How Kitchen Staff Shortages Are Reshaping Restaurant Menus

What the Data Shows

According to the National Restaurant Association's 2026 Hiring & Staffing research report, 22% of US restaurant operators said in 2025 they didn't have enough staff to meet customer demand — down from 78% in 2021 and 32% in 2024, but still far from resolved.

Among restaurants that remained short-staffed in 2025, 43% changed their menu, 34% cut operating hours, 21% closed on days they'd normally be open, and 20% added more technology or automation.

Cutting the Menu, Item by Item

Applebee's trimmed its menu from roughly 160 items to about 100 during the pandemic-recovery period, dropping slow-selling, labor-intensive dishes such as BBQ brisket tacos, certain soups and some burger variants.

McDonald's USA President Joe Erlinger made a similar case for a leaner menu.

Automation Is the Long Game, Not the Quick Fix

Only 20% of understaffed US operators turned to automation in 2025, suggesting most treat it as a longer-term investment rather than an immediate fix. South Korea shows where that investment can lead: kiosk installations in the private food-service and retail sector rose 4.1-fold between 2019 and 2024, and 71.7% of franchise owners cited labor-cost reduction as their main reason for adopting kiosks, according to a 2026 study in Frontiers in Public Health. Over the same stretch, Korean food-service operating margins fell from 15% in 2019 to 8.9% in 2023.

The pressure isn't only economic. A 2024 PLoS One study found that part-time workers make up 63.1% of Japan's hospitality and food-service workforce and 54.7% of UK restaurant staff — a structural reliance on a workforce segment that keeps shrinking as birth rates fall and populations age.