Most Owners Ignore This Costly Hiring Mistake #HiringMistakes #RestaurantLeadership #TeamRetention

13 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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1:16

A YouTube video by Donald Burns addressing costly hiring mistakes in restaurants. The speaker emphasizes extremely high employee turnover in the industry (high 90s–100% for full-service restaurants; 120%+ in quick service), outlines time and cost components of recruiting/hiring (writing ads, interviewing, no-shows), and argues every candidate should be treated as a potential customer — e.g., buying a meal for interviewees so they leave as customers even if not hired.

Questions this video answers

High 90s to 100% annual turnover.

120%+ annual turnover.

Chapters

When I talk about owning a restaurant as a laboratory, there's a really important piece of that. So you look at restaurant industry statistics. The average turnover in a full service, sit down restaurant, casual dining, fine dining, high 90s to 100% annual turnover. You look at it in quick service QSR, you're at 120 plus. So there's a real mathematical equation to calculating the cost of cycling an employee, right? And so I have this whole calculator and it's, it's interesting when you just fill it out. So how much time do you spend recruiting, hiring, writing job ads, this and that? How much time then do you spend interviewing people? How many candidates? How many times do you get stood up? How many times to actually sit down and have these meaningful, intentional interviews that are promoting? While I'm on that subject, I'm going to say that while every candidate may not be an employee, every candidate is absolutely a customer. And boy, I can't tell you how many people miss that opportunity. After somebody comes in out of their way to interview with me, I always buy them a meal to take home. I want them to love the food. Even if they don't get the job, I want them to love the food and I want them to become a customer.