Forked Online Restaurant Platform

Creating an integrated online platform to support restaurant workers, responsible employers and conscientious consumers as technology changes the industry.

The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in our country, with over 13 million workers, but is also the lowest-paying, compounded by a lack of worker mobility. In addition, the restaurant industry is unique in that technology is not replacing jobs in food service. However, technology is changing the industry in both positive and negative ways, with creation of things like upskilling technology that could facilitate improved career ladders or also job matching platforms using problematic algorithms steering workers of color into low-wage jobs.

Technology can benefit restaurant workers if we foresee challenges and address them. In response, ROC is designing the Forked online restaurant platform, an integrated tool to support restaurant workers, employers, and consumers who want to improve the industry. First, ROC has been providing training and technical assistance to employers for many years to address low wages and lack of mobility. We are now working with the UC Berkeley Haas Business School to develop an online certification program to guide restaurant owners and managers through making these changes. The platform will include a peer community forum for employers as well as a job matching tool to locate potential workers. In addition, ROC United launched a Diners Guide app in 2010, which provides information on ‘high road’ restaurants in select cities, enabling diners to support these restaurant owners. With 100,000 users, the Diners Guide has been very successful, but we are updating the app with more restaurants as well as enabling consumers to directly engage these employers to communicate their values.

In addition, ROC is developing an online platform that will expand our existing job training opportunities. For over a decade ROC United has been offering CHOW, our free 45-hour workforce development program program focused on helping low-wage restaurant workers access livable-wage jobs in the fine-dining sector, which has helped 7,500 workers reach higher-paying jobs. We are now making this training program more accessible to more workers by bringing it online. Building on our beta program TopServer, we are now building a full online CHOW course, which will make the program available to millions more workers. This platform will also include practical tools to help workers do things like calculate tips and a forum where they can swap shifts or seek legal services. The program that would also match CHOW graduate with employers looking for highly-qualified workers.

The Forked platform will include this online certification for employers, the Diners Guide for consumers, and the upskilling for workers, with the overall objective of bringing together all these stakeholders to build a ‘high road’ alternative within the restaurant sector based on sustainable and equitable employment. This consolidated app will be the first to align all stakeholders in the restaurant industry and will help build an engaged base committed to improving the sector for everyone, motivating employers, consumers, and workers to come together to shift the industry to a ‘high road’ to profitability. 

The Forked platform is an innovative approach to workforce development, creating a community of restaurant stakeholders around our CHOW job training program. It makes CHOW accessible to more workers, but also as they take the course we will also link them with a network of employers and consumers who all want to move the industry towards improved employment standards. The activities of workers, employers, and consumers will reinforce one another -- for instance, workers take CHOW, an employer finds CHOW graduates to meet their hiring needs, and consumers know that an employer is hiring highly-qualified CHOW graduates. 

Technology is critical to the success of this project. The restaurant industry is going through enormous change due to a massive labor shortage, pressure from #MeToo (the restaurant industry is single largest source of sexual harassment complaints in the US), and calls to raise wages. Through the Forked platform, we are not only providing job training for workers, but building infrastructure for a national movement towards better restaurant practices. Moreover, through its integrated approach, this platform solves many challenges in traditional job training, including worker attendance logistic issues, difficulties finding placements, and lack of consumer awareness about training impact.

Over the next 12 months, ROC will work with our technology partner Actuals Food to begin building the Forked platform, mapping functionalities for each stakeholder interface and how features will be integrated across user experiences. We will develop a prototype, incorporating the components we have already developed like TopServer and Diners Guide. We will also work with the UC Berkeley Haas Business School to create the CHOW online training program and courses for restaurant managers. Finally, ROC staff will also collect new information on hundreds of restaurants across the country,  broadening the geographic coverage of the platform through new content. 

