November 2, 2023 • 39 mins
On the surface it looks like US employment is strong but labor participation is lower than pre-pandemic levels and there are nearly four million part-time workers, many of which have multiple jobs, Vivian Wang, founder and CEO of Landed, tells Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode of the Choppin’ It Up podcast, Wang sits down with BI’s senior restaurant and foodservice analyst Michael Halen to discuss how fewer full-time jobs and the gig economy are impacting restaurant hiring and retention. She also commented on application volume, chat bots and late-night staffing improvements.
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Chopping It Up.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm your host, Mike Hallon, the senior Restaurant and Food
Service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Today we're joined by Vivian Wang,
the founder and CEO of Landed. Welcome to the pod, Vivian,
thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, I'm pumped to do this, looking forward to it.
Let's jump right in. What are you in the team
at Landed do for your clients?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
So, we're tackling the number one challenge facing the restaurant industry,
which is labor. So we help source that, engage screen
candidates from team members up to managers.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So some of our clients range.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
From McDonald's and Kava all the way to the Michael
Minna Group and invited club corps. So we really run
the whole gamut and and really just the goals to
get people staffed.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Super simple goal.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
There and is it GM's houries both both.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We call it everything within the four walls we can do.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, cool, Talk a little bit about what inspired you
to start the company.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Sure, so, I'll take it back.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
So, my parents actually immigrated to the US from China
and their first two jobs are being a dishwasher and
a waitress in Ohio.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's where I grew up, and so.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
I kind of grew up in like the craziness of
that of restaurants. It's super fun and I kind of
got hooked on it, you know, like once you're in it,
you just you love the chaos. Now fast forward a
little bit. I was in college, and when I was
in college, it was during the rise of the gig economy.
So at Princeton, I studied public policy and one of
(02:02):
the things that we were looking at was economic policy.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
You know, what is the gig economy. It was a
completely new.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Concept at that time, but you had companies like uber Lyft,
DoorDash basically taking the labor model and turning out its head.
So I was looking closely at that, trying to understand, Okay,
the people that are supporting these gig economies, the workers,
you know, where are they coming from, what is the
life path for them? So those were all like just
(02:27):
ideas that were swirling on in my head. And so
let's park that that was going on. I have the
restaurant experience. Now, right before I started landed, I was
actually working in retail. I was working at Gap Inc.
With the CEO there on a bunch of different initiatives,
one of which was our labor because if you have
turnover in your stores, then ultimately you're not necessarily delivering
(02:50):
the best customer experience that you could be. And this
is something that every single brand I talked to is
thinking about. So what we did is we kind of
overhauled the system of how we did hiring and I
took a lot of those parts. And not every company
has the resources of like a GAP Inc. But every
company has the same labor challenges, whether it's at like
the micro scale of a single coffee shop or a
(03:13):
regional ten location pizza shop, or it's a multi hundreds
of location enterprise.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
So I'm all.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Those things kind of came together and that's why we decided,
you know, we're building this the easiest way for restaurants
to hire and the easiest way for candidates to find
a job that's actually the best fit for them. And
then beyond that, what we're thinking through is like, how
can we support those candidates from a finances perspective? So
after somebody comes in the second question is how do.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We retain them?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
So different things thinking there are a bunch of different
topics there that can dive into, like how do people
pay their bills? How do people get paid, how do
people save, how do people get access to credit? Those
are the types of things that we're going to be
tackling next and then finally upskilling. So I call it
the line Livelihood platform because livelihood is not just a job,
(04:03):
but it's also your finances, it's your education, and there's
a lot of stuff for us to do in all
those different categories.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Awesome. So when was the last time you were in Princeton.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I think I went.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
I go to reunions almost every year, so the reunions
are always in May, and basically you enter the orange
bubble we call it, and you have you have joined
a an orange cult. Everyone's wearing tiger printed things or
orange things. It's such a fun time.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
That's cool. Favorite restaurant in Princeton.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yes, it's a Greek a laugh.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Ah, nice, great, great choice.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I'm working in skillm in office most of the
time some times in New York, and yeah, that's a
great spot.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
And you know that entire place was new, it was
like actually renovated and it was opened when I was
when I was at school.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh really, Yeah, have you ever been to.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
CONTI I haven't.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
No, that's one I'm going to have to add because
I haven't even heard of.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It is on the main strip.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
No, where is it? It's Witherspoon. No, oh, okay, might
be on Witherspoon. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Kanti's Pizza is absolutely fantastic. It's kind of off, like
out of the way, it's not I don't think it's
that close to campus, but it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I highly recommend it.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I'll be there. Pizza is my favorite food.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That was Yeah, that was one of port Noise. I
think it's a top ten Dave Portnoy one slice rating,
very high up there. Yeah, yeah, so definitely check it out.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Next next may you got you got some homework to do?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
All right, let's let's start with a five thousand foot view.
You know a lot of the economic indicators are weakening,
but not the unemployment numbers.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So how strong is the US job market right now?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
So it's kind of tricky, right because on the surface,
it looks like unemployment is looking good, right, and unemployment
one of the first indicators of economic health. But if
you actually like double click into that unemployment number. Like,
labor participation is high, it's about sixty two percent right now,
(06:23):
but it's still lower than the pre pandemic levels. So
labor participation has fallen. You know, it's not a ton,
but it's fallen. And when you actually look at like
the roles that people are taking on, a lot of
them tend to be more like part time roles, so
they're not necessarily these full time roles that would indicate
like a more stable job. There are a lot of
(06:45):
part time roles and the number of part time workers
is increasing actually, so before like literally like you're on
like now we're looking at like nearly four million workers
are part time workers. So, you know, that's something to
think about because in the restaurant industry, being a full
time worker doesn't mean that you're working like nine to
(07:06):
five forty hours a week. Being a full time worker
means that you have some consistency of like thirty hours
that you're getting scheduled in per week. Now, if you're
below that, then that means that you probably have to
have more than one job.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, So yeah, and that's something I definitely wanted to ask.
So let's ask it.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Now, what percentage of the workforce are working multiple jobs.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Well, so what we're seeing landed and we're you know,
focused on this restaurant industry, the hospitality industry, our industry
is seeing that each on average, an employee will hold
two point one jobs simultaneously. So two point one jobs,
I mean, so basically two, but actually in some cases
like three. And that's because maybe you'll get ten hours
(07:48):
over here, twenty hours over here, twenty hours over there,
and that's what you need to support your livelihood. But
it's interesting too though, because there are there's kind of
this rise of and you know this for while, Mike,
these like daytime cafes, like daytime cafes are doing super well.
Coffee shops are doing you know, I think they're growing
super fast. You have companies like seven Brew that are
(08:12):
popping up and are going to sweep the nation. Yeah,
and and so you have like all these like kind
of jobs out there that are more like part time
jobs where you can actually hold more than one job simultaneously.
So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Like
having more than one job at the same time is
not a bad thing as long as they're not in
direct conflict with one another and they kind of help
(08:34):
drive stability in like your livelihood.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, so have you seen the actual number of full
time job shrink?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
So there are a ton of open jobs. It's the problem.
You know, there are a ton of open jobs. And so.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Like the number of full time jobs, like it's kind
of stable, maybe a little bit up, but there's so
many open jobs, Like it's it's kind of crazy. And
and you actually also see like gig economy. I brought
up the gig economy that's like grown a lot, and
that's kind of cannibalizing some of like the full time
(09:12):
job openings. Like I know that we are going to
talk about this, and like it's it's kind of crazy.
