It’s Friday, the dinner rush starts in an hour, and you’re two servers short. Or that great line cook who applied on Monday? They’ve already taken another job, because nobody called back. This guide covers how to hire restaurant employees so those nights happen less often.
Hiring comes down to two things: finding the right people (your careers page is the best place to start) and calling them within a day, before another restaurant does.
Applicants show up. In our 2025 Recruiting Metrics Report, restaurant and food service businesses averaged 112 applicants per job and 166 applicants per hire (180 across all industries). Yet major job boards brought 66% of those applicants and only 29% of the hires.
So where do your best hires come from, and how do you reach them first?
In short: Restaurants average 16 days from application to hire, but applicants wait 6.5 days for the first call. That’s a big slice of the hire spent before anyone says hello.
Quick answer: Know who you need, post a job that’s honest about pay and schedule, build your own pipeline through your careers page and referrals, and call good applicants within a day. Start with your careers page, because it brought restaurants more hires than any other source in our data.
Why trust our data? Our 2025 Recruiting Metrics Report looked at 2024 hiring across more than 60,000 small businesses, with a full section on restaurant and food service. We’ve also worked with restaurants like Chick-fil-A North Hills and Kona Grill. The restaurant numbers in this guide come from that report.
Here’s how to hire restaurant employees in eight steps, from attracting better applicants to making the hire before another restaurant does.
1. Know what a great restaurant employee looks like, and hire ahead of the rush
A great restaurant employee has an attitude you can’t train, so hire for that and teach the rest. In front of house, look for people who are friendly, quick on their feet, calm when the room fills up, and good at reading a table. In back of house, look for people who stay steady on a busy line, show up, care about the details, and take direction.
Can you hire people with no restaurant experience? Yes. Our founder, Clint Smith, writes, “Remember that ‘Can they do it?’ is a different question than ‘Have they done it?'” He frames the full test as three questions: “Can they do it? (Ability) Will they do it? (Motivation) Will others do it with them? (Culture fit)”
In a restaurant, the person at the counter is the brand. Clint’s Notes puts it this way: “Your people are how you stand out,” because “the experience they have is determined by whoever’s working that day.”
Timing matters too. Restaurants in our data ramped up hiring in October, ahead of a November and December applicant peak, and hired least in January and February. Clint warns against hiring in a panic (we’ve all hired whoever could start Monday): “When you are reactive and desperate while hiring, you let your guard down and compromise your standards.” His Notes add, “Operators who fall behind in April and May are playing catch-up all summer.” Our hiring process steps and restaurant hiring workflows can help you plan ahead.
2. Write a restaurant job posting that sells the shift
A restaurant job posting should lead with pay, schedule, shift length, and perks. Clint’s advice is simple: “Start with compensation and benefits. Be as open about these things as possible.” Use your own numbers.
Keep the application short and mobile-friendly. Growing fast, Kona Grill (46 restaurants in 23 states and Puerto Rico) struggled to make management and hourly hires, and it was paying extra to post on job boards. After switching to CareerPlug, it got 400% more applicants than with its previous provider, and management hires rose 45% in the first two years. It found the mobile-optimized platform and the Spanish application option especially useful. Our guide to writing effective job descriptions covers the basics, and job posting software gets the ad in front of people.
3. Turn your guests into applicants with a careers page
Your careers page brings restaurants more hires than any other source. It brought 15% of restaurant applicants but 38% of hires, the biggest single source of hires. The report explains the overlap: “This is an industry where your customers and your potential employees have significant overlap, especially in quick-serve and fast-casual dining.”
Clint’s line fits: “You need to recruit them. And you need to recruit like you sell.” He adds, “Someone who loves to eat at your restaurant … has the passion that you want in every one of your employees.”
Rally DeLeon, the operator at Chick-fil-A North Hills, already got plenty of applicants from walk-ins and employee referrals, but wanted a bigger pool and quality applicants faster. He put his location’s core values and benefits on a careers page, along with a picture of the culture, so applicants from job boards and from a sign in the store land on the same application. Our guides to building a careers page and to your restaurant’s online reputation and hiring show how to do the same. See how restaurants use CareerPlug. Do your guests know you’re hiring?