The Forked platform ultimately aims to improve working conditions for restaurant workers and standards in the industry overall. In 3-5 years, we expect a community of close to one million employers, workers, and consumers will be using the platform. From work with these stakeholders, we already know their needs: workers want training for good jobs, employers have to find skilled workers, and value-oriented diners want to support the restaurants they believe in. Through Forked, all these user can support calls for ‘high road’ business practices together, and as these approaches took root, the platform will attract progressively more users. 

ROC will integrate Forked user acquisition into our One Fair Wage campaign to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers, a major cause of worker poverty and sexual harassment in the industry. We have active campaigns in three states, with plans to launch many more in the near term. As we engage millions of restaurant workers, employers, and consumers for these campaigns, Forked will be a major organizing tool, used to mobilize our allies. These users will then continue to rely the platform as it meets their needs for things like job training, peer networking, or finding new restaurants. 

ROC United has provided CHOW training to more than 7,500 restaurant workers, the vast majority low-wage workers, primarily people of color, immigrants, and women. In addition, the Diners Guide app currently has 100,000 consumers looking for ways to express their values. Armed with Forked, workers and consumers can find out which restaurants have embraced ‘high road’ employment practices, and also avoid ‘low road’ establishments with bad reputations. Finally, we have been providing training and technical assistance to a network of 800 ‘high road’ restaurant employers, who can connect to each other, as well as new customers and staff through Forked. 

With an integrated Forked platform, we plan to be serving 150,000 people in 12 months, with a goal of one million users in 3-5 years. The restaurant industry is one of the largest employers of immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals, women of color, and individuals who were formerly incarcerated, yet they lack the hard skills or networks to advance to higher-paying jobs in the restaurant industry. The Forked platform will provide these low-wage workers both the skills through our online CHOW course, as well as the network, since it will connect CHOW graduates with ‘high road’ restaurant employers and knowledgeable consumers. 

ROC is a national organization with a proven record working for and with restaurant workers. We have 17 years of experience organizing and advocating within the restaurant industry, and we have forged partnerships with over 800 responsible restaurant owners to promote the ‘high road’ to profitability, published over 40 groundbreaking reports and three books on the restaurant industry, and trained more than 7,500 people to advance to livable-wage jobs within the industry. We have already developed apps and online tools to benefit workers, and through our research, are uniquely positioned to identify further technologies that could meet their needs. 

ROC will be able to ask workers and employers to pay for training it provides each stakeholder. We are working with municipalities and counties that require certain forms of food service certification to offer our training as an option to workers seeking this training. For workers, most of the CHOW training will be free, but we will charge for a certification program in a similar cost structure or cheaper than comparable programs. We will also potentially associate costs with some advanced CHOW modules on topics like mixology or barista service, depending on expenses to build these out, though we also hope to generate revenue through product placement agreements, such as for the wine or other branded materials that we incorporate into the CHOW training. For employers, we expect to make some of the general online training available for free, but will charge for the more advanced individualized technical assistance to help employers tailor specific ‘high road’ models to their context. Finally, for consumers, we will be launching a credit card in partnership with Self-Help Credit Union that will provide special industry-perks through our network and provide a small income stream as diners use the card.  

Unique amongst other low-wage sectors, restaurant workers are currently not being replaced by technology and automation. For these reasons, the restaurant industry provides a perfect opportunity to explore how technology can be used for the benefit of workers rather than to lower wages or replace them. Through participation in the MIT Solve challenge, we will seize the opportunity to connect with leaders in Future of Work fields to figure out how we can make the Forked online restaurant platform a productive forum and organizing infrastructure to move the restaurant industry towards ‘high road’ practices. 

The restaurant industry is one of the most socially connected work spaces in the US. Workers talk to other workers, particularly online, evident in the proliferation of things like Facebook restaurant worker groups for swapping shifts and trading information on bad or good employers. Restaurant managers similarly establish extensive networks. Meanwhile, tools like Yelp show how invested consumers are in the restaurant industry. Yet, there is no current space that harnesses this energy towards improving the restaurant industry. As the restaurant industry is one of our country’s lowest paying sectors, we need to reimagine the sector and improve working conditions.