But like literally a gig economy is of eighty percent
since which rate since January twenty twenty, Like eighty percent
growth and just a short timeframe. And that's like, you know,
that's a contributing factor to keeping low unemployment levels. But
(09:35):
that's not like that's not like a sustainable like full
time job.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, so is this mainly younger workers that are are
you know involved in these gig jobs?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Not necessarily, so there are a lot of workers kind
of like you know, there are the younger workers, of course,
but a lot of the workers actually, like they are
ages like twenty five to forty, and you know, there's
a big population of them that are the immigrant like workers, right,
the immigrant workers are coming up, but of course they're
you know, they can work in the US, go through
(10:07):
the background tracks, they do all that stuff, but they're
trying to like get their footing here still.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
So it's an easy way to get footing.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
But really, like there's a they can get jobs that
are not like the gig economy jobs, just it's just
that they have to like really get their bearings once
they've like moved over.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Okay, Yeah, I find that interesting because I'd assume it
would be the younger cohorts people that aren't ye in
a hurry to get health insurance and stuff like that, right.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, And I mean so there aren't like a lot
of these companies that have popped up to support gig workers,
like everything like help you get loans to get a car,
help you get loans to get it like you know,
mopad helps you actually get the health insurance and things
like that. But it's tough because it's like it's expensive
(10:58):
and you see states like California, you know, always the
first ones to do it, and then you have like
New York City and you know, they just passed like
the twenty dollars minimum wage, and that's going to change
things because full time employees are are entitled to certain benefits,
(11:18):
but part time employees and mental states are not. So like,
how will that change how restaurants think about their labor
mix is going to be it's gonna We're going to
see a lot of changes because California is just one state.
But if you're going to change it for all California,
basically the rest of the country is going to follow.
(11:39):
And the company has to like think about things from
that perspective and they're not going to just isolate it
to California. It really is like challenging companies to think
through everything.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, we wrote that when we wrote our note about
the about the passage of that bill, and it's you know, Oregon, Washington,
New York, Illinois. Those states are pretty fast fallows when
it comes to some of the workers legislation that comes
through California.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So you mentioned the gig economy has been around for.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
A little while. How how has it evolved over the
years and what industries hasn't impacted.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
The most absolutely, so the gig economy.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
You know, when it first started, like all these companies
that were even before like door Dash and Uber and Lyft,
there was like there were a bunch of other companies
that you know, ultimately didn't make it, and these were
the ones that succeeded. But what they really did was
they like it was a labor arbitrage opportunity. You could
take somebody from one place and bring them to another
(12:39):
place where it might be a little bit more affluent,
and people are willing to pay for the service of comedians.
And so this is interesting too because like at the
same time as gig economy has been rising in the
past like about like almost a decade, you also have
the gen z and the millennial like generations that have
(13:00):
grown up on the internet with instant gratification. So as
like the services have evolved, it's kind of like chicken
and egg because like the consumer now frankly demands this
type of instant gratification. So how the gig ecomny has
evolved is okay, great. It like started out with just cars,
all right, we need to get around in cities. But
(13:21):
then now it's and then you have like door dash
and grub hub, and now everybody needs their food like
at their doorstep in like thirty minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like I know, if if I.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
See a restaurant takes more than thirty minutes to deliver something,
I'm probably not going.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
To order from it because everybody is so impatient.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Nowadays, and so like the consumer now frankly demands it.
And this has really like expanded outside of just you know, transportation,
It's expanded outside of restaurants and hospitality where I mean
most QSR is, like you know, fifty to seventy percent
of their orders are like supported by the gig economy
their delivery type orders. So that's there. But then also
(14:03):
like we got to think about like warehousing and logistics.
I mean, I think all of us knew about like
the crazy supply chain crises that were happening in the
past couple of years.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And why is that.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, like, actually warehousing and storage and couriers and messengers,
air transportation, all these industries are also not as high,
not as up as like gig economy, which is eighty percent.
But since February twenty twenty, they've been up like nearly
thirty to forty percent each of these categories. So what
that means is like, now anything that we want to
(14:36):
order like we need like this type of like instant speed.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
There are companies like Gettier here in New York, Fridge
no More that you.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Know, unfortunately, like you know, went out of business or
got acquired Gorillaz, and they were promising ten minute fifteen
minute delivery times.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I mean it's insane.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
And then now you got to also look at other countries,
like places like China, fifteen minute delivery times have been
has been a norm in the major metropolitans for the
past few years. Actually, So it's just we're going to
be moving in this type of direction where it's like
instant gratification is super important. Digital data is super important
(15:15):
because now we're kind of living in this like omni
channel world where everything is omni channel now, so data
has to be omni channel two and every industry is
going to be impacted by it. But we're seeing huge
impacts on hospitality, on transportation, on like home goods, retail, warehousing,
(15:39):
these industries, and these are also the industries that like
you know, land it focuses on because we think about
high volume hiring as of really are sweet spot and
high volume hiring is our sweet spot because they're high turnover.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's high activity industries.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, yep, as we know, our restaurant industry is a
very high turn over our restaurants back to pre pandemic
staffing levels right now.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Well, so it's so like where restaurants have experienced basically
like a year and a half of consecutive employment growth.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
So actually, like we do have the.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Same number of restaurant employees about twelve point four million
today as we did in early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Okay, so that's good.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But the problem is that like a lot of like
the restaurant jobs have become complex and they're just more
of them, Like there are a lot of open jobs.
And it's because if we look at like the restaurant
and how it's evolved in the past couple of years,
like we basically turbo charged and industry by like a
decade in the span of like a year, which is crazy.
(16:47):
And so like we have the introduction of like everybody
has to be on third party delivery now you just
have to. Everybody has a loyalty program. Everybody has some
not everybody, but most have some type of like cloud
concept or ghost kitchen concept. Everybody has new hygiene practices
(17:09):
and the good the restaurants that have been doing well
are growing really fast because you know, there's a lot
of cheap commercial real estate that they were able to
kind of snap up in the pits of the pandemic.
So now you know you have this employment growth, but
you have so many new openings. I mean, I think
(17:29):
that probably like a third of all the locations that
we're working on at any given point, Okay, maybe a
third is a lot, but like twenty five percent there
are new openings. Twenty five percent of our clients. The
third of our clients have new openings like literally every month,
and these are multiple, and so I think that like
we can't really compare apples to apples, Like where we
(17:49):
were in February twenty twenty is very different than where
we are now. The jobs are a lot more complex
and there are more jobs, which is why you have
to introduce technology. Because restaurants can't continue to higher headcount
to support like their their increasingly complex businesses. They have
to introduce technology in order.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
To keep up.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Okay, how's application volume versus say last year? And then
against pre pandemic levels.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah, so application volume is like looking up like literally
in the past like six months, I would say, like
last last year, it was really challenging because there were,
you know, applications were kind of these like passive ghost
applications where you know, due to how like certain states
(18:37):
had their unemployment benefits set up, like there's a lot
of just like you know, people applying and not necessarily
looking for jobs, and so that that made it very
challenging for the industry. So now we are finding that actually,
like what the metric that we look at is actually
like a cost per application. So rather than the volume
of applications, like what we really monitor heavily in each
(18:59):
of the differences codes across all fifty states which we're
in all fifty states, is the cost application. This is
a good metric because cost application tells you like how
much traffic there is and how expensive that traffic is
in applying for a job. So we actually found that,
you know, because we're good at what we do at LANDED,
(19:21):
you know, we're able to come in at usually like
thirty to forty percent below like benchmark cost p applications.
