There are more hospitality employees in Canada than in any other industry (and most industries combined), they number in the millions. When you look at restaurants more than half of all restaurants fall into the Quick Service or the QSR category and more that $.60 of every dollar spent dining out is spent in a QSR.

So if the largest number of employees in the hospitality field work in QSR, most of the restaurants in the country are QSR’s and more than 60% of all money spent in restaurants is spent in a QSR’s, then QSR’s should be leading the way in attraction and retention right? Wrong!

I have had the conversation many times about what our friends in the QSR world can do to be better at getting staff, keeping good staff and rewarding their staff. The truth is that in the QSR world turnover is rampant, salaries are low (for the hours required) and there is not a lot of people lining up to work in their stores. As you can see one thing leads to another here. Constant turnover costs a lot and really hits your bottom line, so you can’t pay as much because, well “they’re just going to leave anyway” and so on.

What to do? I have a theory and it has to do with uniforms! Let’s look at 2 companies in the same market segment – Tim’s and Starbucks. Now I know Starbucks has had it challenges in the past year, however we are talking about attraction here and not business levels.

So who has an easier time finding staff? Answer Starbucks.
Who does greater volume per store? Answer Tim’s.
Who should want to have an easier time attracting staff? Answer – obvious!

So why does Starbucks have an easier time attracting staff? I say it is the “cool factor.” Is Starbucks product better? Millions of people each day say NO. Where is the disconnect? I think uniforms have a lot to do with it.

When I walk into a Starbucks I generally see staff aged 16 – 25 dressed casually and with a little style generally in their own cloths. From what I have seen I don’t think that there are any limitations as to the type of cloths (no jeans for example) but they are definitely not in a standard uniform. BUT, I never have any trouble at all identifying who is working there because they are generally the people standing behind the counter asking me what they can get me and oh yeah… wearing a green apron that says Starbucks on it!

Now when I walk into a Tim’s I see something entirely different. I see staff aged 16 – 50+ depending on the time of day and all in a very similar uniform. My first thought here is that how can you make staff ranging from 16 – 50+ happy with one style of uniform? At best you will only make 50% of them happy but in reality it is probably much less than that!

What if I walked into a Tim’s and n o one was wearing a uniform. Some people were in jeans, some in cotton pants, and some in golf shirts or in T-shirts but all in a beige apron with a big Tim’s logo on the front. And for food safe purposes each employee had chosen and was wearing a variety or different head wear (trucker cap, visor, ball cap). Would I be confused as to who was working? Would my experience be ruined? Would the quality of the product be different? I don’t think so. But you would have happier staff who feel better dressed in their own “style.”

How do you design a uniform for employees with such a range in age? Or can you?

It just seems odd to me that many restaurants are moving away from standard uniforms and allowing their staff to have input into what they wear with broad guidelines. I see most of the corporate upper tier casual chains moving in that direction. I have even noticed it in some fine dining establishments. Servers all dressed very differently but you can identify them because they are the people wearing aprons through the dining room.

Why does the QSR industry continue to hold on to the ideal of the uniform?
Do people frequent a certain restaurant because they love strange shades of polyester?

The truth is that eliminating mandatory and often ugly uniforms will open the door to more people applying not to mention it may save your company money. And it will not hurt your business levels, I promise!

We do know that happy staff = happy guest, right?
We do know that people that like their job will refer their friends, right?
We do know that happy staff are more productive, right?
We do know that lower turnover = more $ to the bottom line, right?

Isn’t it enough already with the 1970’s uniforms?