Steele at a Glance | From COGS to People Power: Rethinking Hospitality’s Labour Problem

 

Steele at a Glance by Steele Service Co

 

From COGS to People Power: Rethinking Hospitality’s Labour Problem

In our last instalment, we looked at how independent venues could work together to increase their buying power, lower COGS and create some of the efficiencies that naturally come with scale. But purchasing is only one area where scale matters.

Ask most hospitality operators what keeps them awake at night and wages, staffing and retention will be somewhere near the top of the list. Anyone who has written a roster knows the problem. You have a great casual who wants 25 hours a week, but this week you can realistically give them 14 without blowing your wage percentage. You want to keep them, they want to stay, but they also need to pay their bills. So they pick up work somewhere else, and a few months later you’ve lost a good employee and you’re back advertising, interviewing and training someone new.

The Staffing Challenge for Independent Venues

One of the natural advantages of operating across multiple venues is workforce flexibility. When one venue is quiet, staff may be able to pick up a shift somewhere else within the same group. Employees can gain exposure to different venues, access more hours and sometimes see clearer opportunities to develop and progress.

For independent venues, creating that same level of flexibility can be much harder. We each build our own roster, recruit our own people, run our own training and solve our own shortages. In many cases, venues sitting only a few kilometres apart are dealing with very similar staffing challenges completely independently of one another.

That raises an interesting question: could independent venues create some of the same workforce advantages through collaboration, without giving up their independence?

What If Independent Venues Shared Talent?

Imagine a group of trusted independent venues working together to create a broader employment network. Your bartender might work two shifts with you, another at a nearby hotel and pick up a Saturday function at another participating venue. A chef looking for additional hours could become known across the network rather than needing to look further afield for extra work.

When one venue has a major function, staff illness or an unexpectedly busy weekend, there could already be a pool of trained people familiar with the venues and their expectations. That gives staff more opportunities for hours while also giving operators access to people they already know and trust.

It wouldn’t remove the need for each business to manage its own workforce, nor would it be as simple as creating a group chat and swapping employees around. Employment arrangements, payroll, insurance, responsibilities and standards would all need to be structured properly. But the principle is worth exploring. Instead of every independent venue solving the same staffing challenge separately, could collaboration give good people more reasons to stay within the sector?

Training Is Another Opportunity

The same logic applies to staff development. Most independent venues would love to provide more structured training, but the problem is rarely a lack of interest. It is usually time and cost.

It is difficult to justify bringing in a specialist trainer for eight employees. It becomes much easier when eight venues are sending employees. A network could collectively organise practical training in areas such as cellar management, cocktails, coffee, food safety, gaming and compliance, customer service or leadership.

More importantly, it could help create something hospitality often struggles to provide: a visible career path. A talented supervisor at a small venue may not see an obvious next step. Across a network of 10 or 20 businesses, suddenly there are far more opportunities to learn, take on responsibility and build a genuine hospitality career while still working within independently operated venues.

Scale Without Losing Independence

This is really the bigger idea behind Steele. Independent venues don’t need to become part of a large group to benefit from some of the efficiencies that scale can create. We can remain independently owned, independently operated and connected to our own communities while choosing certain areas where it simply makes more sense to work together.

Purchasing is one. Technology is another. People and training could be one of the most valuable of all.

Hospitality ultimately comes down to people. Finding good ones is difficult, developing them takes time, and losing them is expensive. If working together means we can give good hospitality people more hours, better training and a clearer reason to stay in the industry, that’s worth a serious conversation.

Thanks for reading instalment four of Steele at a Glance. Until next time, keep serving, keep thinking differently, and keep looking for the opportunities that become possible when independents work together.