We’ve said it before, but the restaurant industry is failing women -- and COVID-19 has only exacerbated the reasons why.
Women make up more than half of a restaurant’s total staff (52%) but nearly three-quarters (71%) of service staff. That means when restaurants shut down in-door dining last year, women workers took the brunt of the pink slips.
And those who were able to keep their jobs weren’t greeted with empathy, patience, or respect from guests – instead they got the complete opposite.
An Increase in Harassment, Decrease in Tips
In a study titled “Take off your mask so I know how much to tip you,” 40% of women restaurant workers claimed sexual harassment from customers had increased during the pandemic – despite a huge drop off in in-house visits. On top of that, food service workers were often subjected to “maskual harassment,” a situation where guests request the server remove their mask to gauge how much they should be tipped.
Big. Yikes.
And the stats just get worse.
Restaurant staff, especially serving staff, also ended up being the ones having to enforce social distancing and indoor mask mandates. Sadly, this lead to further harassment from guests who couldn’t be bothered to follow simple guidelines.
It also put staff, especially mom’s in the industry, more at-risk to catching COVID. In fact, working moms reported contracting COVID-19 at higher rates than all other workers — 26% versus 19%.
Meanwhile, 83% of food industry workers also saw a decrease in tips (see “maskual harassment” above). Due to that and the increase in guest harassment, 60% of restaurant staff were hesitant to enforce social distance & masking policies – putting themselves and other guests at huge risk.
But who can blame them? When a large portion of women staff’s paycheck comes from tips, and guests are tipping based on masks and policy enforcement, your staff are not going to take those extra steps. It’s a calculated risk, but one they shouldn’t have to make.
Like we said before… Big. Yikes.
A Moral & Practical Nightmare
Not only is this bad from a moral and ethical standpoint, but it’s also bad from a practical business standpoint, too. Women make up 51% of the restaurant industry workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 78% of them are considering leaving the industry due to “low wages and tips,” and 56% due to “COVID health risks.”
In a normal year, the restaurant industry employs about 13 million people. Losing 5+ million workers would absolutely cripple the industry.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. The restaurant industry is an amazingly unique experience where someone with little training or formal education can learn everything they need to know about the industry, running a business, and leading a team. Few other industries can offer that.
And there’s a lot of amazing minds and talent that walk into our industry, too, but they need a certain level of protection and nurturing from their employers. Here are a few ideas to consider.
1. Protect Your Staff
Our industry needs to do a better job at stopping the harassment of our employees – especially harassment thrown at women and other minority staff. No one wants to go to work for relatively low pay in a highly stressful environment and then have to deal with guests (and sometimes other staff) harassing them.
This means creating honest and useful policies for combatting harassment and being able to follow through with those policies. This may even mean banning a guest from your restaurant or firing an employee. None of us want to have to do that, but you need to decide if keeping those toxic personalities around is conductive to a great working & dining experience. Your reputation is at stake here, too.
And your staff shouldn’t have to play de facto health marshals at your restaurant either. As an owner or manager, that should be your job. And, again, it may mean banning a guest from your restaurant in the name of keeping everyone else safe.
Enforcing health protocols instead of your staff might not stop bad guests from tipping poorly, but it does provide a buffer between terrible guest attitudes and your staff. And if it doesn’t, perhaps those guests need the boot. Your staff will appreciate knowing you’re watching out for their best interest.
2. Evolve Your Pay/Wages Culture
Folks -- especially women and working moms -- are deciding that sub-minimum wage + tips isn’t worth the grueling effort and harassment the restaurant industry often entails. And, sadly, we can’t really blame them.
Stopping a toxic work environment and protecting staff from sexual and “maskual” harassment will make life working at your restaurant better, but we also need to make sure their life at home is better, too. And that starts with staffs’ paychecks.
This may mean it’s time to get rid of tipping altogether. We know… that’s not a popular idea among our subscribers. But if our guests can’t be trusted to tip properly and our staff are deciding what they are earning isn’t worth it, what other choices do you have? We’re losing great talent to other industries.
If you’re wondering how you’re going to afford pay raises, that’s understandable. While you could look for ways to cut costs in exchange for higher labor, often that comes with its own issues. Budget fat and unnecessary expenses should always be look for and eliminated, but cutting costs at the expense of your ability to operate well is a recipe for disaster.
Instead, your best bet is to raise menu prices. We know… it’s another very unpopular idea. The problem is you can’t operate a restaurant efficiently if you don’t have the bodies to handle the volume, and it’s clear that a huge population of our staffing pool doesn’t think the current pay structure is worth it.
If you don’t value your staffs’ skill, time, and labor, why should your guests?
Alternatively, you could look into other ways of raising funds to pay for -- such as service surcharges. That comes with its own baggage to manage, of course.
Regardless of your strategy, it’s important to be crystal clear about the decision, the reason, and how it’ll work and when. Communicate with guests and staff early and often. You won’t please everyone, but you can still do right by the people under your care and employment.
3. Meet Women Where They’re At
And we mean in all aspects of their life – from in school, to post-grad, to motherhood and beyond.
College-employees and working moms need a more flexible schedule than other demographics. Fortunately, one of the strengths of the restaurant industry is being able to operate with a flexible work schedule. If you’re not allowing staff to easily work around classes or picking up/dropping off kids at school, you’re giving your women employees a reason to look for employment elsewhere.
It also means hiring women into leadership roles – something the restaurant industry, as a whole, has struggled with. Building a more diverse leadership staff will give voices to marginalized communities, help cover your subconscious blind spots, and make a larger labor pool feel welcomed and at home in your restaurant. Representation matters – and yes, we know you need to balance this with picking the best person for the job; that comes down to better training and mentorship programs.
But if you need a more practical reason, studies have shown that diverse companies outperform homogeneousness groups for their increase in ability to expose faulty thinking, generating fresh and novel ideas, and accounting for a wider variety of variables when planning.
We know this can be a little tricky depending on the area you operate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try your best and take a good, hard look at your recruiting, hiring, and promoting history to see if you’re missing out.
At the very least, restaurants can diversify the gender of their leadership team. Companies with more than 30% women on their executive teams are significantly more likely to outperform those that have between 10 and 30% women, and these companies are more likely to outperform those with fewer or no women executives.
A Chance to Change
Just because we’ve been failing women in the industry, doesn’t mean we have to keep down that path. It does, however, mean we need to evaluate how we, as an industry, are managing our business. It also requires being honest about where why and we’re failing and come up with real solutions to fix those issues.
The survival of our restaurants may depend on it.
