Restaurant owners are optimistic and ready to grow.
Technology and automation tools fuel resilience, enabling owners to focus on what's next.
Restaurant owners across regions have navigated inflation, worker shortages and fear of a looming recession over the last year. Despite the magnitude of these challenges, the majority of owners have navigated them with success. Today, the vast majority of owners
say they feel more optimistic about the future of their business compared to 12 months ago.
Optimism is especially high for fast food and casual dining restaurants. These businesses benefit from buying bulk ingredients at lower costs, fulfilling higher order volumes at a fast rate and running with less waiting staff, which may explain their resilience. Almost half of fast food (44%) and casual dining restaurant owners (40%) said they feel much more optimistic compared to last year, followed by café or other (38%), and fine dining (31%) restaurant owners.
To combat the continued food and beverage worker shortage, restaurant owners have needed to adapt by rethinking their dining hours, scaling back hours of operation or simply short-staffing their shifts. Owners aren’t completely absolved of workforce constraints, but relief is on the horizon. On average, respondents say it’s been 18 months since they were last fully staffed, which is a slight improvement since 2022, where respondents cited an average of 20 months since they were last fully staffed.
In some regions restaurants are in a stronger position than others. Nearly half (44%) of Australian restaurant owners said it’s been 1–12 months since they were last fully staffed, compared to 38% of respondents in the UK that said they didn’t experience a labour shortage at all.
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No matter the workforce constraints restaurant owners experience, one thing all restaurants have in common is their use of technology to address staffing challenges. All (100%) owners surveyed said they use technology and automation to help fill critical gaps when they’re not fully staffed. Across the board, owners depend on these tools to help with several responsibilities behind the counter and directly with guests.
Cafés and other restaurants (40%) rely on tech tools to accept customer orders the most. Fast food restaurants use tech to fill staffing gaps the most for tracking item availability in real time (37%). Finally, fine dining restaurants see the biggest benefits in staffing gaps the most for managing customer loyalty programmes (37%) and managing real-time restaurant capacity (38%).
As restaurants adopt technology, customers are on board:
prefer that restaurants use automation technology in at least one area to help enhance efficiency, including taking payments, making reservations and tracking item availability.
To stay competitive in an increasingly saturated market, restaurant owners are focused on improving all areas of their business, not just staffing. According to owners, improving environmentally sustainable business practices and using their business data to understand what customers want are equally top priorities (39%). This is closely followed by restaurants’ need to level-up how they engage with their customers through a marketing programme (38%).
For different restaurant types, priority levels vary. For instance:
Fine dining and casual dining restaurants care about sustainable sourcing and operating more than average. Nearly half (42%) of fine dining restaurant owners say this is a priority and 40% of casual dining restaurant owners say the same.
Cafés and other restaurants care about using data to know what customers want and engaging customers through a marketing programme more than average. Nearly half (42%) say both are a priority.
