People & HR

How to track open roles as Restaurant and Hospitality Founders

People & HRFor Restaurant and Hospitality Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're hiring a line cook, a bartender, and a weekend host all at once, and your 'system' is a shared Google Doc, a stack of paper applications behind the host stand, and a group text with your managers. You post on Indeed and Craigslist, get 40 applications, and have no idea which ones your floor manager already called back. Half your open roles disappear from your memory when Thursday service gets chaotic. You're losing good candidates to slower follow-up because nobody owns the pipeline. 7shifts and Homebase track your current staff schedules, but neither tells you what roles are unfilled or where each applicant stands. You're the bottleneck on your own hiring.

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People & HRFor Restaurant and Hospitality Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A single place to track every open role — line cook, barback, front desk, dishwasher — with applicant status, interview notes, and who owns next steps, visible to you and your managers

A task system that assigns interview follow-ups, reference checks, and offer letters to specific people with due dates, so nothing falls through during a double-shift week

An onboarding knowledge base that captures your training steps, house rules, and tip-out policies so new hires don't spend their first week asking you the same five questions

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Task Manager Knowledge Management

Data sources & config

Project Management and Task Manager run standalone inside Starch — no external sync needed to get started. For applicant sourcing context, connect Gmail from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can pull application emails into the hiring tracker automatically. Knowledge Management stores your onboarding docs directly in Starch. If you use 7shifts or Homebase and want to cross-reference current headcount gaps, Starch automates those sites through your browser — no API needed.

Prompts to copy

Build me a hiring tracker with columns for role name, location (front-of-house vs back-of-house vs bar), source (Indeed, referral, walk-in), applicant name, phone number, current status (applied, phone screen scheduled, interviewed, offer extended, hired, rejected), and who on my management team owns this candidate.

Create a task for Maria to call back the two line cook applicants from Tuesday and log notes in the hiring tracker by Friday at noon, priority P1.

Build a Knowledge Management page for new hire onboarding that covers our tip-out policy, uniform standards, opening and closing duties by role, and who to call if they're going to be late. Flag it for review every 90 days.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open Starch and describe your hiring tracker: paste the prompt above or describe your roles in your own words — Starch builds the board with your columns, statuses, and role categories.

2 Add every open role right now as a card: line cook (2 open), weekend barback (1 open), front desk / host (1 open). Set the source, priority, and manager owner for each.

3 Connect Gmail from Starch's integration catalog. Tell Starch: 'When I get an email with an attachment from Indeed or a subject line containing job application, create a new applicant card in the hiring tracker with their name, role, and contact info.'

4 For any applicant site that doesn't have an email flow — say, a local culinary school job board — Starch automates it through your browser. Tell Starch: 'Check the culinary school jobs portal weekly and pull any new applications for my open roles into the tracker.'

5 Use Task Manager to assign next steps. Type: 'Create a task for Marco to schedule phone screens for the two line cook applicants by Wednesday, P1.' The task appears assigned with a due date.

6 After each interview, have your manager add notes directly to the applicant card. Tell Starch: 'Add a notes field to each applicant card so my managers can log interview impressions and a hire / no-hire recommendation.'

7 Set up a weekly status prompt: 'Every Monday at 8am, give me a summary of all open roles, how many applicants are at each stage, and which candidates have been waiting more than 5 days without a follow-up.' Starch runs this as a scheduled automation.

8 When you make a hire, move the card to Hired and tell Starch to create an onboarding task list: 'Create a checklist for onboarding a new line cook — uniform pickup, food handler card verification, first training shift scheduled, added to 7shifts, tip-out policy reviewed.'

9 Build your Knowledge Management onboarding hub. Paste in your current Google Doc training notes or describe them from scratch. Starch organizes them by role category and makes them searchable.

10 Tell Starch to flag stale docs: 'Alert me if any onboarding page in Knowledge Management hasn't been reviewed in 90 days — things like tip-out policy or allergen procedures change and I need to keep them current.'

11 When a new manager joins, point them to the Knowledge Management hub instead of spending two hours walking them through house policy. They can search 'what's our no-call-no-show policy' and get the answer without texting you during service.

