Co Founder & President at Premier Sports Leagues ( Franchisor), looking to find strategic partners to help bring exciting new sports and a better sports experience to youth in communities across North America
Integration is the name of the game for point of sale or POS systems, as one restaurant client of Toast described via video at the Food On Demand Conference. "So prior to Toast we trialed another POS system for a year, but they didn't have the same capability to integrate," a manager of the Mexican restaurant said.
For the first time, this year's Food On Demand Conference included a panel of high-profile restaurant tech investors who opened their playbooks to share what they're watching at this pivotal convergence of automation, innovation, convenience and challenges driven by supply chain and climate change.
Restaurateur Eddie Segovia attributes his sales doubling year-over-year almost exclusively to Snackpass self-order kiosks. A restaurant catering to Millennials has to make the order process fast and easy. Hence, Eddie Segovia, owner of Freddy's Wings & Wraps in Newark, Delaware, didn't waste any time offering self-order kiosks when his POS provider, Toast, made them available.
If you couldn't make it to the food drive, but would still like to donate, you can do so online. S. WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. - Families are falling on hard times because of the economy, and having no choice but to visit their local food banks in order to feed their loved ones.
Cafe Rio Mexican Grill has opened a location in Buckeye, Arizona, which offers curb-side delivery, in-store pickup, drive-thru and a digital kiosk experience. "Expanding ordering channels in our digital locations allows for increased convenience for our customers and opportunities to...
"Thus, the barriers and transition costs employees incur when switching employers have been reduced.
Greater options and lower costs to move mean that employees can be more selective and focus on picking jobs that best fit their personal needs and desires."
Finding good employees has always been a challenge - but these days it's harder than ever. And it is unlikely to improve anytime soon.
The so-called quit rate - the share of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs - hit a new record of 3% in September 2021, according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The rate was highest in the leisure and hospitality sector, where 6.4% of workers quit their jobs in September. In all, 20.2 million workers left their employers from May through September.
Companies are feeling the effects. In August 2021, a survey found that 73% of 380 employers in North America were having difficulty attracting employees - three times the share that said so the previous year. And 70% expect this difficulty to persist into 2022.
As a professor of human resource management, I examine how employment and the work environment have changed over time and the impact this has on organizations and communities. While the current resignation behavior may seem like a new trend, data shows employee turnover has been rising steadily for the past decade and may simply be the new normal employers are going to have to get used to.
The economy's seismic shifts
The U.S. - alongside other advanced economies - has been moving away from a focus on productive sectors like manufacturing to a service-based economy for decades.
That change has been seismic for employers. A majority of the jobs in service-based industries require only generalizable occupational skills such as competencies in computing and communications that are often easily transportable across companies. This is true across a wide range of professions, from accountants and engineers to truck drivers and customer services representatives. As a result, in service-based economies, it is relatively easy for employees to move between companies and maintain their productivity.
And thanks to information technology and social media, it has never been easier for employees to find out about new job opportunities anywhere in the world. The growing prevalence of remote working also means that in some cases employees will no longer need to physically relocate to start a new job.
Thus, the barriers and transition costs employees incur when switching employers have been reduced.
Greater options and lower costs to move mean that employees can be more selective and focus on picking jobs that best fit their personal needs and desires. What people want from work is inherently shaped by their cultural values and life situation. The U.S. labor market is expected to become far more diverse going forward in terms of gender, ethnicity and age. Thus, employers that cannot provide greater flexibility and variety in their working environment will struggle to attract and retain workers.
Employers now have a greater obligation than in the past to convince existing and would-be employees why they should stay or join their organizations. And there is no evidence to suggest this trend will change going forward.
Thus, there is a large incentive for businesses to adapt to the new labor market conditions and develop innovative approaches to keeping workers happy and in their jobs.
A May 2021 survey found that 54% of employees surveyed from around the world would consider leaving their job if they were not afforded some form of flexibility in where and when they work.
