Topanga Social, the newest addition to Earl Enterprises restaurant portfolio, is located in the gorgeous, new expansion of Westfield Topanga. It features a wide range of the hottest eateries, including 24 celebrity chef food outlets, curated to appeal to all tastes.
Topanga Social team was looking to hire 180+ employees across 9 roles over 10 weeks to staff their newly constructed food hall. They partnered with LANDED to assist in hiring the grand opening crew for their opening in early May. LANDED was focused on 9 hourly positions across back and front of house - line cook, prep cook, busser, dishwasher, bartender, cocktail server, host, runner, and receiver - and helped Topanga Social team reach 124% of their original hiring goal.
When needing to hire over 180+ employees in just 10 weeks, it takes a whole team to solely focus on sourcing, screening, vetting, engaging with candidates, setting up interviews and rescheduling as needed. LANDED saved the Topanga Social team time on these aspects of recruiting so they could focus on everything else related to a grand opening, i.e construction, permitting, marketing, training, etc.
"We've got a pretty good roster. Over 2 weeks, we're looking at upwards of 40 candidates that we think we want to move forward with, spread throughout culinary, which is what we're looking for."
Drawn Out Hiring Process:
Previous grand openings for Earl Enterprise food halls consisted of a long hiring process. From the time the candidate applies to the time they are offered a job, too much time elapses, driving technical difficulties and candidate drop off.
Issues Communicating with Candidates At Scale:
With large new openings like this one, it’s difficult to vet, engage, and schedule interviews with candidates in a timely manner at scale. It takes time and man power to sift through thousands of candidates, reach out and qualify them and set up interviews.
Inefficient Advertising:
In terms of advertising and candidate sourcing, Topanga Social was focused on Indeed as the only advertising channel, leading to inefficient recruitment spend.
"For staffing, I think we're in a really good place. We've hired our quota, which includes over staffing for opening since we anticipate some fallout. We've got a lot of really good quality candidates from LANDED so we're in really good shape for a successful opening."
Saved Time:
• LANDED took over hiring process, saving Topanga Social 80+ hrs/week
• Enabled Topanga Social team to focus on candidate retention rather than acquisition and engagement
Improved Speed to Hire:
• Engaged with large volume of candidates quickly and scheduled interviews fast
• Screened and vetted thousands of applications at scale, leaving no candidates out, and scheduled interviews within a few hours rather than a few days
• Improved speed to hire and overall candidate experience
Provided Data Driven Insights and Diversified Sourcing:
• Diversified job advertisements across 80+ job boards and social media
• Focused on most efficient channels generating lowest CPAs - average CPA across roles was $12, 50% lower than nationwide industry average across restaurant roles
"I applied through LANDED and uploaded my info. Someone reached out very quickly and had my interview scheduled within a day."
