Pro Perspectives: What’s Working in Hospitality Like in 2024?
Introduction
The past few years have no doubt been a trying time for the hospitality industry.
While we’re past the uncertainty, doom and gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fragmented labor market and inflation still pose significant challenges for hospitality workers.
Hospitality workers are the unsung heroes behind our vacations, celebratory events, memorable date nights and countless fast food cheeseburgers. Despite playing such a critical role in society, their perspectives are too often rendered invisible.
From our experience connecting thousands of businesses with tens of thousands of workers, our ears are close to the ground in the world of hospitality. So to better understand the challenges faced by hospitality workers in 2024 we sent a survey to our active Pros and received over 1,600 responses. Here’s what we found.
Key Findings:
44% of hospitality workers report experiencing toxic behavior from a manager.
60% of hospitality workers reported using platforms like Gigpro to pick up extra shifts in the past month to cover unexpected expenses; 58% of hospitality workers report being “very reliant” on apps like Gigpro to make ends meet, and nearly half report struggling to pay for groceries every month.
70% of hospitality workers indicated that increasing wages is the number one thing businesses can do to retain them.
Toxic Behavior Still Runs Rampant
There’s a reason why FX’s The Bear has been such a hit, and a controversy—it doesn’t shy away from depicting the chaos that restaurant kitchens have become infamous for.
Anyone who has worked in a restaurant kitchen knows that energy and passion is critical to success. The dark side to this, of course, can mean flaring tempers, hurling insults, and worse. And the problem is widespread—44 percent of our survey respondents reported experiencing this type of abuse from a manager while working in the industry.
Toxic work environments can result in high staff turnover and in some serious cases, legal action against the business. As such, hospitality businesses should take extra care to promote positive behavior in the workplace, especially from management.
“By cultivating an environment where positivity, responsibility, and mutual respect are the norms, restaurants will thrive both in operations and employee satisfaction and retention. Owners and managers should discourage drama by setting clear boundaries for communication, teamwork, and expectations,” said Caroline Roberts, Pro Success Manager at Gigpro. Caroline started her career as a server and worked her way up to chef before joining Gigpro.
“Addressing the negativity before it roots will ensure a more pleasant work environment for all,” she said.
Gig Work a Life Line for Hospitality Workers
A common theme we hear from Pros is that their regular jobs are not providing enough, so they are turning to platforms like Gigpro to find additional work. Indeed, 60 percent of the Pros we surveyed have used Gigpro or other similar platforms to pick up additional shifts to cover emergency expenses.
For many of our Pros, Gigpro is absolutely essential for finding work—58 percent of survey respondents indicated they are “very reliant” on Gigpro for making ends meet.
“Gigpro has saved me in so many hard times I genuinely don’t know where I’d be without it,” said Hunter S., a Pro from Charleston, SC with over 50 Gigs under their belt.
With fewer hospitality businesses offering full time positions, platforms like Gigpro offer these workers the opportunity to make up additional shifts they might not be getting from a regular job.
On the other hand, the flexibility that platforms like Gigpro offer empowers hospitality workers to forge their own career path on their own terms and in some cases, rely solely on work picked up from Gigpro—28 percent of our respondents said Gigpro was their main source of income.
Increasing Wages is Key to Retaining Workers
We see this play out every day on our Gig boards: Gigs with higher hourly wages see more qualified applicants. So it’s no surprise that our survey respondents overwhelmingly indicated that increasing wages is the number one thing businesses could do to retain them, with 70 percent saying so.
While there was some preference for better benefits and paths to promotion, it is clear that hospitality workers are thinking the most about their bottom line.
We posed a hypothetical question to our survey respondents: Imagine you’re working at a restaurant, and a similar restaurant across the street offers you the same job with the same hours, for $1 more an hour—would you take it, or stay at your current job and ask for a raise?
The result was surprising: 86 percent of respondents indicated that they would stay at their current job and ask for a raise.
While hospitality workers want—and deserve—higher wages, this also speaks to a desire for employment stability. Many hospitality workers want to keep working at their places of employment and don’t want to jump ship the second a slightly better opportunity arises, but economic pressures no doubt impact that calculus.
Business owners should be mindful of what the market is currently commanding for hospitality roles—browsing Gigpro’s Connect portal to view hospitality talent in their local area is an easy way to get a snapshot of local hospitality wages.
The informal nature of the hospitality industry has created a gap between businesses and workers: on one hand, businesses might have an outdated understanding of where hospitality wages are currently at, while on the other hand workers do not have visibility or access to the breadth of work available to them—something Gigpro is seeking to disrupt.
“This is a solvable mismatch of talent and opportunity in the market,” said Sam Mylrea, CEO of Gigpro.
Conclusion
While some challenges continue to persist, there are glimmers of hope for the industry. We’re also seeing more national conversations about toxic behavior in the hospitality industry, and more workers are standing up for better treatment—behavior that would have been more commonplace in the kitchen a decade ago is getting called out.
While wages in the hospitality industry experienced growth over the past several years, that growth has flatlined—highlighting the importance of platforms like Gigpro for providing additional opportunities for hospitality workers.
Methodology
In June 2024 we sent an email survey to our Pros and received 1,632 responses. Survey participants entered for a chance to win one of three $500 gift cards which were awarded in August 2024. These Pros are validated users of the Gigpro mobile app and have completed at least one Gig on the platform.
