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The pandemic has made things challenging, to say the least, for restaurant owners and managers. Help could be on the way with a new tool designed to improve one particularly difficult aspect of the industry: hiring.
PLUCKhire is an on-demand video talent pool of restaurant workers. The company originally planned to launch in London but instead launched recently in Sarasota.
Behind the shift to Sarasota is PLUCK team member Richard Li and his wife, Tiffany Valvo. Valvo grew up in Sarasota and knew what was happening in Sarasota’s restaurant industry from friends and family struggling to find restaurant workers and jobs. She thought PLUCK could help. “Given what we know and the trajectory of where Sarasota is going, we thought it was good place to pivot to,” Li tells Coffee Talk.
Apart from some terminology differences between the U.K. and U.S., there wasn’t much to change to get the app ready for its Sarasota launch. PLUCK has also expanded to Tampa and Orlando and plans to expand to Miami, London and Richmond, Va., where Li is based.
Through PLUCK, job candidates post 30-second to roughly one-minute videos of themselves for employers. “The challenge for restaurants when there were few people and when there are many is you can’t tell what someone’s attitude is on a CV or resume,” says London-based CEO Marilyn Gardner, with a background in human resources. “You can’t tell if they are the least friendly waiter in the world.”
PLUCK is reaching out to restaurant decision makers through Instagram. The biggest challenge ahead, officials say, is continuing to get the word out about the company with restaurants and candidates. “The goal is to go national,” says Li. “It’s dependant on how COVID plays out, how the economy responds in the next year and how local communities on our platform form and grow.”
The service is free for candidates and employers, and the company plans to monetize through selling ads. “It’s a pretty attractive user base — a very targeted demographic,” says Li. “We’re also thinking about eventually offering some premium services.”
PLUCK is looking ahead to how it could help employers in other fields, too, such as retail and customer service. Gardner says, “PLUCK works in any industry where service and attitude are most important.”
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