Chipotle Mexican Grill plans to hire as many as 4,000 employees in a single day next month, a large-scale example of how even the biggest brands in the industry are stepping up recruitment efforts amid the labor shortage faced by many concepts.
Some of the new employees would be placed at locations Chipotle plans to open this year, but the majority would fill positions at existing units, the Wall Street Journal reports. The planned hires would expand Chipotle’s workforce by close to 7 percent.
“The economy has been thawing, more restaurants are opening, and there are fewer job applicants than there were several years ago,” Monty Moran, co-CEO of Chipotle, told the WSJ.
The fast-casual chain says it will promote the Sept. 9 “career day” via ad campaigns on social media and on music-streaming service Pandora. It aims to open its close to 1,900 restaurants three hours early on that day, interviewing candidates until customers come in the doors at 11 a.m.
Chipotle isn’t the only large chain to undergo a large-scale hiring push of late. Earlier this summer, Starbucks launched its 100,000 Opportunities Initiative with the goal to train and hire 100,000 “opportunity youth,” and Taco Bell made its own pledge to hire 1.5 million young adults by 2022.
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