Professor Bruce McAdams on Restaurant Labor, Gen Z & Improving Culture

The Menu Mix is a hospitality podcast that talks to senior thought-leaders across the industry, uncovering the future of the sector. Subscribe on YouTube to follow.

In this episode George Wetz (CEO) and Matt Holy (Director of Strategic Projects) welcome Bruce McAdams, a hospitality professor at the University of Guelph, to discuss the ongoing labor challenges facing the restaurant industry. Drawing on his extensive experience in both academia and restaurant operations, Bruce provides insightful analysis and practical advice for restaurant operators looking to attract and retain talent in today's competitive market.

Key Takeaways

• The post-pandemic labor landscape: Bruce discusses the reasons behind the current labor shortage in the restaurant industry, noting that while many employees have returned, there's a significant gap in skill and leadership potential. He attributes this to a lack of training opportunities during the pandemic and the unique characteristics of Gen Z.

• The Gen Z perspective: Bruce examines the values and expectations of Gen Z employees, highlighting their desire for transparency, trust, and work-life balance. He emphasizes the importance of understanding this generation's perspective and adapting management styles to meet their needs.

• The regenerative employment model: Bruce introduces his research on the "grind" of restaurant work and his proposed solution: the Regenerative Employment Model. This model focuses on reducing workplace stressors and improving the lives of employees by understanding and addressing their individual needs.

• A hopeful future for hospitality: Despite the challenges, Bruce expresses optimism about the future of the restaurant industry. He believes that the current landscape presents an opportunity for innovation, improved quality, and a renewed focus on hospitality.

Episode transcript

Matt Holy: Joining us today is Bruce McAdams, professor in the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph. Prior to entry in academia, Bruce held various leadership roles in operations and training for Darden, and most notably as VP of operations for the infamous Oliver and Bonaccini Group in Canada.

Since becoming a professor, his research on sustainability and employment models in a food service have been published 16 times. And he has won several awards that include OHI's Educator of the Year. Bruce is a regular at sharing his views on core hospitality issues, having appeared on major news outlets like The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio, The National, NPR, and now The Menu Mix.

Bruce, welcome to the show.

Bruce McAdams: Thanks Matt. Thanks George. Happy to be here.

George Wetz: Awesome. Well, Bruce, great to have you here and we're going to dive straight in today. We know, you know, loads about talent and the hospitality industry. And one of the observations that we've seen and been hearing about is. of through COVID and post COVID, the conversation around labor was all around, how do I get labor? Just a real restriction in terms of the market and the number of people who are in the hospitality space. But now the conversation has been changing. And it's much more around the quality of the labor that's available. I was wondering, given your experience and your research, can you give us some sense of what you think the key reasons are behind the current situation around quality and labor?

It's something I've noticed. George, in conversations with, um, people across the industry and in conversations and just observing and reading statistics on things like online reviews that are, that have been dropping in general and just sort of, you know, there is this, idea of, employees are back, but they're not at the quality.

They were perhaps that. pandemic or even 10 years ago. what we really have to do and, and, and we have to sort of think what the pandemic did, the pandemic was, it was a huge disruption obviously, and it, threw wrenches into how we operated, but out of it , and during it, what it also did was really put training on the. burner or even out the back door, I would argue, you know, who, who was training during the pandemic. And so we had a two year period really we had people thrown into situations, um, that they weren't prepared for and that, you know, no neglect by the operators of a survival mode. We were, everyone was just trying to get through.

So there was, there was really a lack of sort of building skills and growing. People in positions during that time. And we also had a lot of people leave the industry. We had people sit at home and not work for two years. So we, we sort of had this, you know, we call it the COVID cohort, the two years of, of students that sort of went through this, that, you know, really don't have the skills and the talent that we're used to as well as, and I know we're probably going to get into this with talking about Gen Z, but you know, the generation itself is not one that is. Conducive and wired to working in jobs that require a lot of socialization, a lot of communication, et cetera. So, so it's sort of a perfect storm, if you say of things that led to this, um, and I don't want to say it's lack of great people, because I think they are great people, just great people that are under trained and don't have the skills and the understanding of perhaps what's necessary to, you know, To excel and succeed in the hospitality business and restaurants.