But even with even among like Landed clients. We're finding that,
like cost applications in the past two quarters have like
dropped around like fifteen to twenty percent drop. Now we're
going to be expecting seasonality. We're going into the holiday season,
(19:42):
and holiday season is always very very competitive, so we
do expect, like you know that to kind of increase
a little bit for the next few months at least,
but then it's going to go back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So cost application is good.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
I mean, you know, paying to get candidates is not
something that every single brand has to do, but every
single brand has to do at some point, like usually
around a new opening, usually around you know, specific like
we call them like nine to one one red locations
that have challenges, maybe a place where you know, manager
turnover is high. It's like nearly seventy percent at QSRs,
(20:18):
which is crazy, Like you know, they're like the lifeblood
of a business. But when you have manager turnover, you
would expect more turnover in the hourlies as well. So
it's kind of like something that we have in our
arsenal to help. But something that we are talking very
closely is that cost for application metric.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Interesting, many workers didn't want to go back to the
restaurant industry post pandemic. Is that still the case there
or are some some previous restaurant employees return into the business.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
We do see not necessarily it's like previous restaurant employees,
so you know, now they have like a lot these
different options. But we do see like a new crop
of restaurant employees. So before in twenty twenty, we had
about like seven about seven percent of the employees were
(21:13):
just for restaurants of the employees, and when we look
at it now, it's actually a little bit higher. It's
like around like eight percent of all employees are like
you know, in the restaurant industry. So as a whole,
if you look at it, it looks like there are
more people turning to that. But I think a lot
of that's coming from like the new the new crop
(21:36):
of gen Z employees, you know, seventy percent of hourly
workers nowadays or gen Z.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It makes sense. But because everyone.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Is you know, a lot of your workers are gen Z,
you're going to have to rethink, like how to retain
gen Z employees is different?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, how is it different?
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I mean I think that there are a lot of
stereotypes out there, Okay, but there are like things that
really like come down to, like you know, we run
we've run surveys and we like we have over a
million candidates that you know, we've engaged at any given point
in time. We have like you know, millions of like
job applications that we've engaged with, and we're finding that
(22:15):
the most actually like it's this is kind of crazy,
but like a third of gens employees actually care more
about career growth than the pay necessarily. So that's interesting
because that means that you know, they're thinking about, like, Okay,
what do I get in the long term Here this
kind of goes back to what I was talking about
with like gig workers, like what do you get in
(22:36):
the long term, like working a gig job? Like you
don't want to necessarily be doing that the rest of
your life.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
That landed what we think a lot about is more like, Okay,
how do we help someone build their career in the
industries that we serve. The other thing that we're that
brands that are preferred employers think about is like really
playing up like that social awareness and responsibility that they
are that they are bringing to the community. So this
(23:05):
is actually crazy number if from our surveying is that
fifty one percent of gen Z employees will actually take
a lower salary if their employer was environmentally responsible. So
that's kind of interesting because like, you know, sometimes you
hear out there like oh, my workers like move down
the street for ten cents pay up or like career
for twenty cent pay up, and that is you know,
(23:26):
that is still definitely the case. But like these new
like entry level team member employees, like you know, think
about things a little bit differently, you know, they were
they've kind of.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Grown up in like this new era.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
And then the other thing that's going to be really
important this is going to be I will predict now
calling it right here on chopping it up with Mike
and Vibian that in ten in the next like ten years,
daily pay or even streaming pay like by the hour,
by the minute, by the second, which is what you
(23:58):
know basically gig economy already brings to the table, is
going to be a necessary part of the job because
you know, eighty one percent of hourly workers are worried
about paying their bills. They're living paycheck to paycheck, and
having a two week or even weekly like pay cycle
for them is just it's like it's actually quite archaic,
(24:19):
like it doesn't actually match up to like the speed
and the instant gratification that we know are themes.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, that's that's cool, very cool.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So which restaurant chains are doing a good job of
attracting GM talent hourly talent and how are they doing it?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So you know, we we work with a bunch of
different companies like that, like that really range and like,
of course I have like a little I have soft
spot for our clients, but like, you know, we see
companies that are doing some pretty cool stuff. So like
Kava for example, Like they are very focused on you know,
(24:58):
they've super well and they're very like technology focused. They
really understand that the general manager is really the life
blood of their business. And they have gardens, you know,
they have these gardens of managers and gardens of restaurants
and they are all about just like actually the support center,
(25:19):
like the HQ supporting their managers. Like their managers are
really like the ones running the show, and they make
sure that you know anything that what the manager needs
to focus on day to day is guest experience and
like the quality of their product, so the food, the beverages.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And everything else.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
They're thinking about technology and bringing technology in and AI.
Generative AI is a hot topic in this area because
and like, you know, what we're able to bring the
table is, hey, all that manual stuff that their managers
are doing, they don't need to do anymore, like Landed
can help take care of it. But then also like
(25:58):
personalization is the other piece. So one of our clients is.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Uh, you know, lou Mal Natties.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Lu Mal Naughties has been known in the Chicago, you know,
into Chicago world forever and they are expanding rapidly across
the US because they've done super well. And one of
the things that like, you know, they care a lot
about is like bringing that family, like you know, old
school Chicago deep dish, like across across the US to
(26:24):
Wisconsin to Arizona. And so personalization of your interactions with
people are super important. That's another thing that gen z
and millennials care about. They don't want to talk to
a chatbot, Like how many times have you called and
you're talking to a chat bot and you just repeatedly
hit zero zero.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I want to talk to human being.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah, And you know the worst is when they respond
and they're.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Like, no, sorry, we don't recognize the zero. And I'm like, what,
like I'm never going to talk to a human beings?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Yeah, yes, And so like you know, we're in the
hospitality into street. We're in the hospitality business is fundamentally
human business. And yet we think about like our employees
and the employee retention, and we're like, you know, once
they started at the job, we need to make sure
they have a great experience. Well what about before they
start at the job, because your first impression with the
employee is like how you show up to the employee
(27:17):
and the application process, so personalizing the outreach, making sure
that you're really fast, making sure that you are like
on top of it. Everybody likes to talk to somebody
who is communicative, personalized, fasten the response, and thorough and
frankly like managers if they're doing that like themselves on
top of all the other things that we just described,
that's part of a manager's job, like does not have
(27:39):
time for that, otherwise they'd be a full time recruiter.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Like that's why the recruiter job like exists.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
So that's something that we're able to help with, is
like that personalization and like leveraging AI and technology to
do so rather than necessarily having to hire, not even hire,
but just like you know, put more stuff on your
GM's shoulders and on their plate.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, so you mentioned that Kava has very strong communications
between their gms and their support center. What are the
implications for chains that don't do this well and how
can land and help solve that issue?
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
So, I mean the big implication of it is that
we're in a competitive world.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
If you have a finite labor pool, and that labor
pool has a lot of options, not just even in
the restaurant industry, but in other industries, you know, because
there's also the rise of remote work too, then you're
going to just stay perpetually understaffed, and there's just like
negative cycle, right, because you've got to when you're understaffed,
(28:45):
what are you doing. You're probably paying over time, you
might be paying for temp, You're probably cutting hours and
like the most important time of the day for example,
like late night labor. Late night labor is a nightmare
like for most companies, but that is a big opportunity
because late night tends to have larger basket values compared
(29:06):
to their daytime counterparts. They frequently require delivery services, so
that's something that you have to have set up. And
if you're not mastering late night or you're not becoming
a top player in late night, you are going to
be missing out on a huge revenue opportunity. Okay, but
you can't open late night when you're understaffed, right, and
if no one wants to come work from you know,
(29:27):
eleven pm to four am for you or on the
flip side, you know, we work with Tim Horton's duncan
want to come in at four am to bake your donuts,
you know, then you're kind of out of luck.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So either you.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
It's kind of like a twofold right, So there's so
manytinential stuff that we can do. That's like in the
short term, you can introduce like more competitive pay. Okay, great,
you can, but without like the money piece, Like one
in every three candidates hourly candidates will just take the
first job they're offered actually because you know, they're wanting
to move fast. So even if you pay the exact
(30:04):
same amount as the person next door, if you're just
faster at getting to them and you know landed. Of course,
we make everything very immediate. We're twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, constantly communicating with candidates, delivering personalized
responses using our generative AI plus our human recruitment specialist team.
