Innovate Through The Foodservice Worker Shortage.

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