So, I know I shared with Matt a couple of weeks ago, a conversation I had with a CEO of a, of a company in Canada, big company, 80, 90 stores. And he was saying their numbers are finally back as far as attraction and, and getting people to apply. But it was, quality that was down and quality in the.

front line positions, whether it be server, cook, et cetera. And the interesting thing that he said that I've heard other people say, um, I don't have the data this up. This is anecdotal, but really challenging trying to find people who want to lead, who want to be that assistant manager, that, bar supervisor, that, that banquet manager, that, dining room manager.

And so that seems to be the biggest void and then the talent issue in the, in the front lines. 

 That was what I was going to pick up on was, you know, how is the issues around the frontline teams translating into leadership and management roles, like both kind of in store, but also in head office as well. I mean, it always used to be the way that you would. identify great high performers and frontline teams and sort of train them up and work through, but we've sort of been hearing that that's been a bit more challenging now.

And, you know, restaurant brands are going either to other brands to capture talent or even other industries, you know, to pull them in. Like, can you just talk a bit about that, that relationship between the two and any specifics around how management positions have been impacted? 

Bruce McAdams: Well, when Matt was a student of mine, probably 10 years ago, we would have talked about hypos and, you know, those high performance and identifying those people in your organization to train and invest in, but what we're finding now is. Is. Young people are averse to leading and I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit more and there's a few reasons that. So it's hard to even get them interested in wanting to be a leader so that you have a pool to identify people from. George, six, seven years ago, I do these real life case studies every semester and often they would be HR and all the HR managers would be talking about bench strength.

Um, Bench strength. We want to, we want to really increase our bench strength. We want to have a pipeline of talent coming up from within. And, and the CEO I was speaking to. For the first time in 14 years, he hired two of the last three GMs he's hired have been external, and he'd only hired internally for the past 14 or 15 years. And so this is where there is no longer it's really hard to have a pipeline. It's really hard to have hypos that are people that you can identify. So we've had to change., the way we approach things and we really have to get and take a step back and say, , these aren't necessarily there.

So how can we help create them? And that's an issue because Gen Z, the research will show they don't want to lead. First of all, they have the lowest trust in leadership of any generation we've ever seen. So, know, in religious leaders and political leaders and business leaders, the scores are horrible.

Yeah. And this has been these, this decline in these scores from the leadership work has really  been increasing throughout the generation. So millennials had a lesser view of leadership, and now even Gen Z, even less than millennials. And they associate leadership with a few things that Doesn't work with what they want out of life.

One is leadership. With leadership comes stress and more responsibility and they don't want stress. And a lot of the work that's being done now is on, is this a react? Is this a result of our focus on mental health and, our opening the door and removing the stigma to mental health? Because when I was in the restaurant industry, I never heard the term mental health. I never had anyone come up to me and say, I'm having a bad day, I need a day off. This is 15 years ago. It was like, okay, people just did stop showing up and it was like, okay, they pulled a runner or burnout or whatever. And now I actually published a paper two years ago on leader preparedness on managing mental health.

And I'm getting a little off topic here, George, but I hope that's okay. The.

George Wetz: know.

Bruce McAdams: Yeah, you know, one of the things I found when I interviewed chefs and leaders in restaurants was an increase in the amount of time they had to spend in managing their employees mental health. and, the old timers would say, Exactly what I just said, you know, 5, 10, 15 years ago,

this wasn't a consideration. Now I have employees coming and telling me when they have to take their medication, , and the fact that they're having a bad day. So they're not coming in because of whatever. And this is something. new to this generation. And if you think about how restaurants are perceived and how we've run restaurants the past, that's a really hard fit because in restaurants, employees deal with an incredible amount of what we call emotional labor. ? If you think of physical labor, that's lifting, that's pushing, that's chopping, that's whatever. Emotional labor is dealing with guests, dealing with your teammates, dealing with your employees, etc. So, , these people want to avoid that. You know, these young people want, they want to , this is a real challenge for our industry and, and something that, you know, I don't know who said it to me, but it may have been on a podcast like yours that I heard, but someone said, you can't change a generation. Right. So don't, don't think you can change your gen zeds to think differently. We have, we operators will have to change.

George Wetz: So this means it's paramount, you know, if for operators looking forward, the next one to two to three to five years, you know, thinking about how they best solve for this and work most effectively with that generation is going to be absolutely paramount to, to their hiring to, and to their success. Right.