12 Review the open-roles summary every Monday morning before pre-shift. Close out filled roles, open new ones as your schedule shows gaps, and keep the tracker current so you're never surprised by a staffing hole on a Friday night.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Spring Hiring Push — April 2026 (independent 60-seat restaurant, Chicago)

Sample numbers from a real run

Open roles tracked	5
Applicants in pipeline across all roles	23
Days to fill line cook role (vs prior average)	11
Candidate follow-ups missed in first 2 weeks	0
Onboarding docs built in Knowledge Management	8

In April, the owner of a 60-seat neighborhood restaurant in Logan Square had five roles open at once going into patio season: two line cooks, one barback, one weekend host, and one prep cook. Before Starch, this was a disaster — applications coming in via email, walk-ins dropping off paper resumes, and a floor manager tracking callbacks in her head. In the first week with Starch, they built a hiring tracker with all five role cards, connected Gmail from Starch's integration catalog so Indeed application emails populated the tracker automatically, and assigned follow-up tasks to two managers with P1 priority and Wednesday deadlines. The Monday automation fired at 8am showing 23 applicants across five stages. They caught three candidates who'd been waiting six days with no contact — recovered two of them with same-day calls. The first line cook role was filled in 11 days, compared to a prior average of 18. New hire onboarding docs went into Knowledge Management: tip-out policy, allergen matrix, opening duties by role, uniform standards. When the new line cook started, the owner spent 20 minutes on intro and pointed him to the hub for the rest. She got her Sunday afternoon back.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Days to fill an open hourly role (target: under 14 days for FOH, under 21 for skilled BOH)

Applicant response rate — percentage of applicants who get a follow-up within 48 hours

Roles open longer than 30 days (a warning sign for compensation or sourcing problems)

New hire 30-day retention rate (did they actually stick around after you hired them)

Onboarding completion — did new hires complete all checklist items in the first week

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Indeed / Craigslist + shared Google Doc

Fine for posting, but nothing tracks candidate status across managers or sends you alerts when follow-ups go stale.

7shifts or Homebase

Both are strong for scheduling and labor cost once someone is hired; neither has a real applicant pipeline or open-role tracking view.

Workstream or Harri (hospitality-specific ATS)

Purpose-built for restaurant hiring and worth it if you're running a multi-unit operation; adds another paid tool and subscription for an independent operator with 5–10 open roles a year.

Notion or Airtable hiring tracker template

Flexible and free at small scale, but you're building and maintaining the system yourself, and it still won't automatically pull in emailed applications or remind your manager about a stale candidate.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, task manager, knowledge management all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch connect to Indeed, Craigslist, or hospitality job boards to pull applications automatically?

Indeed doesn't publish a public API, but if your Indeed applications come in via email, connecting Gmail from Starch's integration catalog lets the agent parse those emails and create applicant cards in your tracker. For sites with no email flow, Starch automates them through your browser — no API needed — so it can check a job board page and pull applicant data directly.

Can my floor manager and bar manager both use this, or is it just for me?

The hiring tracker and task assignments are visible to anyone on your Starch workspace. You assign tasks to specific managers, they see their queue, and you see the full picture. It works for a two-manager setup or a larger team.

I already use 7shifts for scheduling. Does Starch replace it?

No — 7shifts is better for shift scheduling and labor compliance once someone is on your team. Starch fills the gap before that: tracking open roles, managing the applicant pipeline, and getting a new hire through onboarding. If you want to cross-reference your current 7shifts headcount to identify coverage gaps, Starch automates 7shifts through your browser.

What happens to my onboarding docs when policies change — tip-out law, allergen labeling, overtime rules?

Tell Starch to flag any Knowledge Management page that hasn't been reviewed in 90 days. You set the review cadence, and Starch alerts you when something is overdue. For legal and compliance content, you still need to update the content yourself — Starch surfaces the reminder, not the legal advice.

Is my applicant data secure? I'm collecting names, phone numbers, and interview notes.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today, and there is no on-premise option — your data lives in Starch's hosted environment. For a small independent operator tracking a handful of hourly hires, that's usually fine. If you're subject to specific data-handling requirements, factor that in before centralizing sensitive applicant records.

I don't have time to build this during service. How long does setup actually take?

Describing the hiring tracker and getting the first five role cards set up takes about 15 minutes. Connecting Gmail and building the first automation adds another 10. The Knowledge Management onboarding hub takes longer — maybe an hour to get your existing policies in — but you can do it in pieces. Most operators do the tracker first and add the knowledge base over the following week.