Then you're going to be able to like with that,
(30:25):
you're going to be able to stay competitive even without
hitting necessarily or bottom line, you just have to be
faster and better at running operations. And you know, the
long term thing there is like, also, how do you
make sure that you're actually betting for quality candidates? Quality
candidates are something that everybody wants. Like nobody ever says
they don't want a quality candidate, but everybody does desperation
(30:47):
hiring like everybody. And so when you're down a couple
people and you have your general manager who's way overpaid
to be flipping burgers flipping burgers, then you know you're
not necessarily like running an efficient operation, but you have
to do that to kind of limp on. So what
we do is we kind of sit down and understand, Okay,
what does a quality candidate look like for every single
(31:10):
you know, brand and for every role because it varies,
and so once we understand what that is, then we
go and then we actually develop like you know, hiring plan,
we go and find those quality candidates so that really
your managers are only spending time with quality people who
can be on their team soon, so they're.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Not wasting time with people who are not going to
be good fits. Instead, they're spending more time.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
They have more time to spend them with their existing
team to know how the existing team is doing. And
so it sounds like you know, wave a magic wand
and Landed can do all these things. But of course
it's like a two way street. We got to sit
down and understand like that holistic strategy and then we
will we will implement that for you and then just
(31:52):
have your managers make that ultimate hiring decision because we
of course would never take that away from them.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, that's been a huge theme with our companies, the
companies that we cover, or is you know, freeing up
time for the gms, freeing up time for them to
touch the tables and coach the team and.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And not have to get into that daily grind. You know.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I think I think everybody's pretty much woken up to
the fact that you know, you need good, good, strong
gms run in your restaurants to be successful. You know,
Another one of the themes that we've written about this
year was late night and how some of the chains
that do a really strong business at late night. Jack
(32:31):
in the Box leads the pack, but you know, Wendy's
McDonald's has some twenty four hour stores that they had
kind of the sales tail wind because late night would
get better. And you kind of touched on it a
little bit in your previous answer, So, so what is
going on? Why is late night labor improving? Is it
just them offering more pay or is there something else
(32:54):
in there?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah, so lately labor is improving. We do see Actually
this like introtion of like tiered pay rates. So tiered
pay rates is like something that like was previously mostly
happening around like seasonal like around like holiday basically. But
now I think that, uh that restaurants are getting smarter
(33:17):
about this, where they're like, okay, like this is a
supply and demand problem, right, so if I increase like
the price of the of the demand, then the supply
will the you know, the supply will come, and so
uh that this is something that like I think this
is a norm that had to be introduced like during
(33:37):
like the COVID timeframe where it was just like.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
A mess, and so now I actually.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Very frequently see like you know, actually twenty percent pay
rate increases for like certain for certain shifts, and so
late like late night labor is improving because they have
these like you know, they have that increased pay you
know capacity. But then also back to like what I
(34:04):
was talking about with like the like having each person
have two to three jobs simultaneously. If you have a
day job or like a day part job, then you
can also work some late night as well. And so
that's that's something that is really interesting and ultimately, like
the other thing about late night is that late night
(34:25):
you it's a lot more about delivery and like digital ordering.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So like, you know, one of the.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Things that we see is a lot of folks in
the restaurant industry have faced you know, sixty two percent
of workers have felt like they've been mistreated by customers.
I guess, so you know, at some point in time, right,
like somebody else is having a bad day, they take
it out on you.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
When it's late night. It's a lot more about like
interfacing with a computer.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
You know, you're interfacing with like these third party apps
that are coming in you just have to do your job. Well,
it's you know, the back of house, and then you
and then you're able to kind of like push that forward.
One of the things that at Landed we do is
we also support multi lingual like hiring, so we're able
to have like do hiring in like many different languages.
(35:15):
And there has been like a surge in like non
English speakers like entering the restaurant industry in the past
few years. And but it's really important. I see actually
certain restaurants like running their entire back of house in
Spanish actually, and all the instructions are written in Spanish.
And these are like large chains like these are they're
quite large. And so that's interesting, right, because we have
(35:37):
to be a lot more accommodating of the diverse, like
of the diverse labor population and make sure that you
can be the employer of choice, not just to English speakers,
but to everybody who might be working in the industry.
And when you have like a certain day part in
your shift that allows for you know, anybody to come
(35:57):
in even if maybe they don't have the front of
house experience, maybe if they are like native speakers of
another language, it expands your pool. But you can also
expand your pool if you just make your entire hiring
process more accommodating of different languages.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, and just removing stress from the employees that you
do have that maybe you know, English is a second
language for it, right.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Exactly, shakesheck is tried a four day work week? Does
it work?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Four day work week is a tricky one. I think,
like what we've actually seen work really well because like
for hourly workers, like the four day work week is
kind of like it happens to some of them anyway.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
But really like where it comes down to is like
the general manager.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
When I talk about the four day work week, when
when I hear about like, you know, days off, I
hear about it primarily around like that manager role, because
the manager is, like, you know, it's a stressful job.
I actually hear some companies that have like two managers
per restaurant so that there can be like a little
bit more coverage, and they actually found that that's cost
effective because manager turnover is so expensive. So what I'm
(37:05):
actually seeing work really well is having two consecutive days
for managers to take time off so it doesn't have
to be Saturday, Sunday, but it could be Monday Tuesday.
But as long as they have those two consecutive days
and then maybe during those days you have the AGM
or maybe you have like that kind of the other GM,
or maybe you have the district manager kind of just
be a be like more hands.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
On during those two days.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
That's really the thing that is like making managers a
lot happier and helping them like stay. So that's like
something a way to come back. That's sixty eight seventy
percent manager turnover, and so I would really encourage folks
to like think about it more so from the perspective
of the manager.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Like four day work week.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Good, but really like two consecutive days off is like
really what I'm seeing like works.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Well, yeah, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
You need it's a tough job, so you need those
two days to kind of decompress.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yes, exactly exactly instead.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Of Sunday scaries.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It might be the Tuesday scaries or something, but exactly yes.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
And I mean also like that's a lot of you know,
Chick fil A has Sunday's closed like every every week, right, and.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
You know there are other businesses that do that. You know,
that's like, I don't.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I think a lot of businesses are the can't like
necessarily do that, But I mean there are many companies
that do.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Quite well that make it work for sure. All right,
good stuff. Listen, next time you're in Princeton. Let me know.
Maybe we'll do conties together.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
All right, that's the plan.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Awesome, I'll hold you to it. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Thanks for doing this. Where can the audience go to
find more about Landed?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
You can hit me up at vivianatgotlanded dot com. I
am all at ears and you can also go to
our website at gotlanded dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
G O T L A n d ed dot com.
