FrontHouz: Solving Hospitality’s Staffing Shortage with Tech & the Gig Economy

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have Starr Douglas, who is the Founder and CEO of Fronthouz. Welcome.

Starr Douglas: Thanks, Lee. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about front House? How are you serving folks?

Starr Douglas: Yeah. So Fronthouz is the future of hospitality staffing. Our platform sources vets and uses AI to train hospitality professionals so that restaurants, restaurant managers can push a button and receive a fully trained, fully vetted staff member on demand.

Lee Kantor: And then what types of skills do you specialize in?

Starr Douglas: So we’re in the front of house in restaurants and event venues. So when I say the front of house, think guest facing roles like bartenders, servers, hosts, skilled positions of that nature.

Lee Kantor: So since they’re customer facing, how do you help train them so that they understand kind of the nuances of each of the specific places they’re going to go to work at?

Starr Douglas: Yeah. So every single restaurant or venue that we onboard our step one is to take a professional 360 degree virtual tour of their space, and we build this tour. Think of like one of those virtual tours you see when you’re Your online touring, some sort of real estate property, but we put that together. We label all those table numbers, and then we bring this to the top of the basically to do list for workers to study before they get there, so they can walk around, view all the table numbers, learn the access points. You know, this is table one. That’s table 19. This is the cabinet where the coghlan’s glasses live. So that’s step one. And then we collect training documents, think menus cocktail build sheets like ingredient lists, steps of service, any other information that’s used to train in-house staff that goes into our portal. And we use AI to analyze these documents and generate quizzes, assessments, any sort of knowledge check to make sure that the staff they’re studying and they’re comprehending this material.

Lee Kantor: So then the staff enters there for the first time. They kind of have the lay of the land a little bit.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, yeah. For the most part, it’s not a completely perfect process, but what we see happen most of the time is these workers will show up day one. They’ll have a very general understanding of the table numbers and the layout and the menu, how to upsell, how to make the drinks. But then through repetition and continuously picking up shifts at the same location, they’re able to really become just like an extension of the staff.

Lee Kantor: So it’s not or is it meant for the person who, okay, I got I need, you know, I’m triaging this bad situation and I got to put two bodies here for just a shift and that’s it. Is it for that or is it for somebody that. Okay, maybe I can get somebody in here and then they can eventually be more of a solution that will last a while, not just for this one problem I’m having today.

Starr Douglas: Yeah. So there are many different business cases on the the venue side. And we refer to all of our businesses as venues. So venues can have many different reasons to, to using us. Maybe it’s somebody calls out, maybe somebody no shows. Maybe they just they can’t find anybody who’s qualified to work at their specific location. Um, so in the amount that they use us, it could be every day. It could be a few times a week, a few times a month. It really depends on the business. But we’ve built this platform for the workforce because the hourly labor market is very different. It’s a very different landscape now post Covid, especially in hospitality. All these restaurant workers in 2020, they lost their jobs. And you know, they they now have a lack of job security, uh, knowing what could happen at any point in time. So Covid happened, they lost their jobs. And all of a sudden, where are they going to turn to because they still need to pay their bills. So we found that the vast majority of these, the workforce they entered, the freelance economy, the gig economy, and they started driving for DoorDash and delivering for Instacart companies like that. And the workers really enjoyed the freedom and the flexibility that those platforms offered. But at the same time, they knew that restaurants paid 2 to 3 times more on average. So we really took all the benefits of the freelance economy, applied it back to restaurants, and gave workers that freedom, the flexibility that they desire. And we pay them within, on average, 10s of clocking out. So we’ve built a solution for the workforce first, knowing that if we can optimize for them and build a solution that attracts the best workers, the best venues have no choice but to follow.

Lee Kantor: So. But it is a two sided marketplace.

Starr Douglas: Yes.

Lee Kantor: And then you just started first by optimizing for the worker.

Starr Douglas: Yes. We believe that by obsessing over the workers experience, we can create a very sustainable, long term solution that just delivers what the workforce wants. And then in turn, once. Once you’ve made the workforce happy, it becomes much easier to serve the business as well.

Lee Kantor: So now is your relationship with the worker just primarily they’re an app user, or are you kind of a temp agency? Um, that are helping them get gigs?

Starr Douglas: So we we actually have banned the word temp from our vocabulary at our platform. We are very far removed from the concept of temp labor, especially because of all the vetting that goes into, um, being an approved user on the platform. Um, I would say that the experience for the workers more on the the former, uh, of the two that you mentioned. So they’re a user of the app. There’s somebody who regularly logs in, sees what shifts, what gigs are available, and then they have 100% freedom and control to select any shift that they want to work.