Bruce McAdams: Absolutely. And, , it's the most difficult time in restaurant history in my restaurant history to ask people to focus on this. I know in Canada, the amount of operators, we have 60 percent of operators that are saying they're breaking even or losing money. The amount of debt from.

Taking on government loans from what we call CERB loans in, in during the pandemic is, has increased. Dining numbers are down in Canada. , I know they're down a little bit in the states as well. , and so there's a lot of stress and pressure and someone like me comes along and say, Hey, you know what, now's the time you really have to focus on people, on your leaders, on your employees, because you know what? Without them, you're not going to be able to succeed. And it's really the hardest time. 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when I was in the industry, it was like, okay, things are rosy, there's no pandemic, things are going okay. It's like, yeah, I can put my time towards training. I can put my time towards, you know, improving the staff room, et cetera. It's pretty hard to ask now, but it's one of those things that I really believe, uh, are gonna, it's going to be the difference between people's survival and people flourishing in the future in their business. 

Matt Holy: That's, um, it's a good transition speaking about kind of the future, the next generation of leaders in the industry. We were having a chat not too long ago about how this is actually also affected the enrollment in hospitality centric programs. Can you walk us through a little bit about what you've seen, either in your program or amongst your peers?

And, how this is translated into higher education and hospitality as well.

Bruce McAdams: Yeah, it's a great, a great point because I don't think a lot of people think of us as educators having the same issues that industry has, we do. And I'm going to speak in a Canadian context, and I do a little bit of work with some people out at Washington State, but mostly I do work with some Scandinavians and they're definitely feeling the same way. there in the Nordic country. So, you know, perspective is, is important in this, but in Canada, um, our enrollment in programs is down significantly for hospitality and it has been declining for 20 years and that's in the domestic market. So these are students that are Canadian students and it's been declining, declining, declining. So what our schools did was prop that up, right? With, uh, students. we would say, okay, domestic enrollment is is declining. So let's take in students from this country in this country in this country. Let's find customers really right from other markets and bring them in. And we were able to do that. In total pandemic, and we had propped ourselves up really and subsidized our programs with international students. what happened in many cases during the pandemic is those those disappeared. and the Canadian government now has put in, in Increasing regulation on housing is a big issue, I think, across North America, but, but in Canada, it's a huge issue, so they've, decreased student visas, international student visas, 75%. lot of those are hospitality students, so now. Um, colleges and universities in Canada are saying, okay, we're very much like our industry partners are the operators in the industry. Our numbers are down, so we're starting to cut costs, and we're starting to look at new revenue streams. I had never considered. The fact that my school would market to high school students, we're going into high schools. Now we're inviting them to come to our campus and have a tour. We literally just put up a website and people signed up and now it's like we're fighting, know, tooth and nail for, , every person we can. Now there's a good side to that is that, We're having to really consider how we promote our industry and the benefits of it and, and the industry, both the   academic side and the operator side is saying the stigma about working in restaurants is holding us back. It's holding you as educators back because students don't want to apply to your program because they think the work is long hours, low pay. cetera, et cetera. And it's hurting us in in trying to get staff. So we're starting to see new programs come up, innovation, collaboration, grassroots stuff. So that's really actually quite exciting. Um, I think we need government to kick in and and put more support behind it and make sure the monies are going the right place.

But I hope that answers it. You know, positive note, though, Matt, just is our school was shut down for a year as far as Intake during the pandemic. We then opened up again , and we had a good amount of students all domestic and this year our numbers went up again all domestics, but we went up 20%. So I look at that as a positive as well. Um, so, so I think there's,  I think there's some, there's some good news coming out of it. 

Matt Holy: Yeah, it's great to hear that Enrollment has finally been kind of going in the opposite direction But yeah, I was I was absolutely shocked to learn that especially domestically that enrollment numbers were going down because I mean, I might be biased, but I, I thought the program was amazing. You know, there's this co op opportunity.

I did mine in China where you get real world work experience. There's the wine program. You got to run a fine dining restaurant, create your own menu. Um, yeah, it was like a really, really exciting program. So it sounds like now, because of the stigma. That is associated with the restaurant industry.

Maybe that was like a big reason for it, but it sounds like that is, that is changing slightly. So could you, go a little bit further into some of the innovation that you spoke about to get those numbers back up and like get people excited about working in hospitality again? 

