employees

Leadership

MOD Pizza hires HR vet Dayna Eberhardt as chief people officer

Eberhardt previously spent more than 13 years in various human resources roles at Starbucks.

Workforce

The pandemic pushed hospitality workers to make a switch

Layoffs and uncertainty in the restaurant industry drove managers, chefs, bartenders and servers to pursue other lines of work. For some, it’s been a rewarding move.

Workers are being shifted from the digital kitchen to the front line in short-staffed stores, forcing the fast casual to “throttle” digital orders during peak times.

The 16-unit fast casual is now offering $50 referral bonuses to diners who send new hires to the chain.

The seven-unit, quick-service chain in upstate New York is making the expensive decision to give its overworked employees some paid downtime for their mental health.

It would be the second such settlement this year for the fast casual, which agreed to pay $15 million in March to a group of workers who said they were wrongfully denied overtime pay.

Indiscriminate roundups of undocumented restaurant workers may be things of the past, according to federal officials.

The pizza giant is holding its first hiring conference in hopes stories of workers’ long-term success in the business will inspire new and existing employees.

In social media posts and restaurants’ own signs, a lack of workers is leading to shorter hours and fewer service lines.

The fast casual had lauded the experiment as a valuable recruitment and retention tool, but blamed COVID for the need to put the program on hold.

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