Lee Kantor: But what if the person wants to hire them? The venue? And what if they want to hire them? Is that cool?

Starr Douglas: Yeah, we don’t charge any fees for that. The business is more than welcome, but we’ve what we’ve found by surveying our workers is that 92% of them say no amount of money, no full time job offer, whatever convinced them to return to full time W2 work because it’s just not how they want to work or live their lives anymore.

Lee Kantor: Now, what percent of the workforce wants that level of freedom compared to the percent that wants kind of more security in a full time or quote unquote, security in a full time job?

Starr Douglas: So looking at the general hourly workforce, it’s estimated that by 2027, 50% of the US workforce will in at least some capacity, be freelance. 91% of freelancers across the board say that no amount of money would convince them to return to a full time job. So it’s not just hospitality, Even though this is really a perfect use case for it. So our workers, we’ve surveyed them in 92% say they don’t want a full time W2 job anymore.

Lee Kantor: And the driver behind that is the freedom element.

Starr Douglas: The freedom, the fact that they don’t have any overbearing manager. Nobody’s setting their schedule. They get to to choose when they work, what shifts they want, and they are fully their own boss and they get to clock out, um, and get paid within seconds in full.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, so tell us about kind of the early days, the genesis of the idea. Like, how did this come to you?

Starr Douglas: Well, I lived the the problem from both sides. I was a bartender, but I eventually was also a bar manager and beverage director. And I experienced the pain as the worker, you know, wanting to have more flexibility, wanting the particular schedule that I wanted. And I, I was always very independent. I wanted to do my own thing and not be micromanaged. And I also loved the concept of going and bartending at a dozens of different places across the city. And that’s what I had done in college. So that was very appealing to me and my other coworkers around me at the time. But then when I was a manager and director. Wow. It was such a crazy period, especially during and post Covid. I couldn’t keep staff behind my bar to save my life. I kept losing them to DoorDash and Uber and I figured, well, why couldn’t I do something about this? You know, every day I was told by the the owners or the operators that this is just the way it’s always been. Turnover is just something that you have to live with and figure out a way around and just suffer those costs. And I figured with all the new technology out these days, why not make something that could change that? So I was actually finishing up my last year at Georgia Tech at the time, and I was sitting in class and I was in between, uh, going to two different jobs.

Starr Douglas: I had just come from my day job. I was about to leave for my night job. I was pretty busy at the time, and I was just sitting there dreading what I was about to walk into because I was supposed to be managing the bar, but I knew that I was going to have to bartend because I wouldn’t have staff. And there was a guy sitting in front of me, and he had his laptop open and I could see what he was doing. I was actually pretty tuned in to what he was typing, and he was searching on Google how to find and book a bartender for some sort of party. And I was just thinking in my head like, man, if only it was that simple. And then I thought, well, why couldn’t it be? Why couldn’t I create a platform as intuitive and as easy to use as a DoorDash or an Uber and instead bring all those benefits to restaurant workers? So that was the genesis.

Lee Kantor: So then did you were you went to Georgia Tech? Did you know how to code and build the platform?

Starr Douglas: Uh, yes. I studied computer science and Business Administration at Georgia Tech, but the platform was built by my CTO.

Lee Kantor: So you found a kind of a partner early on?

Starr Douglas: Yeah. A wonderful technical partner. I’ve always been more focused on the business side, you know, being there in the weeds.

Lee Kantor: The front of the house.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, exactly. I love being in there and and making sure that the customer experience, when I say customer, I mean the venues and the workers making sure that it is smooth, it’s flawless. And, you know, there’s so many things that you have to account for when you’re dealing with humans and automating, uh, human scenarios and things that can happen in life. So being out there in the field and just spending time with our different stakeholders and optimizing our operations, that’s really been, uh, one of my areas strategy, growth, business development and product strategy, helping guide, you know, take that feedback and then guide where we’re going to go on our technological roadmap.

Lee Kantor: So, uh, I would imagine you build some, um, minimum viable product first and then, uh, kind of tested it with a venue.

Starr Douglas: Yes. And in the very early days, it was me I was going around and I was seeing what it took for me to learn those training documents up front. And then I’d go and I’d work the shift. I’d go bartend, I’d go serve, I’d host. And it was a ton of learning and a ton of great relationships built along the way.