Bruce McAdams: we have companies now and we have leaders that are, hotels, restaurants that are partnering with regions, so municipalities in our case in Canada with high schools and saying, okay, you can do a, what's called a schism, which is almost an apprenticeship. Or a co-op in high school, in a restaurant or in a hotel, right?

And that, that didn't exist 10 years ago. So that, that was like, okay, this is a career path for you. You can go through a semester and you can, we partner you with a, an industry and et cetera, et cetera, and you get credit for it. So those sorts of things are happening. We also have, a lot of more sort of workshops and, , colleges saying. You know, our school, we're working on a sustainability workshop where we're going to have a day Of great guest speakers and a great meal put on by a sponsor and we're going to invite all these high school students and college students to come in and , get a certificate at the end of the day. So, there's a lot of grassroots sort of things happening popping up. I think. Where we're lacking is any sort of government program and investment. And the, and the government actually in Canada puts a lot of money into this. They just put it in the wrong places, which surprise, surprise, but you know, some sort of formal, what they're working on right now is, is, uh, accreditations and micro certifications.

So micro certifications are becoming a big thing in education where you can take a. A five hour course and become certified in, , soft skills in hospitality, right? So there's lots of interesting things to me. I look at them and I'm like, this is great.

And this is great. Wonderful. But it's not coordinated. And, and there's a lot of people duplicating effort. And I'm like, geez, if we ever had a sort of national plan or a strategy, it might be a little bit more efficient. . . 

Matt Holy: Obviously tough to coordinate anything with any government body, but sounds like they're Are definitely some things that are moving in the right direction. pivoting the conversation a little bit. , you recently released a really interesting framework, kind of bringing this back to work culture and burnout and, during that downtime, just after COVID, you had some time to really sink your teeth into. 

, some research in this space. Would you be able to walk us through your regenerative employment model, and the term that you use a lot, like the grind of working in hospitality, but what are some of the practical things that.

operators could take from this framework, to combat the grind in order to attract and retain talent, in the hospitality industry. 

Bruce McAdams: I'm glad you asked about that Matt. This work is a result of my sabbatical that started at the end of COVID and then came into the opening after pandemic and what I wanted to do is get a, A sense of where people were within the industry, and I wanted to do it from the grassroots, from the dishwasher, from the prep cook, from the takeout person, you know, from the server, from the host, et cetera.

And I was like, you know what, I spend a lot of my time talking to CEOs and HR VPs , but I really want to get into the frontline worker, including the frontline supervisor. Which, is probably a person who is so key to, you know, your listeners operations, you know, that assistant manager, that supervisor, bar supervisor.

So these people are critical to your success. So I spent a lot of time talking to these people and asking them questions. And, and the first thing that was. 60, 70 percent of people would always use the same word, the same phrase, the grind.

It's a grind. Sit down with these people. I can remember sitting down with a woman at a winery restaurant at a picnic table and she said, it's such an effing grind. Like, you know what, you're about the fourth out of the last six people I've heard and I just kept hearing it more and more and more.

It's like, okay, this is a big issue. In those conversations in the maybe 60, 70 conversations I had underlying was. Also, people have jobs to improve their life, to improve their standing, their lot in life. You don't typically just have a job for fun. You're saving money, you're trying to pay rent, you're trying to, to start a career, 

so, underlying to all this was the conferences I was going to at the time. Everyone was talking about, you need a great culture. There, there is a guru of culture called Ed Schein. I've read all his stuff. agree with him more. Culture is incredibly important. Culture is an outcome though, It's a result. It's the result of the behaviors and policies of leadership. So I was asking operators and the higher ups, what makes a great culture? They were like, oh, know, I don't know. I know I need one. I know I need a good one, but you know, how does culture happen? Cultures really result, as I said, of leadership. So we need to focus on leadership and the behaviors of leaders. And for me, with my students, I was like, I want a practical guide for a 21 year old, 22 year old, that's On a little table that can go out to their job as an AGM or a banquet supervisor and say, if I do these things, this is going to improve the culture.

This is going to improve my, my work and help me get promoted, etc. So that's where I created this model, a two factor model of what I call the regenerative model of restaurant employment, where we need to do two things. We need to reduce the grind and we need to improve the life of people. And everyone is a little different.

