May National

Challenges and solutions for restaurants

By Alexandra Zendrian

At this year’s Society for Hospitality and Foodservice Management (SHFM) Critical Issues Conference, the focus was on bridging the A gap between hospitality and technology. After all, as Harpreet Cheema, Senior Director of Digital Design and Development at Sodexo, noted, “By 2030, 75 percent of jobs will have a tech skill requirement.” In this industry in particular though there’s a dichotomy because, as he points out, “we didn’t join this industry because we love working behind a laptop.” So how will the foodservice industry surpass whatever inherent gap it has with tech and learn to use tech that will be beneficial? When people in the industry think about a tech gap, they need to embrace that people have various levels of tech literacy and literacy overall, said Alice Fournier, Chief Information Officer at ISS Americas. Fournier suggests rather than putting someone without digital skills in a negative place before they even start work, such as a digital onboarding, to be cognizant of where each employee and potential staff member is at in their lives, which also includes neurodiversity.

“Automation drives fear because of the lack of knowledge,” said Rob Brummett, Director of Digital Strategic Accounts at Aramark Workplace Experience Group. Other tips for making the tech experience more inclusive is not assuming that everyone’s default language is English, Cheema said. For him, ultimately, “success around digital is not to have to train employees on anything.” Therefore, if there’s a lot of training required, perhaps this isn’t the best solution. But, if there is training involved, it can be helpful to have employees train other employees on the new tech, Brummett noted. “There is untapped talent within the resources you have today,” said Elicia Young, Global Food Program Manager at Intuit. And many of the day’s panelists agreed that the industry shouldn’t clamor for tech as the cure-all. The best approach to solving an issue is determining what the problem is and then assessing from the ground up what’s required to achieve the goal.