They witness
- Raoul Dehé, owner of two restaurants in Ile-de-France
- Vanessa Loudac, HR manager of the Butard group, caterer and reception organizer (Pavillon d’Armenonville, traditional catering and catering for the general public)
- Florent Malbranche, CEO and co-founder of Brigad
- Frédéric Oble, academic director of the Food Business Challenges chair at Essec
- Marine Moullé-Berteaux, recruitment consultant specializing in catering at Michael Page
Wage increase, additional rest, removal of the break
“Things are going a little bit better”, assures Thierry Marx, starred chef and president of the employers’ union for the hotel/restaurant sector (Umih) in a recent interview, even if he specifies that there are still 200,000 positions to be filled for the upcoming season.
It must be said that the health crisis – which had shut down the sector for many months – had drastic consequences on the workforce, with a loss of 237,000 employees in one year, in a sector used to gaining 50. 000 per year before the Covid.
Professionals had to go into overdrive to make up for the lack of staff as soon as they reopened. And found themselves faced with a historic shortage of candidates, as many qualified people left the sector
Raoul Dehe
This is the case of Raoul Dehé, owner of two restaurants in Ile-de-France. He changed his way of working to keep his workforce: increase wages between 10 and 15%, add a weekly rest day and remove the cut for the kitchen (except when an employee is on vacation). “Before, nobody respected the 39 hourshe explains. Today, this translates into more hiring, therefore an increasing wage bill and and above all, we have to be quite flexible.”
For one of his Parisian restaurants, Réminet, he looked for a chef for 6 months before finally reorganizing the staff without this position. “We are facing a loss of know-how in the profession. It is no longer so easy to find competent people who want to do this job, he notes. Above all, it requires additional efforts from the restaurateurs”.
More young people on work-study programs
For its part, the Butard group has chosen to invest in work-study programs to train young people and hire them: “We are having difficulty recruiting, both salespeople and party managers or clerks, attests Vanessa Loudac, HR manager of the Butard group. For example, a chef de partie in pastry is a highly sought-after position in the market. Today, there are more offers than candidates so the latter go to the highest bidder and the closest to home.
Above all, these vacancies have consequences for the organization and management: “It is the other employees, and among them the managers, who absorb the necessary overtime and the resulting fatigue.”
Freelance “extras”
The Butard group, which brings together several activities (caterer and reception organizer with the Pavillon d’Armenonville site, traditional catering and catering for the general public), has 130 permanent employees. Numbers double between April and October and can triple in June, the very high season. “During the big periods, the extras save our lives, confirms Vanessa Loudac. We need this population”.
By creating Brigad, Florent Malbranche, CEO and co-founder, facilitated the process of uberisation underway in many sectors and which the catering sector is no exception to: allowing employees to leave the workforce in order to become self-employed and become “extra”. The novelty is that they are not fixed-term contracts (therefore paid in salary) but auto-entrepreneurs (therefore paid by invoice).
Like the other Extracadabra platform, Brigad facilitates contact between restaurateurs and “extras” in freelance for specific needs. It is the latter who set their own remuneration (on average 25 euros excluding tax per hour).
“Restaurant owners can thus attract better employees, more committed because they are self-employed and are their own representative”, considers Florent Malbranche. 30,000 people are registered, half doing at least one mission per month.
Florent Malbranche
““Restaurant owners can thus attract better employees, more committed because they are self-employed and are their own representative”, considers Florent Malbranche. 30,000 people are registered, half doing at least one mission per month.
Nevertheless, Brigad remains a troubleshooting solution: “100% self-employed in a restaurant would not be viable, you need at least 80 to 90% stable jobs”, he believes. It is necessary all the same to count service charges of 20% HT on the services.
A modernized management
As a recruitment consultant specializing in the sector at Michael Page, Marine Moullé-Berteaux notes that in addition to quantified efforts (salaries, hours, etc.), establishment managers have had to reconsider their management: “Employees like to be provided with figures such as turnover, the cost of a uniform, for example, or the price of the person’s meal, she lists. Above all, they want to be listened to, that their opinions be taken into account as much as their ideas”.
No more dad-style management so dear to the profession! And this is reflected in the recruitment of executives as well, who must be on the ground and close to the teams. “Executives can no longer simply ask their employees to be executants. They have to put more people into it and support them for the schedules otherwise it doesn’t work”.
A breath of fresh air with employees from other sectors
Can we fear a vocations crisis between the many resignations, closures (In 2022, 20,579 catering establishments were deregistered in 2022 according to the Statistical Observatory of the National Council of Clerks of Commercial Courts) and successful or unsuccessful reconversions? ?
This movement is normal. This creates a renewal that is good for the profession with varied personalities, new ideas and new perspectives. I see a lot of profiles from the world of retail or marketing who want to enter this sector
Marine Moullé-Berteaux, recruitment consultant specializing in catering at Michael Page
Towards a “restaurant where it is good to work” label?
Frederic Oblé
The students of the Food Business Challenges chair (Essec) had an idea: to create a label dedicated to catering. The academic director, Frédéric Oble, explains: “Drawing inspiration from Great Place to Work, this label would allow candidates to identify the restaurants in which it is pleasant to work. We could even imagine an audit, a progression plan to evolve…”. For now, this idea has remained a project in the boxes.