​Find your ideal balance of labor and tech

​As summer approaches, restaurants are expected to keep adding jobs – even if the economy slows. The National Restaurant Association projects that by the end of the year, the foodservice industry workforce will grow by 500,000 jobs. This would bring industry employment back to pre-pandemic levels.


As you serve guests this summer, use it as a period to calibrate your technology-to-labor balance. The industry is at an inflection point worth watching: While brands such as Sweetgreen unveil automated makelines and other automated processes infiltrate all corners of the back of the house, we’ll begin to see patterns in how human roles in restaurants are changing – and where guests do and don’t want face-to-face help and interaction.

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