Given the heightened priority employees place on finding a job that fits their preferences, companies need to adopt a more holistic approach to the types of rewards they provide. It's also important that they tailor the types of financial, social and developmental incentives and opportunities they provide to individual employees' preferences. It's not just about paying workers more. There are even examples of companies providing employees the choice of simply being paid in a cryptocurrency like bitcoin as an inducement.
While customizing the package of rewards each employees receives may potentially increase an organization's administrative costs, this investment can help retain a highly engaged workforce.
Managing the new normal
Companies should also plan on high employee mobility to be endemic and reframe how they approach managing their workers.
One way to do this is by investing deeply in external relationships that help ensure consistent access to high-quality talent. This can include enhancing the relationships they have with educational institutions and former employees.
For example, many organizations have adopted alumni programs that specifically recruit former employees to rejoin.
These former employees are often less expensive to recruit, bring access to needed human capital and possess both an understanding of an organization's processes and an appreciation of the organization's culture.
The quit rate is likely to stay elevated for some time to come. The sooner employers accept that and adapt, the better they'll be at managing the new normal.
The first U.S. jobs report of 2022 showed continued - if lackluster - growth. But perhaps of greater significance for the economic year ahead are two factors that lurked behind the headline unemployment rate: a stagnating labor pool and the impact of omicron.
First, the good news. The economy did add jobs in December, 199,000 of them, with gains in most sectors. This was less than the 440,000-job increase that some economists expected. Still, the gains are an indication of a reasonably healthy economy.
And October and November jobs numbers were revised upward by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, gains were seen across a number of key sectors. The leisure and hospitality sector was up, as expected given recent trends, as were business services and manufacturing.
Construction was also up and should continue to gain in the months to come - if it can find the workers.
The stagnating labor market
The unemployment rate was down to 3.9% - a new low in the pandemic era. This is good, to a degree. People who want jobs are finding them.
The problem is employers are having a hard time finding the workers amid a somewhat stagnating labor market.
The number of people in the labor force increased a little in December, but not by much - only about 168,000. And with job openings outpacing this small increase in the labor market, there remains a significant risk that worker wages may begin to rise too quickly for the economy.
While this is great for workers, it poses a concern for those trying to tamp down the rising prices of goods. Higher wages in the hands of workers means more money to spend, which generally drives prices of goods upward.
The latest report shows that wages are up, hours worked remain constant and the participation rate was unchanged. Even the number of people not in the labor force but wanting a job changed little. It is very much a sellers market in labor right now. Strikes, wage pressure and more flexible work environments may become the new normal.
Separate data from November, released on Jan. 4, 2021, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides further evidence of a drying up labor market. There were 6.9 million hires that month but 10.6 million job openings - a clear imbalance. Meanwhile the share of workers voluntarily quitting their jobs continued to be high.
It appears that many Americans who lost their jobs in 2020 have either taken early retirement or are still delaying re-entering the workforce.
And those hesitating to rush back to the office or factory floor are unlikely to be encouraged by the problem not yet reflected in jobs data: omicron.
The slowdown to come
The latest jobs report does not really reflect the effect of omicron on the labor market. The monthly jobs data is typically collected mid-month - before the highly contagious COVID-19 variant really took hold in the U.S.
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But if the U.S. doesn't see omicron cases peaking soon, Americans will likely see some real slowdown in hiring. With more workers falling ill and unable to work, managers at retail stores, as well as bars and restaurants, may well be forced to reduce hours of operation, reducing revenue and slowing growth in the process.
We are already seeing this with airlines, which have been forced to cancel flights. The real sectors at risk here are the leisure and hospitality sectors and retail - two industries that have bounced back quite well of late.
This may all sound a little downbeat given that the December jobs report did show gains. Growth is growth - it is just that the risks to the economy are quite high right now.
Global shortage of shipping containers highlights their importance in getting goods to Amazon warehouses, store shelves and your door in time for Christmas
Perhaps you're snacking on a banana, sipping some coffee or sitting in front of your computer and taking a break from work to read this article. Most likely, those goods - as well as your smartphone, refrigerator and virtually every other object in your home - once were loaded onto a large container in another country and traveled thousands of miles via ships crossing the ocean before ultimately arriving at your doorstep.
