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Restaurant Retention Report

Restaurant employee turnover by city and state and Restaurant Retention Playbook

It’s no secret that restaurants are under strain to hire and retain employees. Here we pull together the hard facts surrounding turnover and have crafted the playbook to solve it.

Bartender mixing a red fruit based cocktail.

It’s no secret that restaurants are under strain to hire and retain employees. Here we pull together the hard facts surrounding turnover and have crafted the playbook to solve it.

Restaurant Employee Retention Playbook thumbnail

What's inside this report?

The 7shifts Restaurant Turnover and Retention Report uncovers key trends across the restaurant industry through aggregated and anonymized 7shifts platform and engagement data. This data study analyzes trends and data from August 2021 to August 2022, with over 635,000 restaurant employees in the United States.

Topics covered include:

How is the industry faring 2 years removed from the pandemic?

The real reasons restaurant employees leave.

Five real ways that restaurants keep retention high.

Adam Lamb

Chef Life Radio

"How are front-line staff supposed to know that you care unless you invest your time and energy with them?” You can't expect someone to engage with you if you don't engage with them, especially from a position of power."

Key findings from the report

Turnover in restaurants is as high as ever. Labor shortages, health crises, and general economic trends have made it a struggle — and restaurants need help.

Measure it in minutes, and it sounds longer

For restaurant employees added in the past year (August 2021-August 2022), the average employee tenure is just 110 days—a little over three months. Or 158,400 minutes.

Stat: 110 days is the average employee tenure at a restaurant.

Chart depicting a restaurant employee turnover rate of 62 percent.

We aren’t talking about apple-filled danishes here…

Of employees who joined their team in September of 2021, just 38% are still with that team as of the time of writing—a hot 62% turnover rate. Employees who joined in December of 2021 are faring slightly better—cooling to a 55% turnover rate.

Cross-country commonalities

For the restaurant-dense metropolitan areas, the Twin Cities and Boston came out on top, with Atlanta, Vegas, and Richmond, VA towards the bottom.