Lee Kantor: So did you, um, what was it like when you, you know, left it out into the wild? Um, like, did you I’m sure you had some venues that agreed to pilot, and then you were looking for people to be kind of the guinea pigs to go through the training and start working.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, yeah. And we always thought that it would be more difficult to bring on the worker side, but it ended up being the easiest part because the workforce is so ready for this. So what we did was we put out some some ads and we were able to bring workers into our application funnel. And from there, you know, they’re they’re jumping through a lot of hoops to be a part of the platform. Work experience verification, professional reference checks, identity verification, skills based tests, personality assessments, virtual interviews, the whole nine yards. So we can really get a good sense of who they are, their experience, their personality, which are both so equally important in the front of house. So we get these workers onto the platform and then just let them loose and see what breaks, see what we need to do to fix it. And what was really interesting was that we didn’t spend a ton of time nor money on marketing or these ads, but we ended up pretty soon, or pretty early on, having a wait list of over 20,000 workers who wanted to work through us.

Lee Kantor: Now are they? Does each one of them have to go through all of those checks and take all those assessments? Because that cost has to be, um, kind of substantial? I would imagine.

Starr Douglas: Every single one of them has to take the same testing, all the application requirements. Um, we’re we pride ourselves on adding more friction intentionally to our registration because we, we really want the best, the best workers who are willing to stick it out, knowing that there are rewards if they do and they do a great job. Um, as far as cost, all of that is actually automated. Thanks to our incredible CTO. We have a very robust technology stack, and our software automates the entire registration process from start to finish.

Lee Kantor: So there’s no fee for the worker.

Starr Douglas: For the worker, no, there is no fee to them.

Lee Kantor: So when 20,000 people on board, all of those costs are just absorbed by the platform.

Starr Douglas: So the only cost that we incur at this moment is for identity verification. It’s about a dollar and that’s per person. But the workers don’t pay any pay anything to apply. And the only fees come out of subscription fees for the venue side. And then actual shifts worked. But again, that’s all being charged to the to the venue. Workers keep 100% of what they earn, and there’s no fee for them to join front House or apply.

Lee Kantor: Right. So the venue is the one that’s paying the bill, as they should for the worker they need.

Starr Douglas: Yes, correct.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, so you didn’t have a problem getting workers. The so was it more talk about kind of educating the um, the venues in order to try this? The, the need sounds kind of desperate. So I don’t know how much education it would take. I just I guess they would have to believe you know, your promise. But, um, was once you started getting some success there, then I would imagine it probably quickly. Word of mouth spread.

Starr Douglas: Yeah. Word of mouth has been a huge driver for us in referrals. The venue side to get them to trust us. We it was an interesting scenario. We had to do a lot manually at first to have confidence in our numbers. So what I mean by that we have a we’ve averaged a 99% shift fulfillment rate. We filled 99% shifts successfully to date. And across all those shifts, our average star rating for our workforce is 4.95 out of five. So we needed to build that up and, you know, reach, scale and optimize our operations. And we made some really great early partners who were trusting of us. But now it’s at a point where our numbers are very strong and we know them very well. We track our data in the most intense way you can possibly imagine. And, um, just leveraging those numbers and our past success, it’s pretty easy to at least get a company to to try us out, to see it for themselves. And once they do, you know, it’s it’s pretty much a no brainer. It works. It works really well.

Lee Kantor: Now, now those numbers sound like they’d be better than what they were getting with kind of their traditional hiring.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, the traditional hiring process, especially for hospitality, which is really the only industry that I can speak to, um, specifically to this, but the average cost to, uh, well, to turn over an employee is roughly about $6,000 in hospitality and especially the post Covid world. So many restaurant owners and managers, they’re getting stood up on interviews. And I was reading something the other day. There were 25 interviews scheduled. Only two of them showed up and only one of them was even a possible candidate to be hired. So it’s it’s weeks, if not months of spinning wheels and spending money and, uh, you know, churning out dollars through, indeed, ads and just kind of seeing what you get. And at that point, when you finally find somebody who’s decent enough to to take the job, then they’re turning around and quitting in in days, if not weeks.

Lee Kantor: So, Ken, venues just kind of, um, outsource all their employees to you. Has that happened?

Starr Douglas: It’s possible. Uh, Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United, they’re one of the examples of companies that do that. They’re more events driven. They do have full service dining facilities on site at their training camps. Um, so we do 100% of their staffing in the front of house at the Atlanta Falcons training camp in Flowery Branch, for instance.

Lee Kantor: But could a restaurant or a bar do that?

Starr Douglas: They don’t have a bar, they don’t really encourage the football, right?

Lee Kantor: I know they don’t, but could just a random, you know, in the city, just some restaurant or bar, could they just say, you know what, let’s let front of the house be our kind of. They’re the ones hiring now.

Starr Douglas: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: But that hasn’t happened yet.

Starr Douglas: It has, it has, but I will. I’ll keep those stories for another time. We we could really get into the weeds on that one.

Lee Kantor: Um, because of it’s such a problem. And you have a solution. Like, why wouldn’t people just want to solve the problem?

