Applebee’s offered free appetizers in hopes of luring in 10,000 job candidates and more than 40,000 applied

• Applebee’s “Apps for Apps” promotion was a huge success and brought in 40,000 applicants.
• Restaurants are increasingly turning to application perks to attract potential employees.
• Retail is facing a labor shortage industry-wide.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Applebee’s says it drew in 40,000 job applicants for 10,000 openings with its free appetizer incentives.

Restaurants are offering up all kinds of perks to attract workers, and Applebee’s seems to be one of the most successful. On May 17, the chain hosted a national hiring day in the hopes of filling 10,000 open positions. Interviewing candidates received coupons for a free appetizer through the “Apps for Apps” program. It got four times as many applicants, Applebee’s president John Cywinski told The New York Times.

“Our No. 1-selling category is appetizers, so we decided to offer an app for an app. I’ve got guests coming back in droves, but I don’t have all the team members I’d like,” Cywinski said.

Hiring has been difficult for many companies that have reported a lack of candidates for open positions. But retail and restaurants are are also struggling to retain workers who want to leave for new opportunities. That’s making the sector’s labor crunch even worse.

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Subway, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell, along with others, are advertising thousands of open positions online in hopes of staffing up and returning to pre-pandemic hours with open dining rooms. Some hiring managers are advertising perks like $50 for an interview, signing bonuses, and referral programs. Chipotle got thousands of applications after announcing it was boosting the minimum wage.

It seems perks aren’t always enough to restaff restaurants as thousands of people leave the industry for good. Some workers who were furloughed or laid off early in the pandemic may never return to fast food and customer service work.

In place of customer-facing retail jobs, some workers are turning to warehouse employment with companies like Amazon, even as those jobs make headlines for poor working conditions. The e-commerce giant has hired about 2,800 people a day since July, mostly in warehouse roles.