Recipe: A company that standardizes recruiting in India’s fragmented hospitality sector

Startups

• ByStartup History | May 25, 2024

The current recruitment scene in the Indian hospitality segment is not very promising. With turnover rates reaching over 30% and the fragmented recruitment process resembling a jigsaw puzzle, both restaurants and job seekers must undertake a complex journey across the country to pursue their professional passions.

Historically, the hospitality recruiting process has involved a variety of approaches: relying on referrals, guest visits, WhatsApp word-of-mouth, and third-party sites. Typically, restaurateurs start by developing a job description and reaching out to their network for recommendations. If this approach proves ineffective, they turn to national employment offices, which often attract candidates from outside the hotel and catering industry. When time becomes a constraint, they turn to freight forwarders and WhatsApp agencies to manage the recruitment process. However, this patchwork, while useful, can result in a limited candidate pool and perpetuate biases among employees.

“We are recruiting monthly for both new and existing positions due to our expansion plans and high attrition rate,” shares Pritpal Singh from Toscano, India on the Recipeat team.

Restaurant groups without a strong HR team cannot cope with recruitment. The presence of multiple recruitment channels and different requirements makes sourcing and screening candidates a tedious task. “At Recipeat, we streamline all recruitment channels under one dashboard and help recruiters track candidates seamlessly at various stages,” quoted Ramvaibhav Kumaran, Co-Founder, Recipeat.

With Recipeat, restaurants can now use one smart link across all of their recruiting channels to source and screen candidates in one place. The platform identifies the job seeker’s source and helps the recruiter immediately connect with the candidate.

Moreover, high turnover rates in the industry mean that restaurants are constantly recruiting employees. Restaurants use a variety of tactics to find suitable candidates, from attending university job fairs to leveraging the power of social media platforms like Instagram. Additionally, when looking for talent, they often resort to using the services of expensive recruitment agencies. Faced with a shortage of local candidates, some companies send their lone HR representatives to universities and training centers to personally select potential employees. However, this approach is not without risks, especially since hotel groups maintain direct partnerships with educational institutions, facilitating preferential placement of candidates based on brand affiliation. So for independent restaurants, ensuring you have the right staff is like taking a gamble in an environment fraught with challenges, including exorbitant fees and a lack of transparency and accountability.

For example, in Bengaluru, a tech-driven city known for its vibrant culinary scene and young population, restaurants are prioritizing agencies, social media and service outlets to attract fresh talent. Meanwhile, in the cosmopolitan center of Mumbai, famous for its vibrant culinary culture and diverse population, establishments may rely more on traditional methods such as job fairs and personal recommendations from candidates. Despite these regional differences, both cities still face fundamental employee turnover and recruitment challenges, requiring innovative sustainable workforce solutions.

Thanks to Recipeat, their clients are able to overcome these challenges by finding hospitality candidates of all levels in one place. Across Bangalore and Mumbai, Recipeat’s database has over 30,000 candidates for recruiters to source from.

Apart from this, agencies in particular are a significant problem in the hotel and catering industry. Many recruitment agencies operate in a fragmented way, each of them has different fees and replacement policies. This lack of standardization not only complicates the hiring process, but also leads to confusion and frustration for both restaurants and job seekers. Moreover, some agencies take advantage of their position by charging excessive fees or engaging in unethical practices such as the use of substitution policies, further exacerbating the challenges facing the industry.

“We have partnered with over 48 agencies in Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra,” explains Adrien Jasserand. Recipeat is currently running pilot programs to organize local agencies, acting as an intermediary between restaurants and hiring agencies, offering a three-month guarantee and a steady flow of demand and qualified job seekers to both parties involved. Thanks to these partnerships, Recipeat has seen its job seeker database grow by 60% per month. At the same time, Recipeat works closely with agencies to ensure compliance with our standards and procedures, facilitating quick disbursements and redistributing rejected candidates across multiple offers.” Through this initiative, Recipeat has streamlined the sourcing and placement process for both restaurants and agencies, providing much-needed organization in the industry.

“Restaurants can now say no to managing multiple platforms or drowning in paperwork – Recipeat streamlines the process, saving time and resources,” said Ramvaibhav Kumaran, co-founder of Recipeat.

Automation is at the heart of what Recipeat does. Through WhatsApp, they simplify interview scheduling and communicating with candidates, making the process more convenient for everyone involved. Candidates no longer have to navigate the recruitment maze on their own – they simply send their CV and are matched with a recruiter.

In an interview, Priyaa Ranjan, Director of Guest Relations and Operations at Monkey Bar, shared her experience with Recipeat’s recruitment solution. She highlighted the challenges she faced before turning to Recipeat.

“Thanks to Recipeat, I found the perfect job for me. I was matched with Monkey Bar in less than a week and we both felt it was the right fit. I couldn’t be happier,” Priyaa Ranjan expressed the effectiveness of the Recipeat platform in connecting job seekers with suitable positions.

Overall, Recipeat is not just another recruitment tool – it is the standardization recruitment needed in the hospitality industry. They are changing the way restaurants hire employees. Recipeat is one of 6 promising startups in the framework Gruhas Gusto – 6-month acceleration program named after GruhasJubilant Bhartia Family Office, Saber Ventures (DLF Family Office) i Anthill ventures

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