George will be different than Matt, which will be different than Bruce. So there's not one magic recipe. For you, Matt, it may be reducing the grind is  about no more closed opens. Because you're just not a morning person. And it's really hard for you. For George, it may be, you know what, he's got bad knees. And so he needs a break and he needs a place to be able to sit down. And so that's what he needs from reducing the grind, but I, as a manager, I need to know what it is George needs, what it is Matt needs. And I need to know what these people, each of them needs, and I got to reduce their grind. then I got to improve their life. Matt, for you, you want to make money. It's all about the bling, bling, bling. So it's like, I got to put you in a place where you can make money. George wants to progress and own the business. So I got to put him in places where he's going to learn, et cetera.

And for me, I have two kids. I need benefits. So what it is, it's like, okay, we have to look at individuals and we have to say, I need to reduce the grind for them and I need to improve their life. Everyone's a little different. And if we focus on that, that gives me a plan to deal with my employees.

Cause employees want you to care for them huge. want to be a number. They expect you, they actually expect you to want for them, didn't happen in my day, but that's what they want. They want you to care for them. So you reduce their grind. You try to improve their life. To me, that's the easy recipe that frontline managers can use. 

George Wetz: And how, how have you seen practically. No restaurant brands with multiple locations go about actually enacting that would be a lot of conversations to have that's a big project a big plan like how have you got any advice on how to embed that process into the restaurant organization.

Bruce McAdams: So, very important that you bring that up, George. I have had, numerous, independents, , apply this, this model. I've had individual managers, former students use this model and say, hey, it works. I've had discussions with two large companies that. Approach me about it and say, how do we operationalize this? And that is the million dollar question that is tricky when you get, um, going across, you know, regions, large scale operations, , I would say. I was with Darden Restaurants, and at that time we had 2, 000 restaurants, Red Lobsters and Olive Gardens. And when I was a GM, every week I'd get a box, it was a package, it was a do this, do this, do this, and we would roll it out. I think. You can roll this out. I think in your human resource planning and your human resource training, you can roll this sort of model out. One of the reasons I made it and tried to keep it simple. And also, I didn't go into too much detail, so it could be, it could be adapted for different organizations was so that different organizations could tailor it a little bit to   their needs.

But I think. It gets to what we call leadership development LD and giving people the tools that they need to succeed as leaders. And for me, George, this is, this is. It's like, okay, it's like giving a chef a set of knives and saying, okay, this is where you start, right? This is a tool.

 It's a little hard because there is some, this isn't realistic. am I supposed to look at every person individually when I have 60 of them? And it's like, okay, are barriers that we face in restaurants every day. I've been there. You've been there. And, you know, restauranters are amazing for their ability to be resilient to find ways to do things. So, I think if there's a will, there's a way. It, but it has to start at the top, um, as well. It has to be something that people at the top think is important, George.

George Wetz: Yeah, I completely see that. Like you say, where there's a will, there's a way. And, you know, what we've been talking about and what you've been explaining today is just how this issue is. And it's something that's not going away. And so, yeah, finding ways to embed, you know, a framework like this, or this kind of thinking into nurturing The next generation of employees feels like a really critical activity that the restaurant brands be looking at if they're not looking at it right now.

Bruce McAdams: I, when I started as a professor 15 years ago, I would say that, less than 5 percent of restaurants offered benefits to frontline workers, uh, health benefits in Canada, speaking to Canada. Now it's 20 percent of restaurant companies are offering some sort of benefit package. This is only going to grow. as it becomes more important, and one of the things I'm seeing unfortunate is a little bit of a divide. I'm seeing some amazing stories, some companies that are some great things and really finding results and doing things. And then I'm seeing companies that are saying, status quo.

We're just going to. in, this is a cyclical thing, labor will come back, and I think that's dangerous. That could be right. I'm not Nostradamus, but I'm seeing a bit of a divide in, in companies that are sort of embracing this idea of being a workplace that, that wants to attract people, a workplace of choice, you know, all the HR buzzwords, etc.

And then I'm seeing some people that are sort of digging in and saying. You know what? I've always had a stack of resumes. I've always been able to find people. We'll be okay. Let's just stick to our, guns., and to me, looking out in the landscape, I think that's risky than the costs associated with those companies that are moving forward in this sort of zone.

George Wetz: Hmm. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's important maybe just to a little bit more about Gen Z in this generation. because I think understanding and really empathizing you know, any generation, any group it's the foundation from which you can then build relationships and make progress together.

