Help Wanted

Field Report: The 2017 labor issue of Restaurant Business magazine was the culmination of more than a year spent devouring the workforce beat. For this story, I pitched the idea of profiling employee archetypes and worked with a company to source proprietary data about restaurant workers that was not already available from the company’s sister data firm Technomic. Together, we crafted personas using survey data from thousands of participants. As a sidebar, I tapped Technomic’s Operator Community Panel to add restaurateur voices on labor concerns. We asked questions, such as “Has recruitment dropped since immigration became a hot topic during the presidential campaign?” and “Why are employees leaving your operation?” Besides the feature, I also wrote or edited the rest of the labor stories in the issue. I was so proud of my team when this magazine won a Neal Award for Best Single Issue. To get the full effect, I’ve linked to the digital version of the print magazine. I apologize in advance for all the annoying virtual page flipping you’ll have to do. Read the story here.