Starr Douglas: Yeah, I get it. Well, something that we that is a really great scenario. We run into a lot of our, our companies we work with have good culture. You know, we have the best workers. So we really try to partner with the best venues, the ones that, um, are very inclusive and welcoming. And, you know, most of the time when you factor in that great culture and high volume means you’re making really great money in the front of house. And the the great problem we run into when it comes to why wouldn’t they just use us for 100% of their staff? Is a lot of these companies will have at least a small base team of core people who sometimes have been there for years, and that is, well, number one, it’s great for them, but it’s helpful for our staff as well because they have a big support network around them. So even if somebody’s coming in for their first shift, they haven’t been there before. And you know, they’ve studied online, they can still go up to somebody who’s been there for years and just, you know, tag team with them, stand side by side with them and, you know, learn the ropes together.

Lee Kantor: Right. So that’s kind of optimal on both sides. So you have somebody who’s there been there done that has some history. Um, so the new people can go to them to understand maybe some of the subtleties.

Starr Douglas: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: Now is there is the growth map include kind of back of the house. Are you like going to start expanding into like chefs and sous chefs and, and folks behind, uh, you know, in the back.

Starr Douglas: Potentially once we’ve proven ourselves in the front of house, you know, we have a long way to go. It’s a massive market and a lot of growth in our future in front of us. So right now we’re staying very specialized, very focused on the front of house, because by staying this level of specialized, we’re able to maintain quality control, unparalleled quality control on both the venue and the worker side.

Lee Kantor: Now, is this bootstrapped or did you get funding?

Starr Douglas: We’ve raised, uh, one round that is closed and we’re closing our second funding round right now.

Lee Kantor: And your work is primarily in the metro Atlanta area?

Starr Douglas: Yes. Atlanta was our home market. It’s our first market ever. But we recently have done soft launches in Buffalo, New York and Orlando, Endo, and we have worked with events companies in major cities nationwide. So we’ve piloted this, especially on the worker side in over 16 markets east to west coast.

Lee Kantor: So when you got the 20,000 they were coming from, it wasn’t all Atlanta based or.

Starr Douglas: That was actually all Atlanta based.

Lee Kantor: There’s that many folks out there.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, plenty, plenty of people wanting to work this way. And the Atlanta hospitality ecosystem is absolutely massive. The population density of workers out here, it’s one of the the biggest metros in the country for hospitality workers.

Lee Kantor: So about how much is that universe.

Starr Douglas: In the.

Lee Kantor: Metro Atlanta of in. Yeah. The I’m just trying to get a handle on 20 is 20,000 out of a million. 20,000 out of what.

Starr Douglas: Oh in the seven figures, I believe. Last time I checked, in the past couple of months, Atlanta was the number six largest metro hub for Hospitality workers.

Lee Kantor: Wow. That’s amazing. So that I mean, that could be part time. That’s not like full. That’s not how they’re making necessarily their full livelihood. But they might be doing it like you were doing it like in the evenings or something like that.

Starr Douglas: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, when you think about it, hospitality is is 10% of our GDP. They’re the massive or the market for this is just absolutely massive. Um, where we can go across the country, there are virtually no limits, especially when you go back to what you asked a moment ago about expanding into the back of house or other sectors or verticals within hospitality, because we’re still very focused on our lane right now of the front of house. But, you know, there’s a very large door open for the other areas.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you? You need more venues. You need more workers. It doesn’t sound like you need more workers, but what do you need more of money?

Starr Douglas: Uh, so the number one thing that we are building out right now is, is the the venue side? You know, there are so many restaurants and event venues in Atlanta really well across the country that are struggling with staffing. And it’s because they’re looking for their workers in an outdated way. And the more that we can bring awareness to this new style of working, you know, the better these businesses will be, the more money they’ll save. I’ll give you an example. Uh, those companies who use us for 100% of their staffing, they’re saving 10% on their labor costs by doing so. And and their managers aren’t turning over as much because they’re not having to deal with that massive, major stressor of finding staff and filling last minute needs. And just it’s incredibly stressful. It’s, um, to date, it’s been the number one biggest pain point of managers finding staff and retaining them. So if we can take that off their plate, not only are we saving the money, but we’re saving them stress and all these other ancillary benefits that just make everybody’s lives easier. So all that to say, we’re hoping to help as many businesses in the Atlanta area and beyond.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Starr Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. So our website is WW House. House is spelled h o u z. So f r o n t h o u z.com. And you can also feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Star Douglas Starr is with two R’s. Or if you’d like to email us, you can also find us at info at House comm.

Lee Kantor: Well, star, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Starr Douglas: Thank you so much, Lee. It was a pleasure.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.