In the everyday chaos of a restaurant, it can be easy for employees to feel like they’ve faded into the background—a blur amid the many moving parts. “We as cooks want to find a place where our employers will be invested in us not just as cooks, but as individuals,” says Tiffany Ran, a cook at White Swan Public House in Seattle and founder of PR firm BlindCock Media. “It's the only way that we can, in this day and age, have jobs that sustain us financially and emotionally.”
For operators, finding ways to single out employees and create individualized advancement plans could help grow staff loyalty and engagement—a commodity in today’s stiff labor market. Check out how some restaurants are fashioning custom career opportunities for their workers.