Today, an estimated 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea, with 60% of that - including virtually all your imported fruits, gadgets and appliances - packed in large steel containers. The rest is mainly commodities like oil or grains that are poured directly into the hull. In total, about US$14 trillion of the world's goods spend some time inside a big metal box.
In short, without the standardized container, the global supply chain that society depends upon - and that I study - would not exist.
A recent shortage of these containers is raising costs and snarling supply chains of thousands of products across the world. The situation highlights the importance of the simple yet essential cargo containers that, from a distance, resemble Lego blocks floating on the sea.
Since the dawn of commerce, people have been using boxes, sacks, barrels and containers of varying sizes to transport goods over long distances. Phoenicians in 1600 B.C. Egypt ferried wood, fabrics and glass to Arabia in sacks via camel-driven caravans. And hundreds of years later, the Greeks used ancient storage containers known as amphorae to transport wine, olive oil and grain on triremes that plied the Mediterranean and neighboring seas to other ports in the region.
Even as trade grew more advanced, the process of loading and unloading as goods were transferred from one method of transportation to another remained very labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly, in part because containers came in all shapes and sizes. Containers from a ship being transferred onto a smaller rail car, for example, often had to be opened up and repacked into a boxcar.
Different-sized packages also meant space on a ship could not be effectively utilized, and also created weight and balance challenges for a vessel. And goods were more likely to experience damage from handling or theft due to exposure.
But it was not until the 1950s that American entrepreneur Malcolm McLean realized that by standardizing the size of the containers being used in global trade, loading and unloading of ships and trains could be at least partially mechanized, thereby making the transfer from one mode of transportation to another seamless. This way products could remain in their containers from the point of manufacture to delivery, resulting in reduced costs in terms of labor and potential damage.
This system dramatically reduced the cost of loading and unloading a ship. In 1956, manually loading a ship cost $5.86 per ton; the standardized container cut that cost to just 16 cents a ton. Containers also made it much easier to protect cargo from the elements or pirates, since they are made of durable steel and remain locked during transport.
The U.S. made great use of this innovation during the Vietnam War to ship supplies to soldiers, who sometimes even used the containers as shelters.
Today, the standard container size is 20 feet long, eight feet wide and nine feet tall - a size that's become known as a "20-foot-equivalent container unit," or TEU. There are actually a few different standard sizes, such as 40 feet long or a little taller, though they all have the same width. One of the key advantages is that whatever size a ship uses, they all, like Lego blocks, fit neatly together with virtually no empty spaces.
This innovation made the modern globalized world possible. The quantity of goods carried by containers soared from 102 million metric tons in 1980 to about 1.83 billion metric tons as of 2017. Most of the container traffic flows across the Pacific Ocean or between Europe and Asia.
The standardization of container sizes has also led to a surge in ship size. The more containers packed on a ship, the more a shipping company can earn on each journey.
The Ever Given, the ship that blocked traffic through the Suez Canal for almost a week in March 2021, has a similar capacity, 20,000 containers.
In terms of cost, imagine this: The typical pre-pandemic price of transporting a 20-foot container carrying over 20 tons of cargo from Asia to Europe was about the same as an economy ticket to fly the same journey.
Cost of success
But the growing size of ships has a cost, as the Ever Given incident showed.
Maritime shipping has grown increasingly important to global supply chains and trade, yet it was rather invisible until the logjam and blockage of the Suez Canal. As the Ever Given was traversing the narrow 120-mile canal, fierce wind gusts blew it to the bank, and its 200,000 tons of weight got it stuck in the muck.
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Ship-building companies continue to work on building ever larger container vessels, and there's little evidence this trend will stop anytime soon. Some experts forecast that ships capable of carrying loads 50% larger than the Ever Given's will be plying the open seas by 2030.
In other words, the shipping container remains more popular - and in demand - than ever.
"Industry leaders in franchising will discuss the status of franchising for blacks in America specifically discussing the opportunities, challenges, and current involvement in the franchise industry."
