Why Team Camaraderie Matters As Much As Pay in Restaurants

This post is adapted from our “What Restaurant Employees Want” report. Visit our report page to download the full report, which features insights from 1500 active restaurant employees and industry experts.

When it comes to keeping employees happy and retaining them for a long time — is there anything more important than a healthy paycheck?

As it turns out, there is. While more than half of employees listed “Financial incentives” among the top motivators, the influence of coworkers and team dynamics is just as significant. This highlights the crucial role of interpersonal relationships in job satisfaction.

60 percent of employees list “Getting along with coworkers” as one of the top three reasons for job satisfaction in the restaurant industry. The people with whom restaurant workers spend their time greatly affect their satisfaction at work. Call it the “work bestie” effect, if you’re going to be working hard for 8 hours a day in a busy restaurant, being close to those around you is an intangible bonus.

Gen Z is particularly motivated by people versus other age groups — both coworkers and customers.

When we break the data down by age range, restaurant employees who are part of Generation Z* indicate that they are highly motivated by people — both their team and their guests. 60.8 percent of Gen Z restaurant workers rank their coworkers among the top motivators of daily work — and 37 percent rank positive customer feedback among their top motivators.

“I think operators could do more to foster camaraderie, whether through activities, team training, or icebreakers. At Mei Mei, we have a wall with everyone’s picture, their birthday, and their favorite book, and, you know, it’s kind of like a kindergarten class,” says Irene Li.

Irene Li is the cofounder of Mei Mei in Boston and built the award-winning brand through ethical, sustainable sourcing and fair and transparent employment practices. Li has taken lessons learned at Mei Mei over the years to create Prepshift, a coaching and workforce training firm that empowers local restaurants.

“It levels the playing field a little bit. So even the little things like that do make a difference. One of the things on that wall is, what pronouns do you use? We have a lot of genderqueer and non-binary folks on our staff, and I think that kind of thing, you know, when you’re trying to build an inclusive environment, helps set a certain tone. I have also seen that for our folks who speak English as a second language, it continues to level the playing field,” says Li.

At her restaurant, Miss Kim, restaurateur Ji Hye Kim also makes an effort to foster camaraderie. This has the dual purpose of engaging her team in the business at large.

One way to do this is through “Gross Games,” which sounds like a spin-off of Fear Factor, but here, the gross is gross sales. At the end of a shift, staff are allowed to ask a leading question and make an educated guess at the total sales for that day, almost like a game of 20 questions.

“Whoever gets the closest gets a free entree on the house. Next time they work at their time of choosing. So then it makes it fun. I’m coupling that with the weekly staff meeting where we talk about numbers in general. So trying to make the numbers a little more fun and also, um, to make it real, like it’s not just spreadsheet or bar graphs, it’s actually real,” says Kim.

“But this way, we’re having a little fun. We’re increasing awareness of, uh, check average check amount or average dollar spent per head. And then making, uh, making a game out of, uh, like training salesman shifts and then making them feel like they are actually really capable of selling and making a difference,“ says Kim.

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Take Action:

The data makes it clear: restaurant employees value their relationships among the team just as much, if not more than their paycheck. Who they spend their time with has an effect on how long they stay at a job and how happy they are while they’re at work.

1. Use pre-shift meetings or lineups to foster meaningful connections among staff. Check out our guide for how to run effective pre-shift meetings.
2. Consider icebreakers, games, or activities to help staff get to know each other better.
3. Rotate employees through different stations and responsibilities.

“Rotating employees through stations helps build uniformity in skill, inter-employee dependence, and respect for the challenges each station can face,” says Ryan Whyte-Buck, a restaurant operations consultant with US Foods.

*As defined by survey respondents aged 18 to 24