Reduce Restaurant Theft with Better Onboarding and Reporting Practices
An extensive study of theft among restaurant workers was conducted recently by three researchers from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. The results — based on transaction and theft data from 83,153 servers at 1,049 restaurants from 34 chains across 46 states in the U.S. over seven years — are a must-read for restaurant owners, managers and investors regarding theft prevention practices.
Among the findings:
- Restaurant employees who engage in unethical or illegal behavior influence others to participate in similar misconduct. Interestingly, “theft peer effects on new employees are strongest in the first month of employment and disappear after the fifth month.”