Horeca: workforce grows 9% above pre-covid levels

The hospitality sector’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis has been stronger and faster than most analysts predicted. In Belgium, horeca employment has not simply recovered — it has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with the workforce now 9% larger than before the crisis began. This growth is a testament to the sector’s resilience and the enduring appeal of hospitality work for Belgian workers. But strong growth creates its own management challenges, and operators who cannot scale their workforce management systems as fast as their headcount will struggle to sustain the recovery gains they have worked hard to achieve.

Horeca: workforce grows 9% above pre-covid levels

In Belgium, the horeca sector is experiencing a strong and sustained recovery. Belgians are once again enjoying time on terraces and dining at their favorite restaurants in numbers that exceed even pre-pandemic volumes, driving a significant and sustained increase in employment across the full breadth of the sector. According to recent data, employment in Belgian horeca has grown by over 40% compared to the pandemic trough, and the total number of people working in the sector today is 9% higher than before the COVID-19 crisis began — a genuinely remarkable turnaround for a sector that bore some of the heaviest losses during successive lockdowns.

What is driving the workforce growth?

Pent-up consumer demand that has sustained beyond the initial reopening

After months of restricted social activity and closed venues, Belgian consumers returned to hospitality with an enthusiasm that has proven durable rather than temporary. Terrace occupancy, restaurant bookings, and event catering demand have remained significantly above pre-pandemic baselines in most Belgian regions and segments. This sustained demand has required operators to maintain elevated staffing levels permanently rather than simply managing a short-term reopening surge.

New business openings and format diversification

The crisis, paradoxically, created opportunities for new operators and concepts. Lower rents during the recovery period, available commercial premises in prime locations, and changing consumer preferences — outdoor dining, smaller intimate venues, takeaway-focused concepts, experience-oriented hospitality — fueled a significant wave of new hospitality business openings across Belgium. Each new opening adds permanent employment to the sector’s total base and creates new competition for the available pool of experienced hospitality workers.

Workforce composition has changed significantly

The post-COVID hospitality workforce looks meaningfully different from its pre-pandemic predecessor. There is a higher proportion of part-time and flexible workers, more student and occasional staff filling roles that were previously held by permanent employees, and a generally younger workforce overall — partly because some experienced older workers left the sector during the crisis and have not returned. This compositional shift creates new complexity in scheduling, payroll, and compliance management that operators who have not upgraded their HR systems are struggling to absorb.

The workforce management challenges of rapid growth

Growing a workforce rapidly is significantly harder than maintaining a stable one. Operators who expanded quickly during the recovery period encountered a predictable set of challenges: recruitment bottlenecks in a tight labor market where experienced hospitality workers could choose between multiple competing offers; onboarding large cohorts of new staff with management capacity that had not grown proportionally; scheduling complexity from managing a larger and more diverse workforce mix with tools designed for a smaller operation; compliance risk from Belgian labor law requirements that apply fully regardless of how quickly the workforce has grown; and staff retention difficulties in a sector where working conditions have historically driven high voluntary turnover.

How the most resilient Belgian operators are responding

The operators who have managed rapid post-COVID growth most effectively share a consistent characteristic: they invested in digital workforce management infrastructure during the recovery period rather than after the problems it would have prevented had already materialized. By automating scheduling, time tracking, and compliance checking through integrated digital platforms, they freed management capacity for the human dimensions of rapid growth — training quality, culture building, and the retention conversations that prevent the departures that undo recruitment investment.

Digital scheduling platforms that handle the genuine complexity of mixed workforces — permanent full-time, part-time, student, and occasional profiles all managed simultaneously — became operational necessities for growing horeca operators rather than tools for the largest chains. Operators who continued managing scheduling and attendance through spreadsheets found themselves unable to scale beyond a certain team size without proportional and unsustainable increases in management administrative time.

Practical tips for growing Belgian hospitality businesses

• Build a forward-looking talent pipeline — maintain relationships with potential hires during slower periods rather than recruiting only when a vacancy is already open and costing revenue
• Design a structured, repeatable onboarding process for new hires that can be delivered efficiently at volume without sacrificing quality
• Invest in scheduling software that handles the full complexity of your workforce mix from the start — retrofitting is always more disruptive than building right the first time
• Track labor cost as a percentage of revenue weekly rather than monthly — growth without cost control is commercially unsustainable regardless of revenue trajectory
• Focus retention investment on your highest-performing staff first — losing experienced people in a tight market is significantly more expensive than the cost of keeping them
• Review Belgian labor law compliance obligations as your workforce grows and diversifies — what was manageable manually at 10 staff becomes a compliance risk at 25

Frequently asked questions

Is the Belgian horeca employment growth sustainable beyond the initial post-COVID rebound?

The fundamentals of the Belgian hospitality market suggest yes: consumer demand for hospitality experiences remains robust, Belgium has a deeply embedded café and restaurant culture with strong domestic loyalty, and demographic trends continue to support growth in the sector’s active customer base. However, rising labor costs, intense competition for experienced workers, and growing compliance complexity will continue to challenge operators who do not invest in the operational systems that allow them to grow efficiently rather than just rapidly.

How do you recruit hospitality workers effectively in Belgium’s current labor market?

Effective hospitality recruitment in Belgium’s tight labor market requires proactive rather than reactive sourcing — building talent relationships before vacancies arise, not after. Strong employer branding that communicates what distinguishes your workplace from the many alternatives competing for the same candidates is increasingly important. Employee referral programs, partnerships with Belgian hospitality schools and training centers, and early-season student recruitment that secures flexible profiles before competitors do are the most consistently effective sourcing strategies for Belgian horeca operators.

What labor cost metrics should Belgian horeca operators track?

The four most operationally important labor cost metrics for Belgian horeca operators are: labor cost as a percentage of revenue, reviewed weekly against a target of 30 to 35% for most formats; overtime hours as a percentage of total scheduled hours, which is the most direct proxy for scheduling efficiency; absenteeism rate by team and by shift, which is a leading indicator of workforce health and upcoming voluntary turnover; and average cost per hire including agency fees, job board costs, management time, and onboarding costs, which quantifies the ROI of retention investment.

How does scheduling software help horeca operators manage workforce growth efficiently?

Scheduling software scales with the workforce without proportional increases in manager administrative time. A manager who could handle scheduling for 10 employees in a spreadsheet can manage 30 or 40 with a digital platform because the most time-consuming elements — building the initial roster, communicating changes, tracking attendance, monitoring student hours — are automated. This makes scheduling software a scalability tool as much as an efficiency tool, directly enabling growth that would otherwise require additional management headcount to sustain.

Shyfter is built for Belgian horeca operators at every stage of growth. As your team expands, Shyfter scales with you — handling the scheduling complexity of diverse workforce mixes, automating joint committee 302 compliance, and giving every team member mobile access to their schedule from day one. Join the Belgian hospitality businesses that trust Shyfter to manage their workforce through every phase of growth.