Four Ways Modern Labor Management Helps You Respond to Rising Minimum Wages

While careful labor management has always been an important part of controlling prime costs in the restaurant industry, operators should be looking toward better ways to manage labor costs with competition for labor increasing and a potential minimum wage increase on the horizon.

Many operators are still relying on their general managers’ gut feelings when it comes to schedule creation and enforcement. Among restaurant operators who aren’t, some may be working with out-of-date or simplistic software, and others are still writing schedules manually, rather than taking advantage of the predictive tools in more modern software.

Margins are already thin enough that any improvement in labor makes a difference, but if the minimum wage increases, the impact of optimizing your labor will be greater than ever. I know implementing new technology can feel like a big risk in an uncertain environment, but restaurants who move to an up-to-date labor management platform will be the ones best…