With intense competition in the fast-food space, Taco Bell has leaned into innovation as a way to stand out with new restaurant concepts, delivery services, creative menu partnerships, and plant-based offerings. The Mexican-inspired fast-food restaurant is not only innovating its restaurant concepts and menu, but it’s also finding new ways to enhance the restaurant employee experience with new approaches to recruitment and retention through its “Start With Us, Stay With Us” platform.
Taco Bell is innovating its external recruiting efforts. The restaurant company shows job candidates it’s the life of the party by putting on an event of its own: summer hiring parties.
During the summer months, Taco Bell recruiting ramps up as it works to match employee supply with forecasted demand. To fill thousands of jobs, the company hosted nearly 600 hiring parties—its take on a career fair—complete with free food, festivities, and on-the-spot job interviews at various restaurant locations. Taco Bell considers this large-scale recruitment effort to be an effective way to give candidates a glimpse of the company’s fun-loving culture and the opportunity to interview in a casual environment. Though the primary objective is to recruit seasonal help, the company also hopes some of the new hires will become long-term employees. The company promoted the recruiting event through public relations, in-store signage, and social media.
The career fair events are part of a broader initiative to create new jobs in the United States. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many retailers and restaurants laid off employees, Taco Bell forecasted more team members would be necessary as more consumers chose drive-through dining restaurants. The company committed to hiring more than 30,000 workers to fill traditional team member roles as well as new roles related to enhancing safety measures and social distancing requirements. To effectively hire this large number of workers, Taco Bell conducted virtual and curbside interviews.
Taco Bell’s employees will experience a variety of changes as the company invests in new restaurant concepts. For example, Taco Bell’s Go Mobile prototype restaurant is built around digital transactions. The stores are much smaller than the restaurant’s traditional footprint with a double drive-through lane that features a dedicated pick-up option for app users. Employees will benefit from smart technology in the kitchen that syncs with the Taco Bell app. Taco Bell will also introduce so-called bellhops to streamline the drive-through experience. These employees will utilize handheld tablets to increase efficiency.
Taco Bell has also invested in technology to improve communication with frontline employees. For example, Taco Bell partnered with Crew to rapidly roll out its messaging and scheduling app at 470 corporate locations and more than 4,500 franchise locations. The app made real-time communication to team members a reality and streamlined workflows, syncing the company’s various scheduling systems. The Crew app proved to be an asset during the global pandemic as franchisees were able to send critical top-down communications and maintain business continuity amid rapidly shifting safety procedures.
Taco Bell’s “Start With Us, Stay With Us” platform is more than a slogan, it’s a mentality. The company wants to provide career paths and educational opportunities for team members to contribute to their future success. This approach to recruitment and retention has changed the restaurant employee experience and stands to create employee advocates and attract talent that will be with the company long term.

Questions

1. How has Taco Bell innovated its external recruiting efforts?
2. How has technology improved communication with employees?
3. Describe how Taco Bell devised a course of action for matching employee supply with demand during the summer months.