Staffing challenges when you're closed in the winter

Daniel Blaser (00:06):

Hello and welcome to On the Clock, presented by Workstream. If you care about hiring and retaining hourly employees, you're in the right place. I'm Daniel Blaser, and today I am clocking in with Jackson Rogers General manager at Jersey Girl, a restaurant in Wildwood, New Jersey. We chat about the unique opportunities that come through being affiliated with an amusement park and the challenges of staffing a restaurant that's only open six months out of the year. We also talk about their highly successful retention bonus system. Enjoy Jackson. It's really nice to speak with you today. I really appreciate it. To kick things off, can you just talk a little bit about your role, how long you've been there and what it consists of?

Jackson Rogers (00:51):

So this is my first season here at Jersey Girl. I'm the general manager of the property. We are a seasonal business. We operate from April until October, second week of October. So we're finishing up here now. It was a great summer this year but obviously with the seasonal business we have a very small window of time in order to hire employees and get everybody on board and trained properly. So there's some challenges there, but you know, I like it a lot. So it was a good year.

Daniel Blaser (01:25):

What is your season like? When does it kind of, when, when does the restaurant open and when does it close?

Jackson Rogers (01:30):

So we open in late April and we close October 8th.

Daniel Blaser (01:36):

Approximately how many employees are with the restaurant, like overall and then like how many, you know, on any given day are working

Jackson Rogers (01:45):

In the whole entire restaurant with back of house, front of house bartenders, servers, busers, everything? We have about 60 employees. In the kitchen. We'll have probably like five or six at a time on the line. And in the dining room we'll have on a busy Saturday night, we'll run six servers. And for brunches we'll do like four or five servers.

Daniel Blaser (02:13):

And then just to give a little bit more context to the people listening can you talk about kind of the relationship that you have, you know, the, the restaurant is standalone, but it's sort of a, you know, affiliated with an amusement park. Can you just kind of talk about that because I think it's sort of a unique situation.

Jackson Rogers (02:29):

Yeah, definitely. And there are a ton of advantages to being associated with the amusement park. We have access to a very, very large management team of about 20 to 25 people who I can lean on and ask questions to. So that aspect of being affiliated with the amusement park is really great. We are trying to keep the two entities separate in order for our branding and stuff like that. But we also have the opportunity to have the marketing machine of the amusement parks. So we do a lot of collaborations with the amusement parks. We do this some cool promotional things where anybody who's on the pier at that time in the amusement park we can send a text message to their phone if they're on our wifi and we can do like a daily special like, Hey, go down to Jersey girl and, and grab a $2 off Miller Light tonight. Which helps us drive traffic to the restaurant. And it's just, it's something that's pretty unique that a lot of restaurants don't have.

Daniel Blaser (03:34):

Yeah, that is really cool. And it's the, the name of the park is Maurice Piers. Is that the name of the park itself?

Jackson Rogers (03:41):

Yes. Yeah, it's Maurice Piers. So it's on the Jersey Shore like right on the beach. There's two water parks and three amusement piers. There is six full service restaurants with full bar and, and everything as well. But yeah, it's just a little small beach town in Wildwood, New Jersey that is quite quiet in the wintertime. And then in the summertime it's full swing and, and pistons are firing and it's going. So

Daniel Blaser (04:15):

You spoke about some of the advantages of kind of being affiliated with this, this park. Let's talk about some of what, what are the challenges that it presents? You mentioned the seasonality obviously is one. Are there any other challenges that you feel like are a little bit unique given the, the situation that you're in?

Jackson Rogers (04:31):

I can't really think of any negatives being affiliated with the peer with amusement Park. Yeah, we, we, they have a great HR department that, that does a, a big hiring campaign every year and, and recruits j one students to come and work with us as well. So that's a ton of work that they do and, and we appreciate all the work that they do to help us out. Yeah,

Daniel Blaser (04:55):

That's awesome. Okay, so you mentioned that your season kind of begins in April. What does that mean for you? Like, when are you starting, I guess you said this is your first season, so when did you start trying to get people to join the team and get prepared for that April opening?

Jackson Rogers (05:15):

Yeah, so that was like the very first week of April when we didn't end up opening until the very last week of April. Maybe the first couple days of May. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, the hiring process started out right away. I moved back to New Jersey from Colorado. I spent my winter out there. So right when I got back we started the hiring process and I was very thankful to have workstream because it is just very user friendly and, and I, and made it pretty easy. We got applications like right away and a lot of them,

Daniel Blaser (05:51):

What would you say is like kind of the, the reason or like specifically how did workstream result in you getting a lot of applications quickly? What do you think are, is kind of the differentiator there?

Jackson Rogers (06:03):

I, I think it's because it'll end up at the top of people's search. When they're on Google and they're looking for jobs for summer jobs, they just type in server Wildwood or, and, and those key words. And it would put us right there at the top and with a nice like description of, of what we're looking for and, and hourly requirements and, and our rate of pay and everything like that as well. So it just, it makes it easier for us as well as the applicants. Scheduling all of that.

Daniel Blaser (06:34):

Can you talk about, you know, if you have this, this kind of short window where you're trying to hire can you talk about like what that, what that looked like for you as a general manager? Like, you know, you, you're in that period, you wake up and then, you know, how are you able to use work through work stream throughout the day to initially achieve your goal of being staffed up for that opening?

