Beyond Filling Positions: What the Best Restaurant Operators Are Doing Differently

A few years ago, the discussion around the EB-3 employment-based visa focused primarily on expanding the talent pool. Today, the conversation has shifted. The best operators recognize that hiring is only the beginning. Building stronger teams depends on how employees are developed, retained, and integrated into the business.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 State of the Restaurant Industry report, 77 percent of restaurant operators say recruitment and retention continue to be a significant challenge, even as the industry’s labor market has become more stable than it was just a few years ago.

Restaurant operators have spent years looking for a better answer to staffing challenges. Wages have increased, recruiting technology has improved, and operators have expanded the ways they look for talent. Those investments have helped, but they haven’t changed the reality many operators face every day. Staffing still feels like a constant cycle of replacing employees rather than building teams. One person leaves, another needs to be hired, experienced employees spend time training new hires, and before long, the process starts again.

Building stronger teams

The operators making the greatest progress are asking a different question. Instead of, “How do we solve our hiring problem?” they’re asking, “How do we build a workforce that’s more stable a year from now than it is today?” That is how you solve your hiring problem, because staffing challenges don’t end when a position is filled.

Tom Kilby, who leads workforce planning for our EB-3 programs and works directly with multi-unit restaurant operators across major restaurant brands, sees that shift every day. The EB-3 Other Worker visa program allows U.S. employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent, full-time positions they have been unable to fill through the local labor market. He says the operators who struggle most aren’t failing to plan, they’re simply planning in too short a window.

“A lot of operators are trying to drink from the fire hose, making sure they’re staffed for this coming weekend, not this coming year,” Kilby says. “The ones who’ve had the most success are the ones where someone at the ownership level steps back and sees the forest for the trees. They realize there might be a better way if they build a plan for the long term instead of just reacting day to day.”

That’s consistent with what we’ve seen across the operators we work with. The ones who get ahead of staffing challenges aren’t necessarily spending more, they’re thinking differently, treating workforce planning as a year-round discipline rather than something they revisit every time a position opens up.

That longer-term perspective also changes the way operators think about hiring tools. Rather than expecting any single recruiting strategy to solve every staffing challenge, they’re building multiple workforce pipelines that complement one another. Local recruiting, employee referrals, retention efforts, career development, and employment-based visa programs all play a role in creating a more resilient workforce over time.

“I tell people that using the EB-3 Other Worker visa program is like planting a tree,” Kilby says. “If you’re ever in the market for shade, lumber, or fruit, you’d better plant it today because you can’t go back and plant it 20 years ago.”

Successful implementation examples

Kevin Dobski, a McDonald’s owner-operator in Kansas, has seen the value of taking that broader approach. His organization employs approximately 1,200 people across its restaurants and support operations, and, like every operator, he’s spent years working to build and retain strong teams.

“Hiring and turnover have always been among the most important metrics in our business,” Dobski says. “It’s probably one of the top five things we focus on internally within our organization. We were looking for a more sustainable way to build our workforce, and expanding our approach has made a real difference.”

Over the past several years, Dobski says he’s watched dozens of EB-3 employees advance from crew positions into leadership roles, strengthening both his teams and the day-to-day operation of the business.

“We’ve had people go from crew to crew trainer to manager and build their careers here,” he says. “The caliber of people has been tremendous.”

One example is Sanju Priti, who came to the U.S. through the EB-3 program. Originally from Nepal, Sanju first learned about the opportunity through his brother, who had gone through the same process. Within months, he was working in Dobski’s restaurants in Lawrence and Topeka.

Within his first year, Sanju had moved from crew member to crew trainer. He’s now working toward a management position. After receiving his green card, making him a permanent U.S. resident, he chose to continue building his career with Dobski’s organization.

“I knew it was a legitimate process before I applied,” Sanju says. “There’s always someone there to help, whatever the difficulty is. I’m doing well enough that my employer changed my position to crew trainer, and now they’re working toward making me a manager.”

Kilby says he sees the same pattern across employers participating in the program. “One of the things I’m most proud of is that every employer sponsor who’s become eligible to participate again has chosen to do so,” he says. “It becomes a perpetual pipeline. You get into a rhythm, and it becomes part of your overall workforce strategy.”

The restaurant operators we work with aren’t looking for a silver bullet because they know one doesn’t exist. They still recruit locally. They still focus on retention. They still invest in culture, training, and career development. What’s changed is that many are no longer relying on a single hiring channel. They’re complementing their traditional recruiting efforts with additional talent pipelines, including legal workforce programs such as EB-3 Other Worker, so the business isn’t as vulnerable when a single talent source becomes harder to find.

Restaurant operators will always be hiring. The question is whether hiring remains a weekly exercise in replacing employees or becomes part of a broader strategy for building stronger teams. The operators making the greatest progress have already started making that shift. They’re still recruiting, but they’re also investing in the systems, people, and long-term planning that make recruiting easier over time. As labor challenges continue to evolve, I expect more operators will move in that direction.

Chris Richardson is president of BDV Solutions, a Vanteo company, which partners with organizations to address workforce challenges through international hiring and helps restaurant operators implement EB-3 Other Worker programs as part of broader workforce strategies.