Here’s Why Your Favorite Server Quit the Restaurant

“I’ll meet you by the dumpster in five.” That’s what I used to say to my sous chefs in between shifts to escape the confines of the kitchen when we needed to discuss sensitive information that could affect the team’s vibe for the rest of that day. It was our only true safe space. 

The demands on hospitality professionals are more acute and apparent than they have ever been. You’ve seen it as a customer, I’m sure. From the corner pub to the global hotel chain, the human cost of the post-pandemic era is prevalent. Businesses are shuttering early and often. Those that remain are understaffed and lacking services. You may have noticed a downturn in the overall quality of hospitality, and seen more of a show of emotions from the people on both sides of an interaction. Sometimes you just need a safe space as a team to discuss these daily challenges. Mine was the dumpster. 

If it feels like hospitality has gotten worse, this might be why

Amongst the rubble of an industry rebuilding in 2025, the hospitality employee is under tremendous stress and strain. It’s never just one thing. It’s the combined weight of it all — another double, another last-minute no-show, another customer snapping their fingers like you don’t have five other tables in your section. When you finally get a second to breathe, something else changes. Maybe the owner is stressed about the cost of goods, and macroeconomics is affecting their customer count. The flywheel of hard truths continues for the hospitality industry.

We don’t talk about it much, not really. Because if we did, if we really pulled the curtain back, we’d have to admit just how broken parts of this industry still are. We’d have to admit that we’ve normalized suffering, and we’ve been asking our people to push through in silence.

And that’s exactly why your favorite server quit.

People are going out to restaurants again, but there aren’t as many workers

Post-pandemic headlines will have you believing that restaurants bounced back. Sure, we’ve reopened and guests are out again — kind of. But anyone inside the walls of this industry knows that we’re still hustling harder than ever, but with far fewer people.

In 2023, the National Restaurant Association reported that 62% of operators said they didn’t have enough staff to meet demand. This isn’t just about hiring; it’s about retaining. The new reality is that people are quitting faster than we can replace them. Ask a restaurant manager and they’ll tell you that turnover isn’t seasonal anymore, it’s constant. You spend weeks training someone only to have them leave mid-month. You post job ads, offer sign-on bonuses, text a mile a minute, and still shifts go uncovered.

But we keep moving. We always have. That’s part of what makes hospitality people who they are. But beneath that resilience is a burnout that’s become so embedded we’ve stopped calling it by name. 

The pay is still too low

The biggest factor is that the pay still isn’t right. The economics of this industry are unsustainable for most workers in 2025. The median hourly wage for servers in the United States, including tips, hovers around $17–$18, but that varies wildly by market and season. That may have worked in 1995, but not now. In many places, the base wage before tips is still below $3 an hour. You work three tables during a rainy midweek lunch shift and you leave with $28 in your pocket.

Meanwhile, rent’s gone up. Groceries are up. Childcare, transportation, health insurance — you name it. Nothing is getting cheaper. You can’t pay bills with the “fun” parts of the job. You can’t budget with the satisfaction of nailing service or remembering a regular’s name.

For back-of-house folks, it’s no better. Many are still working 50 or 60 hours a week, grinding to hit labor percentages or prep for brunch with two cooks instead of five. Most are still waiting on health benefits that don’t kick in until month three, if they exist at all.

70% of restaurant employees said they would stay in the industry if wages and benefits were better. So why can’t we move faster?

Burnout is real and managers aren’t trained to deal with it

In April 2024, the hospitality platform Axonify published a study showing that 47% of restaurant managers in the U.S. reported experiencing burnout. Nearly 70% say their team members have voiced it too. In the same study, it was noted that only 46% of those surveyed said their companies offered any training around mental health and wellbeing. To me, that feels like it’s not just anecdotal; it’s structural.

How is it possible that we’ve built an entire industry on the backbone of human energy and capacity, and then failed to care for those exact humans?

Culture can’t just be a buzzword

When it comes to “culture,” you can’t just talk about it, you have to be about it. A lot of owners simply talk. It’s on a poster on the wall, in a mission statement that’s never reviewed or shared with the team, or it’s a buzzword in the pre-shift huddles. But culture can’t be aspirational, it has to be operational.

Has a restaurant invested in equitable pay systems? Are they allowing for time off and recharging? Are they scheduling with empathy to allow employees to participate in life outside the restaurant? Are they promoting from within and investing in their people over the long term? If not, then “culture” is just a word.

To clarify, the restaurants that are retaining people right now aren’t always the ones with the best perks. They’re the businesses with owners and managers who are listening, trying to figure out ways to adapt, and leading with humanity. They’re building schedules around childcare. They’re closing one extra day to let their teams breathe. They’re running smaller menus so they can run leaner, without burning everyone out.

There are some I see who are doing it right, like Sea Creatures, run by chef Renee Erickson in Seattle. The restaurant group has led with integrity around how they support their staff post-COVID. They’ve raised wages, adjusted service models to be more equitable, and focused on internal promotion. Dame in New York City, a funky, lauded seafood restaurant run by 2023 F&W Best New Chef Ed Szymanski, made headlines for raising their starting wage to $25 an hour and reducing shifts to four days a week. At Owamni in Minneapolis, chef Sean Sherman not only created a decolonized menu rooted in Indigenous foods; he built a culture where team health, collaboration, and shared values are front and center. He’s not worried about turnover, because he’s created a space that values one another. 

All of these businesses have rejected the old myth that in order to survive in hospitality, you have to break people. This is personal for me. I’ve spent 25 years now as a chef, restaurateur, and entrepreneur in this industry. I’ve seen peers lose their health, their joy, their marriages, and sometimes their lives. I’ve also had the honor of leading incredible people who gave everything they had, even when the systems weren’t built to support them. 

It’s time to reject the grindset

When I was a 15 year old prep cook, every day I’d come into the basement restaurant kitchen I was working in and ask, “How you doing, Chef?” 

“GRINDING, BABY!” he’d reply. As an industry, we have to stop romanticizing the grind. We have to stop acting like working yourself into the ground is a badge of honor. Because it isn’t. It’s a red flag. 

The cost of hospitality burnout is not just human, it’s economic, cultural, and systemic. When we lose our best people, we lose the mechanism to run thoughtful businesses. We lose the heartbeat of the dining room. We lose the energy that makes restaurants feel like home.

So the next time you show up to your favorite spot and notice someone’s missing from the floor, the kitchen or the bar, ask yourself a simple question. Did the industry create a space they could grow in, or just a space they needed to escape from?

Hospitality isn’t broken. But it is begging for repair, and our time is now. 

We can’t fix it overnight, but we can start where we are in our own kitchens, dining rooms, offices, and teams. We can shift the conversation. We can ask better questions. We can invest — not just in systems and tech — but in the humans who bring our vision to life every single shift.

Because the best way to stop the dumpster from being the only place your team feels safe is to make the rest of the restaurant feel a little more human.