4. Ask your team for referrals, and use more than job boards
Referrals brought restaurants 3.4% of applicants but 17% of hires. Custom sources (Craigslist and Facebook groups, plus referral emails to customers) brought 0.5% of applicants and 11.5% of hires. Job boards still matter for volume (66% of applicants), but they brought only 29% of hires.
Clint says, “Your best customers often come from referrals; the same is true for your best employees.” He tells of a restaurant chain in Austin: “I know a restaurant chain in Austin that spends $500 in referral bonuses for hourly employees. Sometimes they raise it to $1,000 per hire when there is a greater need.” It pays after six months, “which helps keep that employee around too!” (That’s one chain’s example, not a benchmark.)
In Clint’s Notes, he writes, “Loyal customers refer new customers. Engaged employees refer good candidates.” An employee referral program gives your best people a reason to ask around, and our pieces on diverse applicant sources for restaurants and the restaurant worker shortage go deeper.
5. Call good applicants within a day
Call good applicants within 24 hours, because the wait for a first call is where restaurants lose people. Restaurants took 6.5 days on average to first contact an applicant, and 5.5 days for the applicants who got hired. Yet restaurants made hires faster than any other industry, at 16 days from application to hire. In the report’s words, they “were slightly slower to initially contact candidates, but made the hire quicker than any other industry.”
Clint’s version: “Great leads are like French fries: they are at their best when they are fresh and hot!” He adds, “Some clients say that the shelf life of a good applicant in their field is 48 hours.” (Yes, even on a Friday. A text counts.)
For a sense of what speed does, our 2026 Franchise Hiring Report found that applicants contacted within 24 hours were scheduled for interviews at 31%, versus 11.5% after four weeks, or 2.7x. That report covers seven service franchise industries and leaves out restaurants. Text recruiting and interview scheduling make speed realistic, and our guide to reducing your time to hire helps.
6. Screen restaurant applicants with a few smart questions
With 166 applicants per hire, you need a fast way to find the right few, so start with prescreen questions on availability and experience. Clint says prescreen questions “may be the biggest time saver in the entire hiring process.” Applicant screening software can ask them the moment someone applies.
Rally DeLeon screens on experience and availability, then on personality, and he contacts the best applicants before competitors do.
7. Ask restaurant interview questions that measure something, then make the offer
Interview for real: ask questions that measure ability and attitude, then watch a short paid working shift. Which Wich franchisee T.J. Schier, president of SMART Restaurant Group in Dallas, was frank about it at the 2018 National Restaurant Association show: “We ask them soft-ball questions just to reinforce our gut feel, but we don’t actually measure anything.” His advice was to define the skills and traits for each position and to “fish where the right fish are.”
Build your questions on Clint’s questions about ability and motivation, then add one about crew fit. Chick-fil-A North Hills built interview guides on its core values to judge both ability and culture fit. For front of house positions, try asking “Tell me about a time you handled an unhappy guest” and “What would you do if two tables needed you at once?” For back of house roles, try “Walk me through a ticket rush when you’re already behind” and “Tell me about a time you helped a teammate in the weeds.” Our list of restaurant interview questions has more.
Then see the work. Clint says, “There is no substitute for seeing how candidates actually work.” Make the offer quickly, with no surprises on pay or schedule.
P.S. Running a restaurant franchise system? The Franchise People Playbook shows franchisors how to make hiring a competitive advantage across every location.
8. Keep the people you hire
Treat retention as your best recruiting strategy, and start with the first week. “The #1 recruiting strategy is retention,” Clint writes. “Your new hire’s first week sets the tone and trajectory for their time with you.” Plan that week: who trains the new hire and who they can ask when it gets busy. Our guides to onboarding and team management and to preventing turnover without raising pay can help.
People who stay refer the next hire, which feeds step 4. Gen Z staff follow the same path: sell the shift honestly and move fast, then make the first week count. Our guide to how to recruit Gen Z goes deeper. Who’s the person you’d hire again tomorrow, and have you asked who they know?
Your next step: put your careers page link where guests can see it
This week, put your careers page link on your receipts or table tents. See how restaurants use CareerPlug to keep those applicants flowing and call them back fast. How long does it take to hire a restaurant employee? About 16 days from application to hire on average for restaurants.
This guide is the short version. The full playbook for hiring and keeping great people is Clint’s book, How to Hire.
Ready to fill your next role? CareerPlug helps you post jobs and reach applicants within a day. See how it works.