You can also find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
All right, stup y'all restaurant tours that I know have
have great things to say about you and the business.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So I also want to thank the audience for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
If you liked the episode, please share it with your
friends and colleagues. Check back in a couple of weeks.
I'll be interviewing Bloomberg's US restaurants reporter daniellis Er Tory
Cortina
Welcome to Chopping It Up.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm your host, Mike Hallon, the senior Restaurant and Food
Service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Today we're joined by Vivian Wang,
the founder and CEO of Landed. Welcome to the pod, Vivian,
thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, I'm pumped to do this, looking forward to it.
Let's jump right in. What are you in the team
at Landed do for your clients?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
So, we're tackling the number one challenge facing the restaurant industry,
which is labor. So we help source that, engage screen
candidates from team members up to managers.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So some of our clients range.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
From McDonald's and Kava all the way to the Michael
Minna Group and invited club corps. So we really run
the whole gamut and and really just the goals to
get people staffed.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Super simple goal.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
There and is it GM's houries both both.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We call it everything within the four walls we can do.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, cool, Talk a little bit about what inspired you
to start the company.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Sure, so, I'll take it back.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
So, my parents actually immigrated to the US from China
and their first two jobs are being a dishwasher and
a waitress in Ohio.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's where I grew up, and so.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
I kind of grew up in like the craziness of
that of restaurants. It's super fun and I kind of
got hooked on it, you know, like once you're in it,
you just you love the chaos. Now fast forward a
little bit. I was in college, and when I was
in college, it was during the rise of the gig economy.
So at Princeton, I studied public policy and one of
(02:02):
the things that we were looking at was economic policy.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
You know, what is the gig economy. It was a
completely new.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Concept at that time, but you had companies like uber Lyft,
DoorDash basically taking the labor model and turning out its head.
So I was looking closely at that, trying to understand, Okay,
the people that are supporting these gig economies, the workers,
you know, where are they coming from, what is the
life path for them? So those were all like just
(02:27):
ideas that were swirling on in my head. And so
let's park that that was going on. I have the
restaurant experience. Now, right before I started landed, I was
actually working in retail. I was working at Gap Inc.
With the CEO there on a bunch of different initiatives,
one of which was our labor because if you have
turnover in your stores, then ultimately you're not necessarily delivering
(02:50):
the best customer experience that you could be. And this
is something that every single brand I talked to is
thinking about. So what we did is we kind of
overhauled the system of how we did hiring and I
took a lot of those parts. And not every company
has the resources of like a GAP Inc. But every
company has the same labor challenges, whether it's at like
the micro scale of a single coffee shop or a
(03:13):
regional ten location pizza shop, or it's a multi hundreds
of location enterprise.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
So I'm all.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Those things kind of came together and that's why we decided,
you know, we're building this the easiest way for restaurants
to hire and the easiest way for candidates to find
a job that's actually the best fit for them. And
then beyond that, what we're thinking through is like, how
can we support those candidates from a finances perspective? So
after somebody comes in the second question is how do.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We retain them?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
So different things thinking there are a bunch of different
topics there that can dive into, like how do people
pay their bills? How do people get paid, how do
people save, how do people get access to credit? Those
are the types of things that we're going to be
tackling next and then finally upskilling. So I call it
the line Livelihood platform because livelihood is not just a job,
(04:03):
but it's also your finances, it's your education, and there's
a lot of stuff for us to do in all
those different categories.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Awesome. So when was the last time you were in Princeton.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I think I went.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
I go to reunions almost every year, so the reunions
are always in May, and basically you enter the orange
bubble we call it, and you have you have joined
a an orange cult. Everyone's wearing tiger printed things or
orange things. It's such a fun time.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
That's cool. Favorite restaurant in Princeton.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yes, it's a Greek a laugh.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Ah, nice, great, great choice.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I'm working in skillm in office most of the
time some times in New York, and yeah, that's a
great spot.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
And you know that entire place was new, it was
like actually renovated and it was opened when I was
when I was at school.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh really, Yeah, have you ever been to.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
CONTI I haven't.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
No, that's one I'm going to have to add because
I haven't even heard of.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It is on the main strip.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
No, where is it? It's Witherspoon. No, oh, okay, might
be on Witherspoon. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Kanti's Pizza is absolutely fantastic. It's kind of off, like
out of the way, it's not I don't think it's
that close to campus, but it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I highly recommend it.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I'll be there. Pizza is my favorite food.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That was Yeah, that was one of port Noise. I
think it's a top ten Dave Portnoy one slice rating,
very high up there. Yeah, yeah, so definitely check it out.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Next next may you got you got some homework to do?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
All right, let's let's start with a five thousand foot view.
You know a lot of the economic indicators are weakening,
but not the unemployment numbers.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So how strong is the US job market right now?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
So it's kind of tricky, right because on the surface,
it looks like unemployment is looking good, right, and unemployment
one of the first indicators of economic health. But if
you actually like double click into that unemployment number. Like,
labor participation is high, it's about sixty two percent right now,
(06:23):
but it's still lower than the pre pandemic levels. So
labor participation has fallen. You know, it's not a ton,
but it's fallen. And when you actually look at like
the roles that people are taking on, a lot of
them tend to be more like part time roles, so
they're not necessarily these full time roles that would indicate
like a more stable job. There are a lot of
(06:45):
part time roles and the number of part time workers
is increasing actually, so before like literally like you're on
like now we're looking at like nearly four million workers
are part time workers. So, you know, that's something to
think about because in the restaurant industry, being a full
time worker doesn't mean that you're working like nine to
(07:06):
five forty hours a week. Being a full time worker
means that you have some consistency of like thirty hours
that you're getting scheduled in per week. Now, if you're
below that, then that means that you probably have to
have more than one job.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, So yeah, and that's something I definitely wanted to ask.
So let's ask it.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Now, what percentage of the workforce are working multiple jobs.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Well, so what we're seeing landed and we're you know,
focused on this restaurant industry, the hospitality industry, our industry
is seeing that each on average, an employee will hold
two point one jobs simultaneously. So two point one jobs,
I mean, so basically two, but actually in some cases
like three. And that's because maybe you'll get ten hours
(07:48):
over here, twenty hours over here, twenty hours over there,
and that's what you need to support your livelihood. But
it's interesting too though, because there are there's kind of
this rise of and you know this for while, Mike,
these like daytime cafes, like daytime cafes are doing super well.
Coffee shops are doing you know, I think they're growing
super fast. You have companies like seven Brew that are
(08:12):
popping up and are going to sweep the nation. Yeah,
and and so you have like all these like kind
of jobs out there that are more like part time
jobs where you can actually hold more than one job simultaneously.
So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Like
having more than one job at the same time is
not a bad thing as long as they're not in
direct conflict with one another and they kind of help
(08:34):
drive stability in like your livelihood.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, so have you seen the actual number of full
time job shrink?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
So there are a ton of open jobs. It's the problem.
You know, there are a ton of open jobs. And so.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Like the number of full time jobs, like it's kind
of stable, maybe a little bit up, but there's so
many open jobs, Like it's it's kind of crazy. And
and you actually also see like gig economy. I brought
up the gig economy that's like grown a lot, and
that's kind of cannibalizing some of like the full time
(09:12):
job openings. Like I know that we are going to
talk about this, and like it's it's kind of crazy.