Jackson Rogers (06:58):

Yeah, so I would, I would have the emails that got sent to my phone as well. So every time we got an applicant I would get an email on my phone so I could wake up in the morning and check my phone in bed and see we've had five people apply for servers two bussers and then I can go right onto work stream and communicate with them through the chat feature which I liked because I don't have to give out my personal information to people who I don't know yet. But yeah, it's just, and then in the chat feature, you can schedule a time that's good for them and you and, and have them come in for an interview and see if it'll be a compatible match.

Daniel Blaser (07:37):

Did you face any retention challenges this, this year? Was it not too bad? And, and sort of what the retention side of things looked like for you?

Jackson Rogers (07:45):

Yeah, so at Jersey Girl, we were lucky enough to have probably I think it was like 10 returning servers from the previous season. So we had some pretty good retention in the serving and back of house as well. But yeah, it's just tough for us with such a small window. And having a lot of college students working here, they leave for school often at the end of August or mid August which is still very busy for us. 'cause We don't slow down until really after Labor Day. So those last few weeks are always a tough push. Luckily like I said earlier, we have the J one students who have a little bit of a later end date. And then I also hired some people who weren't in college, which, which helped us out a lot at the end of the season. But yeah, I think just making sure people are comfortable and, and communicating with the staff about what we expect and our standards. As long as you communicate those things properly, then you're gonna have people who enjoy their time at work and wanna come back next season.

Daniel Blaser (08:52):

When you mentioned kind of this initial group college students that had to leave before the season was over was that something that you prepared for like ahead of time, like you, you, when you're initially hiring, or is that something that you kind of had to fill those positions as au August? Got closer. So

Jackson Rogers (09:10):

Whenever we bring people on, we always get their end date. And we run a retention bonus program as well. So there are certain requirements for the retention bonus program. You have to be over 200 hours for the season and you have to work all the way up until your end date. We also check the end dates that are provided to us from the applicants to make sure that they correlate with when their school goes back. So you need to work until a week before you go back to school. So as long as our staff meets those requirements, they'll get a dollar for every hour that they've worked. And yeah, so we were pretty prepared for, for the end of August. But as I said, it's always tough just with we're, we're still doing super high volume, but we do lose a lot of staff. But luckily we prepared for it.

Daniel Blaser (10:05):

That's a great great idea with that retention bonus specifically, you know, with the, the seasonality of your staffing and everything. That makes a lot of sense. I bet that, I bet that makes a big difference. 'cause That's a, it seems pretty generous to me.

Jackson Rogers (10:18):

Yeah, it definitely is. People really like it as well. And also from a management perspective we have some leverage there. So if, if somebody's not showing up on time or if they're not performing to our standards, then we can say, Hey, listen, if you're interested in getting your bonus, your full bonus at the end of the year, then we're gonna have to address some of these issues that are going on right now. And oftentimes people are pretty responsive to that.

Daniel Blaser (10:43):

A lot of the people that listen to this podcast there are other people that, you know, maybe they're general managers like yourself, maybe there are others who just are concerned with a lot of, you know, hiring and retaining these hourly workers a lot of in the hospitality restaurant industry. So, you know, kind of knowing that those are the types of people that are gonna be listening to this conversation. What have you learned or what recommendations would you make when it comes to, you know, these are some things that really have helped you and your team for, for staffing up for the season?

Jackson Rogers (11:18):

So it's, it's a pretty small town that, that we operate in. So luckily we have the advantage of, of knowing a lot of the people that we hire personally. So as long as you hire good people who are reliable that, that's really what I've learned the most is get to know people on a personal level and they will work hard for you and hopefully everything works out well.

Daniel Blaser (11:46):

What would you do differently next year? What, what kinds of things did you think, okay, this is what I've learned. I've tweak this and this

Jackson Rogers (11:54):

With it being my first season, there was a lot of trial and error. I wasn't exactly sure of the type of volume that the restaurant would be doing and the type of, or the amount of staff that we would need day to day. So I think a, a little misstep that we had made in the beginning was we overhired a little bit. And especially in these tipped positions, you want to guarantee people shifts. But at the same time, you don't want to be overstaffed because then people are here and they're not making money which feels like a waste of time. So I think going into next season, I have a better understanding of, of the amount of people that we need here at a time. So I'll be able to adjust the hiring process early season and not overhire this year.

Daniel Blaser (12:41):

Cool. Well, one last question I had is, you know, once again, given the context of who's gonna be listening to this, there will probably be some people who maybe they haven't tried workstream yet, maybe they've been meaning to test it out and they're using something else. What recommendation would you make to them specifically about workstream and your experience with it?

Jackson Rogers (12:59):

Yeah, so I was speaking with the people who work at workstream at a food conference recently, and I, I, I brought up the fact that one of my favorite features with it is the ability to turn on and off your job posts, like with a simple click of one button. So in this industry while we do have good retention long term with returning servers and stuff, there's always gonna be stuff that goes on throughout the year where whether it's a termination or somebody quits, something comes up and, and, and you need to fill a spot quickly. Work stream was great because I could have the job post closed and then I could open it up and like I said, we were getting applications like pretty rapidly as soon as we would open it up. So for example, this year we had a buser leave and we were understaffed in the busing position. I just went on to workstream, opened it up, and we got probably six applications in a day and a half which gave us the opportunity to then set up interviews with those people and we were able to hire two new buss within four days.

Daniel Blaser (14:17):

Thank you for listening to On the Clock. For more info, visit workstream.us/podcast. Until next time, we're clocking out.