The $5,000 Empty Shift
What one missing worker really costs a restaurant, straight from the National Restaurant Association's chief economist.
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Ninety to ninety-five percent of AI projects fail. Andy Laudato’s the COO of The Vitamin Shoppe. This is someone who has to look a board in the eye and explain where the budget went. Yes, he’s not the first guest to quote this stat. He may be the fifth. It’s a genuine trend. So naturally, we spent the next twenty minutes talking about why retail leaders keep doing this to themselves anyway, and what it takes to scale innovation without setting money on fire.
My Son Took a Restaurant Job. An Economist Says It’s the Best Training in America.
My son came home from college in May and took a job in a restaurant kitchen. I figured he’d learn to show up on time and maybe stop treating our dishwasher at home like a suggestion.
Then Casey and I sat down with Dr. Chad Moutray, Chief Economist & Sr Vice President of Industry Research & Knowledge at the National Restaurant Association, to record the newest episode of Data Blades, and Chad informed me my son basically enrolled in the biggest training program in America.
Half of all Americans got their first job in a restaurant.
Two-thirds of us have worked in one at some point. Chad included. Me? Never did. After this conversation I feel like I skipped a semester everyone else took.
We recorded this one last month just days after a fresh JOLTS release and the monthly jobs report, so this was a live read on the labor market, not a history lecture. Restaurants added 48,000 jobs in May and 220,000 over the past year. Chad’s take: the labor market is more resilient than anyone gives it credit for, mostly because people will cancel a vacation before they cancel dinner out. Respect.
Three things from this conversation are still rattling around in my head.
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One empty chair costs more than you think.
Here’s the number that made me put my coffee down.
One missing frontline worker can cost a restaurant $3,000 to $5,000 in lost sales over three months.
One person. A single gap can cut sales 7 to 8% per meal period.
The mechanics are painfully simple. Short a server, and tables sit empty because the servers you do have can only cover so much floor. Short a cook, and the kitchen slows down until somebody’s shutting off third-party delivery just to survive the rush. Every one of those turned-away orders is money you already spent rent, insurance, and food costs to be ready for.
I used to file understaffing under “annoying.” It’s a line item. Run the math on your own empty shifts and watch how fast your next scheduling meeting changes.
The Great Stay is a window, not a fix.
Understaffing dropped from 78% of operators in 2021 to 22% in 2025. Hiring is genuinely easier. The Great Resignation gave way to the Great Stay, where people anxious about the economy hold onto the job they’ve got.
So naturally I asked Chad for the takeaway, expecting something comforting. Instead he calmly explained that fertility rates are at an all-time low, boomers keep retiring, and the US is heading toward net negative population growth.
His exact words: demographics are not our friend.
He expects tight labor markets for a decade or more. The man delivers hurricane forecasts in a weather-report voice, and I mean that as a compliment.
My read: this cooler market is a window for hiring deliberately instead of desperately. Windows close.
You run a hiring machine whether you like it or not.
Average restaurant turnover in 2025: 122%.
The industry runs roughly 952,000 hires and 937,000 separations every single month.
The average restaurant rebuilds its entire team every year. Casey called operators “masters of onboarding” and she wasn’t joking.
She also said that if she had to hire six great people fast, she’d skip the resume pile entirely and go poach servers, because nobody on earth hustles like someone who’s survived a Friday dinner rush with ten tables. I laughed. Then I realized she’s completely right, and I’ve been reading resumes for the wrong reasons.
Chad walked us through how operators are compressing hiring from weeks to days, including chatbots that screen the candidate who applies at 3 a.m., and how chains use data to spot which location is about to crack before it ever shows up on a P&L.
I won’t spoil the details here.
That part starts around the 18-minute mark and it’s worth hearing in his words.
Where I landed.
The tech buys you speed. The people are the product. Nobody has ever walked back into a restaurant because the applicant tracking system was excellent.
They come back for the bartender who remembers their order and the server who shows up at the table at exactly the right moment.
Restaurant staffing is a math problem and a people problem at the same time, and the operators who win the next decade will be the ones who take both seriously.
How AI Is Meant to Help Your Frontline.
Also, I may owe every restaurant kitchen in America an apology for underestimating them. My son’s learning more this summer than I expected.
Hear the whole conversation.
🎙️The Retail Razor: Data Blades, Season 2 Episode 10: “Restaurant Labor Market 2026 - The $5,000 Cost of Understaffing”
This is Part 1 of a three-episode series with Dr. Chad Moutray on the NRA’s 2026 Hiring & Staffing report. Watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Part 2 gets into the number that genuinely surprised me: how long a new hire takes to become profitable, and why the first 90 days decide everything.
Your Turn.
If someone forwarded you this, subscribe so Part 2 lands in your inbox. It’s free, it’s every episode, and it comes with exactly this much attitude. You’ll thank me.
Comment on this newsletter in Substack or join the conversation on LinkedIn.
Stay sharp. Be data-driven. Harness AI.
Sincerely,
Ricardo Belmar
The Retail Razor: Data Blades
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Data Blades is part of the Retail Razor Podcast Network, alongside The Retail Razor Show, Retail Transformers, and Blade to Greatness. Find us at RetailRazor on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram. For a full transcript of this episode, visit our retailrazor.com website!