But like literally a gig economy is of eighty percent
since which rate since January twenty twenty, Like eighty percent
growth and just a short timeframe. And that's like, you know,
that's a contributing factor to keeping low unemployment levels. But
(09:35):
that's not like that's not like a sustainable like full
time job.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, so is this mainly younger workers that are are
you know involved in these gig jobs?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Not necessarily, so there are a lot of workers kind
of like you know, there are the younger workers, of course,
but a lot of the workers actually, like they are
ages like twenty five to forty, and you know, there's
a big population of them that are the immigrant like workers, right,
the immigrant workers are coming up, but of course they're
you know, they can work in the US, go through
(10:07):
the background tracks, they do all that stuff, but they're
trying to like get their footing here still.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
So it's an easy way to get footing.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
But really, like there's a they can get jobs that
are not like the gig economy jobs, just it's just
that they have to like really get their bearings once
they've like moved over.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Okay, Yeah, I find that interesting because I'd assume it
would be the younger cohorts people that aren't ye in
a hurry to get health insurance and stuff like that, right.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, And I mean so there aren't like a lot
of these companies that have popped up to support gig workers,
like everything like help you get loans to get a car,
help you get loans to get it like you know,
mopad helps you actually get the health insurance and things
like that. But it's tough because it's like it's expensive
(10:58):
and you see states like California, you know, always the
first ones to do it, and then you have like
New York City and you know, they just passed like
the twenty dollars minimum wage, and that's going to change
things because full time employees are are entitled to certain benefits,
(11:18):
but part time employees and mental states are not. So like,
how will that change how restaurants think about their labor
mix is going to be it's gonna We're going to
see a lot of changes because California is just one state.
But if you're going to change it for all California,
basically the rest of the country is going to follow.
(11:39):
And the company has to like think about things from
that perspective and they're not going to just isolate it
to California. It really is like challenging companies to think
through everything.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, we wrote that when we wrote our note about
the about the passage of that bill, and it's you know, Oregon, Washington,
New York, Illinois. Those states are pretty fast fallows when
it comes to some of the workers legislation that comes
through California.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So you mentioned the gig economy has been around for.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
A little while. How how has it evolved over the
years and what industries hasn't impacted.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
The most absolutely, so the gig economy.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
You know, when it first started, like all these companies
that were even before like door Dash and Uber and Lyft,
there was like there were a bunch of other companies
that you know, ultimately didn't make it, and these were
the ones that succeeded. But what they really did was
they like it was a labor arbitrage opportunity. You could
take somebody from one place and bring them to another
(12:39):
place where it might be a little bit more affluent,
and people are willing to pay for the service of comedians.
And so this is interesting too because like at the
same time as gig economy has been rising in the
past like about like almost a decade, you also have
the gen z and the millennial like generations that have
(13:00):
grown up on the internet with instant gratification. So as
like the services have evolved, it's kind of like chicken
and egg because like the consumer now frankly demands this
type of instant gratification. So how the gig ecomny has
evolved is okay, great. It like started out with just cars,
all right, we need to get around in cities. But
(13:21):
then now it's and then you have like door dash
and grub hub, and now everybody needs their food like
at their doorstep in like thirty minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like I know, if if I.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
See a restaurant takes more than thirty minutes to deliver something,
I'm probably not going.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
To order from it because everybody is so impatient.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Nowadays, and so like the consumer now frankly demands it.
And this has really like expanded outside of just you know, transportation,
It's expanded outside of restaurants and hospitality where I mean
most QSR is, like you know, fifty to seventy percent
of their orders are like supported by the gig economy
their delivery type orders. So that's there. But then also
(14:03):
like we got to think about like warehousing and logistics.
I mean, I think all of us knew about like
the crazy supply chain crises that were happening in the
past couple of years.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And why is that.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, like, actually warehousing and storage and couriers and messengers,
air transportation, all these industries are also not as high,
not as up as like gig economy, which is eighty percent.
But since February twenty twenty, they've been up like nearly
thirty to forty percent each of these categories. So what
that means is like, now anything that we want to
(14:36):
order like we need like this type of like instant speed.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
There are companies like Gettier here in New York, Fridge
no More that you.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Know, unfortunately, like you know, went out of business or
got acquired Gorillaz, and they were promising ten minute fifteen
minute delivery times.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I mean it's insane.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
And then now you got to also look at other countries,
like places like China, fifteen minute delivery times have been
has been a norm in the major metropolitans for the
past few years. Actually, So it's just we're going to
be moving in this type of direction where it's like
instant gratification is super important. Digital data is super important
(15:15):
because now we're kind of living in this like omni
channel world where everything is omni channel now, so data
has to be omni channel two and every industry is
going to be impacted by it. But we're seeing huge
impacts on hospitality, on transportation, on like home goods, retail, warehousing,
(15:39):
these industries, and these are also the industries that like
you know, land it focuses on because we think about
high volume hiring as of really are sweet spot and
high volume hiring is our sweet spot because they're high turnover.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's high activity industries.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, yep, as we know, our restaurant industry is a
very high turn over our restaurants back to pre pandemic
staffing levels right now.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Well, so it's so like where restaurants have experienced basically
like a year and a half of consecutive employment growth.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
So actually, like we do have the.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Same number of restaurant employees about twelve point four million
today as we did in early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Okay, so that's good.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But the problem is that like a lot of like
the restaurant jobs have become complex and they're just more
of them, Like there are a lot of open jobs.
And it's because if we look at like the restaurant
and how it's evolved in the past couple of years,
like we basically turbo charged and industry by like a
decade in the span of like a year, which is crazy.
(16:47):
And so like we have the introduction of like everybody
has to be on third party delivery now you just
have to. Everybody has a loyalty program. Everybody has some
not everybody, but most have some type of like cloud
concept or ghost kitchen concept. Everybody has new hygiene practices
(17:09):
and the good the restaurants that have been doing well
are growing really fast because you know, there's a lot
of cheap commercial real estate that they were able to
kind of snap up in the pits of the pandemic.
So now you know you have this employment growth, but
you have so many new openings. I mean, I think
(17:29):
that probably like a third of all the locations that
we're working on at any given point, Okay, maybe a
third is a lot, but like twenty five percent there
are new openings. Twenty five percent of our clients. The
third of our clients have new openings like literally every month,
and these are multiple, and so I think that like
we can't really compare apples to apples, Like where we
(17:49):
were in February twenty twenty is very different than where
we are now. The jobs are a lot more complex
and there are more jobs, which is why you have
to introduce technology. Because restaurants can't continue to higher headcount
to support like their their increasingly complex businesses. They have
to introduce technology in order.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
To keep up.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Okay, how's application volume versus say last year? And then
against pre pandemic levels.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah, so application volume is like looking up like literally
in the past like six months, I would say, like
last last year, it was really challenging because there were,
you know, applications were kind of these like passive ghost
applications where you know, due to how like certain states
(18:37):
had their unemployment benefits set up, like there's a lot
of just like you know, people applying and not necessarily
looking for jobs, and so that that made it very
challenging for the industry. So now we are finding that actually,
like what the metric that we look at is actually
like a cost per application. So rather than the volume
of applications, like what we really monitor heavily in each
(18:59):
of the differences codes across all fifty states which we're
in all fifty states, is the cost application. This is
a good metric because cost application tells you like how
much traffic there is and how expensive that traffic is
in applying for a job. So we actually found that,
you know, because we're good at what we do at LANDED,
(19:21):
you know, we're able to come in at usually like
thirty to forty percent below like benchmark cost p applications.
