Why Most Learning Management Tools are Failing Restaurant Workers

Restaurant employees can’t learn everything about the restaurant industry in a few shifts. In fact, the restaurant industry is constantly changing and evolving–as should your training strategy! Continuous learning in the restaurant industry can improve employee engagement and allow your staff to gain more and more market knowledge.

It’s time to begin offering restaurant training that employees consider an asset to their jobs. If you don’t ditch your boring, forced, archaic training, your employees will ditch you.

Why Restaurants Need A New Training Strategy 

One of the most exciting things about the restaurant industry is how it is constantly evolving. Covid forced many changes in the industry to fast-track, and advancements have been snowballing ever since. With the spike in online ordering and technology, the restaurant industry looks completely different from two or more years ago. This further emphasizes the importance of training and development for restaurant staff. Management must ensure employees are keeping up with industry changes and are confident at work.

Not only is the industry shifting, but it is faced with a tight labor market. Post-covid and with the gig economy growing, more part-time options have become available. Restaurants are no longer the obvious choice for many young workers. 

Over 51% of restaurant operators claim that staffing is their main challenge, while 35% say training is their top challenge. This makes a lot of sense considering turnover is high in the service industry, along with the constant evolutions. 

If you’re not adequately training your employees, they may lose confidence or motivation and can often become disengaged. Consistent, skill-based training is one of the best ways to combat turnover as employees can constantly access development opportunities. Millennial and Gen Z employees agree that learning is one of the top things contributing to workplace happiness. More than a quarter of these young employees would leave a job that does not contribute to their development.

Improving your restaurant’s training and onboarding programs will successfully enable you to reduce turnover, increase productivity and profits.

Engaging employees is your business’s lifeblood, don’t ever forget it.

Restaurant Training Can Be Fun

It can be tough to ensure that all employees and new hires are appropriately trained and kept up to speed in a fast-growing industry. This was precisely the challenge California-based hotdog brand Dog Haus was experiencing. “I just felt like what we were doing was really archaic,” said Dog Haus partner Hagop Giragossian about the employee training materials, which is when they decided to give 1Huddle a go.

Dog Haus’ employees became engaged and almost addicted to our online training games and were motivated by prizes and rotating game topics. The more points they earn on the app, the more employees learn. This motivated employees to soak in what they were reading and learning to ensure they could boost their score in the app and beat out their coworkers. It’s real, 1Huddle creates healthy competition that develops at every level of an organization.

Fast-casual burrito chain, Bubbakoo’s Burritos has also found success with 1Huddles online training platform. Bubbakoo is using our quick-burst training games to improve the entire life-cycle of their employees from onboarding to development. 

Bringing on the 1Huddle training platform would be the best fit for our crew members to effectively communicate out our culture and brand DNA.

-Tarah Freestone, VP of Training and Development, Bubbakoo’s Burritos

Bubbakoo’s employees are constantly learning about the company’s history and new roll-outs. Being able to cross-train employees and offering them a way to acquire the necessary skills to perform the next job in their career pathway is the way of the future. Training pamphlets, videos, or long seminars are boring and ineffective. Training games are scientifically proven to be more effective and a lot more fun.

1Huddle is excited to work with different food-service companies, from upscale dining experiences to fast-food franchises. 1Huddle is here to help these organizations grow, learn new markets, train new employees, and make current staff members feel valued and connected.

Benefits 1Huddle For Restaurants

LMS systems are a one-and-done form of training. Employees engage in this form of learning for a short period and after a month forget more than 87% of what they’ve learned; that’s a science-backed fact. So, if you’re going to use an LMS to train your employees, you must accompany that with a form of ongoing training. This is where 1Huddle comes in as the top online training platform for ongoing training. 

Restaurant training programs can use 1Huddle as an add-on to their LMS or use it as an LMS alternative. 1Huddle is able to customize the training games around your company, industry, organizational goals, and requirements. You can engage all restaurant employees from the front of house staff, back of house staff, and management. 1Huddle is a fun and interactive way to develop skills. It is not the type of training that your employees will dread or need to block out large portions of their days to complete. 

The best part is that the training will never end. Request a demo if you’re ready to improve your restaurant’s training and onboarding with 1Huddle’s ongoing training platform. We can reshape and reform your learning and development offerings to be something that your employees consider a full-on benefit of the job. Win, win.