Restaurant staff shortage: what do you cut first?
When a restaurant staff shortage hits, the first thing to cut is the complexity no guest will miss: unnecessary elements on the plate and manual work outside the kitchen. A dish with 25 elements needs more hands every night than a dish built around one recognizable product. Losing staff doesn't automatically mean lower quality, but it does mean being sharper about where those hands go.
Where should labor flow back into the product?
Chef Syrco Bakker describes how, over 13 years, he moved from plates packed with techniques to simplicity built around the product. That choice means less mise en place per cover and more focus on one great preparation. The same principle applies outside the kitchen: tasks like replying to reviews, asking for reviews and publishing Google posts eat up hours without the guest ever seeing them on the plate. Those tasks are the first candidates for automation.
Which plate elements cost invisible hours?
Elements that are mainly there to show off technique. Five pommes soufflées for 100 guests every night is real craftsmanship, but it's also a fixed labor cost that guests don't always notice.
Why does product-driven cooking work with fewer staff?
A recognizable product with one strong preparation needs fewer separate components. The signature lies in technique and flavor, like the Indonesian influences at Syrco BASÈ, not in the number of elements.
Which tasks outside the kitchen can you automate?
Requesting reviews after the visit, replying to reviews on Google and TripAdvisor, and creating Google Business Profile posts. These are recurring tasks that often land on the owner or general manager.
In the kitchen you can see that you're insecure and want to show what you can do.
Frequently asked questions
Does quality drop when you simplify dishes?
Not necessarily. Syrco Bakker describes simplicity as a sign of maturity and confidence, not a compromise. A dish built around a recognizable product, with the best preparation and a clear signature, actually demands more precision per element. What disappears are the components that are mainly there to showcase skill, and those cost staff hours every night.
How do you spot unnecessary complexity on a plate?
A useful test is to ask whether the guest recognizes the element and would miss it. Elements that exist to show off technique, such as large numbers of labor-intensive garnishes per cover, often score low. When an element requires a lot of mise en place and adds little to the flavor of the main product, it's a logical candidate to cut when you're short-staffed.
Which non-kitchen tasks take up the most time in restaurants?
In hospitality, many recurring admin tasks fall to the owner or general manager. Think of replying to online reviews, asking guests for a rating, updating the Google Business Profile and maintaining the website. These tasks are regular, predictable and well suited to automation with AI agents, freeing up time for the floor and the kitchen.
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Video transcript
Like, you just can see in the kitchen that you are so insecure and you want to show off and you want to put, like, uh, 25 elements on the dish to showcase, like, hey, you see what I can do? And I can put 5 pommes soufflées for 100 people every evening on a dish, you know. I'm, I'm skilled to do that, uh, you know.
That was... and, and then during these years, these 13 years at Pure C, uh, we became more mature and more confident and we were looking more for simplicity in a way. And now I think it's very...
well, we still like... we have been open for 2 years with Syrco BASÈ, and there we are also, like, well, finding our way. At the beginning, we did, like, Indonesian dishes, flavors that we wanted to, like, deconstruct or elevate in a way.
But now it's still... I think now it's very much product-driven, it has to be recognizable. Um, we want to really give a stage to the product.
And so do the best preparation and put some Indonesian influences in there, with the techniques and the signature and everything I know from the past years.