And we quite often hear a lot about Gen Z that's less positive. I would say when we're in kind of conversations or you hear in the media. Um, and I recently was actually at a talk with lady who's sort of expert in generational differences and we had representatives from. Baby boomer, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z is all in the room. And They talked about some things that are really important, but critically, like the reasons behind it. I just wanted to see if it tallies up with your, you know, your understanding. I mean, one of the things they said about, about leadership and working for a company is they want transparency. Transparency is being like absolute paramount importance, but then why is that? and the answer seems to be, they've grown up. In a situation where the social media, they're online a lot. And how do you trust? How do you know what's real and what's fake? How can you trust anything? Because is it fake news or is this the real news? And so, you know, they're coming into the workplace with. is their experience of what people are saying and doing. And so they need to be able to look someone in the eye and really trust them. But when you get there and you build that trust, then, they actually want to stay and be very, very loyal to businesses and be resilient and work hard.

Um, I think to what you're saying, there seems to be a trend as well. Not necessarily for moving up, but they want to try different positions within an organization. So maybe do this job for two years and then shift sideways over here and try that for a couple of years. And you know, I think that's about this kind of stability point.

And if you think, you know, born around the time of 9 11, grew up around financial crisis post, you know, go into the workplace around COVID, this is a generation that's had a lot of big sociological events happen right the way through their childhood and and growing up in formative years. So I feel like coming at it from understanding that is really important to understanding them.

Like they actually do want stability. They want to be loyal. They want to stay somewhere, but they've got to trust you. You've got to get that trust of them first. I mean, how does that tally up with you're seeing? 

Bruce McAdams: so I am not a Gen Z academic expert, but I read all of that and I attend probably the same conferences you do and I think you're bang on, you know, that transparency and trust is a huge issue and you speak about how they're willing to move more horizontally than vertically. So my generation was the IBM. Generation is where you go in, you start as an IBM trainee, and then you move in, you know, management trainee, and then you become a area guy, then you become a VP, and you move up the ladder. That whole idea of moving up the ladder doesn't really jive with, What Gen Z is looking at.

They're not looking at steps up the ladder. And we have to preface this by saying, this is always a curve, right? when I'm saying Gen Z, there's going to be people that are like, Gen Z that are damn right. I want to get up the ladder. But it is, the majority that are like, you know what, I'd rather move and take on different projects and learn different things at the same money. So that's a big part of it is they're not necessarily looking to climb the corporate ladder. Trust and transparency is a societal issue that we're facing because of the increase in access to information, peeling back the curtains of whether it's our political leaders or our corporate leaders and finding out what's going on and young people today.

I see this in class really want to belong to something they really want to care. They want to be loyal. Like you said, they want to work hard, they are very. suspicious and very careful and not like me At the first meeting at Red Lobster, when they said, Oh, we're going to do this. This. And I was like, I was all in, I was all in a hundred percent. No, not anymore. It's going to be like, okay, this is too good to be true. I know what happened to my parents. I know what happened to this politician and this company, so I'm going to be really cautious and. You know, I know Matt and his classmates and we talk a lot about trust and transparency, that was, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, it's only increased more the importance that people want to be involved and understand why decisions are being made. You know, in my day, I never had to think about these things, right? And, and this is, I never had to think about trust and transparency. never had to think about mental health, as I mentioned earlier in the pod, all I did was I took inventories, I placed orders, I disciplined people, I filled out forms. I, I read my comment cards at the end of the night and if they were good, I was off to the next day. And today's world of leading people in restaurants is, is more complex than that. Takes more navigation to be able to get results. ...... inflexibility is something that hurts us as an industry, because you have to be there to cook food. You can't cook food from your apartment. and this whole hybrid work and working from home has hurt our industry in it's a lure to people in the fact that, Hey, my friend works. Nah, she goes in twice a week if she wants, and she can work from home and it's like, Hey, I'm a restaurant manager. I can't do that. That's another thing that Gen Z's are, and only accelerated this is the whole flexibility of work, and then work life balance is still, something that Gen Z's are cognizant of thinking of the higher you go up. The less work life balance you have, and, and they're more about family, which is great. There's, there's research coming out now that shows that these young people during COVID were, and I had two boys, we played board games every night, we watched Netflix, we, and now my boys are closer to my wife and I, you know, they, they still want to go for family walks. I'm like, I would be going to the arcade trying to meet. Right? And they're like, oh, I want to hang out with my family. And so family really important to these people, which is great,   you know, and, and, yeah, I'm, let you get a word in. Yeah,

George Wetz: interesting that point because one thing I've heard is that Millennials were the first generation where they were actually friends with their parents. And then Gen Z is the first generation where they've said one of their parents is their best friend. And so you've seen this trend of getting kind of close and close to the family.

