Stop Hiring Bodies, Start Hiring Believers

Every restaurant owner says the same thing: good help is hard to find. On a recent episode of Ride or Die, host Greg Provance and Spiro Douvris make the case that the good help isn't missing. It's just not working for you, because most restaurants are hiring backwards, filling shifts instead of building a team.

What does "culture" actually mean in a restaurant?

It's how the team thinks and behaves when no one is telling them what to do. Provance defines it simply: culture is the standard, and either you're holding the standard or the standard is holding you. He points to a common scene as the counterexample, a team member leaning against the wall, giving a guest a death stare instead of a greeting. That moment isn't a hiring accident. It's the direct result of who got let onto the team in the first place, and what was tolerated once they were there.

Why do restaurants keep saying good help is hard to find?

Because most hiring happens in reactive mode. Provance describes the typical cycle: a great team member quits, a shift opens up on Saturday at 3pm, and whoever's available gets slotted in to fill the hole. "We're already in reactive mode right there," he says. "So now we just bring in whatever we can to fill that space and tell ourselves, this is gonna fill the hole, and later on we'll get to the culture piece." That's the whole cycle, repeated every time someone leaves. The fix isn't waiting for better applicants. It's changing when you start looking: "Always be hiring," Provance says. "I don't care if you need that person or not. You should always be looking for those next great people to join your team."

Should restaurants hire for resume or for culture fit?

Most hire for resume, and Douvris argues that's backwards: "So many people are hiring just for a body, where culture is the fifth thing on the list." Skill is visible on paper and can be taught on the job. Culture fit can't. Provance says the split in a real interview should run the opposite direction from how most operators run it today, roughly 80% of the conversation probing for values and fit, with skill and experience getting a smaller share, since that part is already sitting in front of you on the resume.

How do you write a job ad that attracts the right people?

Stop writing job ads that just list duties and requirements. Provance calls the standard restaurant job post "very average" by design, lift 50 pounds, have some experience, apply now, and that's exactly the caliber of applicant it attracts. A job ad that names the business's actual values, family-owned, community-driven, a little weird and proud of it, does the filtering before the interview ever happens. "That's already started to divide up the pond," Douvris says. People self-select in or out based on whether the description sounds like them.

What should you actually ask in a hiring interview?

Fewer questions about their last job, more questions about how they think. Provance asks candidates directly what their greatest core value is and why. "If somebody looks at me like they're deer in headlights and they don't even know what a core value is, they're probably not gonna be a good fit," he says. The other rule: trust the gut check. Both hosts agree that the times they ignored a nagging doubt about a candidate who "looked great on paper" were almost always the hires they regretted.

What is a working interview, and why does it catch things a normal interview misses?

A paid trial shift, done before someone is actually hired, for every position, not just kitchen roles. Provance pays candidates a half day's wage to work alongside the team, no different from a chef staging on the line. It works in both directions: the restaurant sees how the person actually performs under real conditions, and the candidate finds out honestly whether the job is right for them. Provance references Zappos' well-known hiring process, where new hires go through weeks of culture-focused onboarding before they're offered a bonus to quit if they want to. Anyone who stays after that offer is fully bought in. The lesson isn't to copy that exact program, it's to take the vetting process seriously enough that a bad fit surfaces before the paperwork, not six weeks into the schedule.

What happens when you keep a toxic high performer on the team?

You teach everyone else what actually gets rewarded. Provance describes the classic case: a fast, skilled bartender who's brilliant with guests but toxic to the team. Keeping that person sends a message down the entire roster, performance beats culture here, and the good culture people are the ones who leave first. "Bad culture people will drive away the good culture people in a heartbeat," Douvris says, "and you will lose the good culture, even the medium culture people." The fix has to be structural: hire slow, fire fast, and treat the standard as non-negotiable regardless of how good someone is at the tasks.

Is culture more important for hourly staff or for leadership roles?

Both, without exception, top to bottom. Provance is direct about this: the standards rooted in a restaurant's core values are non-negotiable "from every single position in the organization, top down. Bar none." The one place it starts, though, is with the owner. If leadership doesn't visibly hold the standard first, no one further down the org chart will either.

A hire that changes how you think about resumes

Provance tells the story of hiring a 16-year-old for his first job ever, at a high-volume fine dining restaurant that normally only hired experienced staff. Midway through the interview, the teenager started asking Provance questions back, how he knew he'd found the right fit for his team, what his own experience there had been like. Within weeks, managers were asking where he found the kid. He brought in his sister and his best friend next, and all three became some of the strongest culture-carriers on the team, despite having zero restaurant experience going in. The difference wasn't the resume. It's whether someone already has the mindset you're trying to build, because that part is nearly impossible to install after the fact.

The real gap isn't the interview script, it's who's enforcing the standard

None of this works if hiring for culture only happens when the owner is the one doing the interview. The restaurants that actually pull this off have managers who can independently protect the standard, spot a wolf in the hen house, and walk away from a good resume attached to the wrong fit, without needing the owner in the room to make the call. That's not a hiring skill. It's a leadership one.

More from the Rundown: if hiring for culture resonated, go deeper with Stop Building Concepts, Start Building Community on what hospitality is really for, Stop Orientating, Start Integrating on turning a new hire into a true believer, and Are You Building Drivers or Just Babysitting Doers? on what happens after they're hired.

If your managers can't hold the line on culture without you standing over the interview, that's exactly what the Leadership Circle exists to fix. Learn more about the Leadership Circle

Listen to the full conversation, "Stop Hiring Bodies, Start Hiring Believers," on the Ride or Die podcast, Episode 6, at gphospitalitypartners.com/podcast.