But even with even among like Landed clients. We're finding that,
like cost applications in the past two quarters have like
dropped around like fifteen to twenty percent drop. Now we're
going to be expecting seasonality. We're going into the holiday season,
(19:42):
and holiday season is always very very competitive, so we
do expect, like you know that to kind of increase
a little bit for the next few months at least,
but then it's going to go back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So cost application is good.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
I mean, you know, paying to get candidates is not
something that every single brand has to do, but every
single brand has to do at some point, like usually
around a new opening, usually around you know, specific like
we call them like nine to one one red locations
that have challenges, maybe a place where you know, manager
turnover is high. It's like nearly seventy percent at QSRs,
(20:18):
which is crazy, Like you know, they're like the lifeblood
of a business. But when you have manager turnover, you
would expect more turnover in the hourlies as well. So
it's kind of like something that we have in our
arsenal to help. But something that we are talking very
closely is that cost for application metric.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Interesting, many workers didn't want to go back to the
restaurant industry post pandemic. Is that still the case there
or are some some previous restaurant employees return into the business.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
We do see not necessarily it's like previous restaurant employees,
so you know, now they have like a lot these
different options. But we do see like a new crop
of restaurant employees. So before in twenty twenty, we had
about like seven about seven percent of the employees were
(21:13):
just for restaurants of the employees, and when we look
at it now, it's actually a little bit higher. It's
like around like eight percent of all employees are like
you know, in the restaurant industry. So as a whole,
if you look at it, it looks like there are
more people turning to that. But I think a lot
of that's coming from like the new the new crop
(21:36):
of gen Z employees, you know, seventy percent of hourly
workers nowadays or gen Z.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It makes sense. But because everyone.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Is you know, a lot of your workers are gen Z,
you're going to have to rethink, like how to retain
gen Z employees is different?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, how is it different?
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I mean I think that there are a lot of
stereotypes out there, Okay, but there are like things that
really like come down to, like you know, we run
we've run surveys and we like we have over a
million candidates that you know, we've engaged at any given point
in time. We have like you know, millions of like
job applications that we've engaged with, and we're finding that
(22:15):
the most actually like it's this is kind of crazy,
but like a third of gens employees actually care more
about career growth than the pay necessarily. So that's interesting
because that means that you know, they're thinking about, like, Okay,
what do I get in the long term Here this
kind of goes back to what I was talking about
with like gig workers, like what do you get in
(22:36):
the long term, like working a gig job? Like you
don't want to necessarily be doing that the rest of
your life.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
That landed what we think a lot about is more like, Okay,
how do we help someone build their career in the
industries that we serve. The other thing that we're that
brands that are preferred employers think about is like really
playing up like that social awareness and responsibility that they
are that they are bringing to the community. So this
(23:05):
is actually crazy number if from our surveying is that
fifty one percent of gen Z employees will actually take
a lower salary if their employer was environmentally responsible. So
that's kind of interesting because like, you know, sometimes you
hear out there like oh, my workers like move down
the street for ten cents pay up or like career
for twenty cent pay up, and that is you know,
(23:26):
that is still definitely the case. But like these new
like entry level team member employees, like you know, think
about things a little bit differently, you know, they were
they've kind of.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Grown up in like this new era.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
And then the other thing that's going to be really
important this is going to be I will predict now
calling it right here on chopping it up with Mike
and Vibian that in ten in the next like ten years,
daily pay or even streaming pay like by the hour,
by the minute, by the second, which is what you
(23:58):
know basically gig economy already brings to the table, is
going to be a necessary part of the job because
you know, eighty one percent of hourly workers are worried
about paying their bills. They're living paycheck to paycheck, and
having a two week or even weekly like pay cycle
for them is just it's like it's actually quite archaic,
(24:19):
like it doesn't actually match up to like the speed
and the instant gratification that we know are themes.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, that's that's cool, very cool.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So which restaurant chains are doing a good job of
attracting GM talent hourly talent and how are they doing it?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So you know, we we work with a bunch of
different companies like that, like that really range and like,
of course I have like a little I have soft
spot for our clients, but like, you know, we see
companies that are doing some pretty cool stuff. So like
Kava for example, Like they are very focused on you know,
(24:58):
they've super well and they're very like technology focused. They
really understand that the general manager is really the life
blood of their business. And they have gardens, you know,
they have these gardens of managers and gardens of restaurants
and they are all about just like actually the support center,
(25:19):
like the HQ supporting their managers. Like their managers are
really like the ones running the show, and they make
sure that you know anything that what the manager needs
to focus on day to day is guest experience and
like the quality of their product, so the food, the beverages.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And everything else.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
They're thinking about technology and bringing technology in and AI.
Generative AI is a hot topic in this area because
and like, you know, what we're able to bring the
table is, hey, all that manual stuff that their managers
are doing, they don't need to do anymore, like Landed
can help take care of it. But then also like
(25:58):
personalization is the other piece. So one of our clients is.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Uh, you know, lou Mal Natties.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Lu Mal Naughties has been known in the Chicago, you know,
into Chicago world forever and they are expanding rapidly across
the US because they've done super well. And one of
the things that like, you know, they care a lot
about is like bringing that family, like you know, old
school Chicago deep dish, like across across the US to
(26:24):
Wisconsin to Arizona. And so personalization of your interactions with
people are super important. That's another thing that gen z
and millennials care about. They don't want to talk to
a chatbot, Like how many times have you called and
you're talking to a chat bot and you just repeatedly
hit zero zero.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I want to talk to human being.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah, And you know the worst is when they respond
and they're.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Like, no, sorry, we don't recognize the zero. And I'm like, what,
like I'm never going to talk to a human beings?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Yeah, yes, And so like you know, we're in the
hospitality into street. We're in the hospitality business is fundamentally
human business. And yet we think about like our employees
and the employee retention, and we're like, you know, once
they started at the job, we need to make sure
they have a great experience. Well what about before they
start at the job, because your first impression with the
employee is like how you show up to the employee
(27:17):
and the application process, so personalizing the outreach, making sure
that you're really fast, making sure that you are like
on top of it. Everybody likes to talk to somebody
who is communicative, personalized, fasten the response, and thorough and
frankly like managers if they're doing that like themselves on
top of all the other things that we just described,
that's part of a manager's job, like does not have
(27:39):
time for that, otherwise they'd be a full time recruiter.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Like that's why the recruiter job like exists.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
So that's something that we're able to help with, is
like that personalization and like leveraging AI and technology to
do so rather than necessarily having to hire, not even hire,
but just like you know, put more stuff on your
GM's shoulders and on their plate.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, so you mentioned that Kava has very strong communications
between their gms and their support center. What are the
implications for chains that don't do this well and how
can land and help solve that issue?
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
So, I mean the big implication of it is that
we're in a competitive world.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
If you have a finite labor pool, and that labor
pool has a lot of options, not just even in
the restaurant industry, but in other industries, you know, because
there's also the rise of remote work too, then you're
going to just stay perpetually understaffed, and there's just like
negative cycle, right, because you've got to when you're understaffed,
(28:45):
what are you doing. You're probably paying over time, you
might be paying for temp, You're probably cutting hours and
like the most important time of the day for example,
like late night labor. Late night labor is a nightmare
like for most companies, but that is a big opportunity
because late night tends to have larger basket values compared
(29:06):
to their daytime counterparts. They frequently require delivery services, so
that's something that you have to have set up. And
if you're not mastering late night or you're not becoming
a top player in late night, you are going to
be missing out on a huge revenue opportunity. Okay, but
you can't open late night when you're understaffed, right, and
if no one wants to come work from you know,
(29:27):
eleven pm to four am for you or on the
flip side, you know, we work with Tim Horton's duncan
want to come in at four am to bake your donuts,
you know, then you're kind of out of luck.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So either you.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
It's kind of like a twofold right, So there's so
manytinential stuff that we can do. That's like in the
short term, you can introduce like more competitive pay. Okay, great,
you can, but without like the money piece, Like one
in every three candidates hourly candidates will just take the
first job they're offered actually because you know, they're wanting
to move fast. So even if you pay the exact
(30:04):
same amount as the person next door, if you're just
faster at getting to them and you know landed. Of course,
we make everything very immediate. We're twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, constantly communicating with candidates, delivering personalized
responses using our generative AI plus our human recruitment specialist team.