Bruce McAdams: yeah,

George Wetz: interesting. Matt, you want to take us away for our final question?

Matt Holy: Well, yeah, it's just kind of, uh, nice talking about that. And it is nice transition into the future and what you seem hopeful for. And, you know, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, how the industry could be a little doom and gloom. Sometimes it is a grind. And you know, right now. 

Numbers are down and it's, it's really tough for the operators to navigate through. But, I feel, and I think you feel as well, Bruce, that there is almost this light at the end of the tunnel and a bunch of stuff to be really hopeful and excited for in the next, three to five years. So, in that time span, yeah, what, really excites you about the future of hospitality based on your research and based on this kind of next generation entering the industry?

Bruce McAdams: yeah, I'm glad you are asking this because often, um, in my commentaries in places, it's, it is doom and gloom, or it's the, challenges, et cetera, but I am optimistic. I see a lot of the challenges we are facing, there are innovators and people tackling these challenges and improving things.

 And one of the things where I think I could see, and I'm going out a little bit on the limb is, is this idea of where we are with hospitality and, and service. , and I, think we've sort of hit a bit of a low. out of the pandemic, this idea of emotional labor, again, dealing with customers, the confrontations we have, customers are harder to deal with than ever before.

 I think we're going to see an evolution and an innovative ideas to get back to pleasing guests and creating great expectations. You know, experiences. I, I see that. And I sort of, that's my crystal ball. Um, I also think inflationary times that we're in right now, quality matters, Um, I dine out four times a week and I'm more cognizant now of, am not going to go to a place and take a chance, right? And so I, think you cannot. Provide value in the quality realm anymore. Um, and get away with it. So I think, I think we're going to see just quality improved coming out of this sort of dip.

So, I see good things. I think I see quality innovation, getting back to hospitality, and conviviality and welcoming people. I see that. Because we need that. And as humans, as we face challenges, whether it be AI or just digital media and our phones, et cetera, we're going to be hungering for those experiences and, and willing to pay for them.

So I think that those people who are willing to invest, focus on, I think that's good. From a. point of view and Matt, you would know from my class. I have my students write weekly reflections on their job placements and how it was. And I have to be honest, I used to get discouraged because there was some really bad people. Employers out there, uh, and bad leaders and the last two years, I've seen that drop. I've seen very, very few, really, really bad experiences from being led by people, et cetera. So. So I have this hope that people want to lead and be better leaders, and they understand the value of employees now more than ever. Uh, and so I really believe that's important. thing in our realm of business leaders. It's like, okay, employees are important. I got to be good leader. Now it's a matter of saying, okay, how can we help these people be better leaders? Right and move the industry forward. And for me, that's the regenerative approach of reducing the grind and improving life. And there's other different aspects as well. So I actually see, I see this desire to be better. And, and I, you know, in the readings of my students. And so, so I'm, I'm positive. And, and I think if you're a young person, if there are any students listening to the pod out there, It is an amazing opportune time now to grow an opportunity to make your mark.

 And, you know, when I went into the business, it was competitive as far as getting a promotion and moving forward. And there was a lot of really good people who'd been around a long time. It was really, really, really tough. And I think now the challenges we face, I think if you're good, , you're going to move up, I see good things. 

George Wetz: hopeful message to end, Bruce, Bruce, it's been a pleasure to to you today. Um, for all of our listeners at home, this has been Bruce McAdams. He is professor at the School of Hospitality, Food, Tourism and Management at the University of Guelph. You can learn more about the hospitality program and his classes at uoguelph. ca slash programs. I will spell that for you. It is U O G U E L P H C A slash programs. And you can also follow him on LinkedIn to find out more about his research. Bruce, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Some fantastic insights, so thank you.

Bruce McAdams: Gentlemen, it has. And your listeners, feel free to email me as well. I like talking to people. Bmccadams. uagwelf. ca. You'll find it. Thanks, guys. 

Matt Holy: Thanks, Bruce. Appreciate the time.

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