Then you're going to be able to like with that,
(30:25):
you're going to be able to stay competitive even without
hitting necessarily or bottom line, you just have to be
faster and better at running operations. And you know, the
long term thing there is like, also, how do you
make sure that you're actually betting for quality candidates? Quality
candidates are something that everybody wants. Like nobody ever says
they don't want a quality candidate, but everybody does desperation
(30:47):
hiring like everybody. And so when you're down a couple
people and you have your general manager who's way overpaid
to be flipping burgers flipping burgers, then you know you're
not necessarily like running an efficient operation, but you have
to do that to kind of limp on. So what
we do is we kind of sit down and understand, Okay,
what does a quality candidate look like for every single
(31:10):
you know, brand and for every role because it varies,
and so once we understand what that is, then we
go and then we actually develop like you know, hiring plan,
we go and find those quality candidates so that really
your managers are only spending time with quality people who
can be on their team soon, so they're.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Not wasting time with people who are not going to
be good fits. Instead, they're spending more time.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
They have more time to spend them with their existing
team to know how the existing team is doing. And
so it sounds like you know, wave a magic wand
and Landed can do all these things. But of course
it's like a two way street. We got to sit
down and understand like that holistic strategy and then we
will we will implement that for you and then just
(31:52):
have your managers make that ultimate hiring decision because we
of course would never take that away from them.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, that's been a huge theme with our companies, the
companies that we cover, or is you know, freeing up
time for the gms, freeing up time for them to
touch the tables and coach the team and.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And not have to get into that daily grind. You know.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I think I think everybody's pretty much woken up to
the fact that you know, you need good, good, strong
gms run in your restaurants to be successful. You know,
Another one of the themes that we've written about this
year was late night and how some of the chains
that do a really strong business at late night. Jack
(32:31):
in the Box leads the pack, but you know, Wendy's
McDonald's has some twenty four hour stores that they had
kind of the sales tail wind because late night would
get better. And you kind of touched on it a
little bit in your previous answer, So, so what is
going on? Why is late night labor improving? Is it
just them offering more pay or is there something else
(32:54):
in there?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah, so lately labor is improving. We do see Actually
this like introtion of like tiered pay rates. So tiered
pay rates is like something that like was previously mostly
happening around like seasonal like around like holiday basically. But
now I think that, uh that restaurants are getting smarter
(33:17):
about this, where they're like, okay, like this is a
supply and demand problem, right, so if I increase like
the price of the of the demand, then the supply
will the you know, the supply will come, and so
uh that this is something that like I think this
is a norm that had to be introduced like during
(33:37):
like the COVID timeframe where it was just like.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
A mess, and so now I actually.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Very frequently see like you know, actually twenty percent pay
rate increases for like certain for certain shifts, and so
late like late night labor is improving because they have
these like you know, they have that increased pay you
know capacity. But then also back to like what I
(34:04):
was talking about with like the like having each person
have two to three jobs simultaneously. If you have a
day job or like a day part job, then you
can also work some late night as well. And so
that's that's something that is really interesting and ultimately, like
the other thing about late night is that late night
(34:25):
you it's a lot more about delivery and like digital ordering.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So like, you know, one of the.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Things that we see is a lot of folks in
the restaurant industry have faced you know, sixty two percent
of workers have felt like they've been mistreated by customers.
I guess, so you know, at some point in time, right,
like somebody else is having a bad day, they take
it out on you.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
When it's late night. It's a lot more about like
interfacing with a computer.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
You know, you're interfacing with like these third party apps
that are coming in you just have to do your job. Well,
it's you know, the back of house, and then you
and then you're able to kind of like push that forward.
One of the things that at Landed we do is
we also support multi lingual like hiring, so we're able
to have like do hiring in like many different languages.
(35:15):
And there has been like a surge in like non
English speakers like entering the restaurant industry in the past
few years. And but it's really important. I see actually
certain restaurants like running their entire back of house in
Spanish actually, and all the instructions are written in Spanish.
And these are like large chains like these are they're
quite large. And so that's interesting, right, because we have
(35:37):
to be a lot more accommodating of the diverse, like
of the diverse labor population and make sure that you
can be the employer of choice, not just to English speakers,
but to everybody who might be working in the industry.
And when you have like a certain day part in
your shift that allows for you know, anybody to come
(35:57):
in even if maybe they don't have the front of
house experience, maybe if they are like native speakers of
another language, it expands your pool. But you can also
expand your pool if you just make your entire hiring
process more accommodating of different languages.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, and just removing stress from the employees that you
do have that maybe you know, English is a second
language for it, right.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Exactly, shakesheck is tried a four day work week? Does
it work?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Four day work week is a tricky one. I think,
like what we've actually seen work really well because like
for hourly workers, like the four day work week is
kind of like it happens to some of them anyway.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
But really like where it comes down to is like
the general manager.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
When I talk about the four day work week, when
when I hear about like, you know, days off, I
hear about it primarily around like that manager role, because
the manager is, like, you know, it's a stressful job.
I actually hear some companies that have like two managers
per restaurant so that there can be like a little
bit more coverage, and they actually found that that's cost
effective because manager turnover is so expensive. So what I'm
(37:05):
actually seeing work really well is having two consecutive days
for managers to take time off so it doesn't have
to be Saturday, Sunday, but it could be Monday Tuesday.
But as long as they have those two consecutive days
and then maybe during those days you have the AGM
or maybe you have like that kind of the other GM,
or maybe you have the district manager kind of just
be a be like more hands.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
On during those two days.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
That's really the thing that is like making managers a
lot happier and helping them like stay. So that's like
something a way to come back. That's sixty eight seventy
percent manager turnover, and so I would really encourage folks
to like think about it more so from the perspective
of the manager.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Like four day work week.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Good, but really like two consecutive days off is like
really what I'm seeing like works.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Well, yeah, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
You need it's a tough job, so you need those
two days to kind of decompress.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yes, exactly exactly instead.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Of Sunday scaries.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It might be the Tuesday scaries or something, but exactly yes.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
And I mean also like that's a lot of you know,
Chick fil A has Sunday's closed like every every week, right, and.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
You know there are other businesses that do that. You know,
that's like, I don't.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I think a lot of businesses are the can't like
necessarily do that, But I mean there are many companies
that do.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Quite well that make it work for sure. All right,
good stuff. Listen, next time you're in Princeton. Let me know.
Maybe we'll do conties together.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
All right, that's the plan.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Awesome, I'll hold you to it. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Thanks for doing this. Where can the audience go to
find more about Landed?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
You can hit me up at vivianatgotlanded dot com. I
am all at ears and you can also go to
our website at gotlanded dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
G O T L A n d ed dot com.
You can also find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
All right, stup y'all restaurant tours that I know have
have great things to say about you and the business.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So I also want to thank the audience for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
If you liked the episode, please share it with your
friends and colleagues. Check back in a couple of weeks.
I'll be interviewing Bloomberg's US restaurants reporter daniellis Er Tory
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