Early · recruiting founding engineers

Restaurant hiring,
decoded by AI

Ascot AI scores every candidate on role fit, culture fit, and growth potential, so your floor stays staffed, your guests stay happy, and your best people stay longer.

75%
Annual turnover in restaurants
$5,864
Avg. cost to replace one hourly hire
36h
Manager hours per open role
Better than gut feel
01 · The problem

Restaurant hiring is broken. It's bleeding the industry dry.

Managers post a job, pile through 200 résumés, hire on gut feel after a 15-minute interview. Six weeks later, that person ghosts a Saturday shift and the cycle starts over.

Turnover is the silent killer

Restaurants lose 70–80% of their hourly staff every year. Every empty shift is lost revenue, burned-out tenured staff, and a worse guest experience.

Résumés don't predict shift survival

Two years at another chain tells you nothing about whether someone will show up on a Friday double or treat a regular like family.

GMs are drowning

Your best manager is interviewing instead of running service. One open role eats 30+ hours and pulls focus from the floor.

The good ones get missed

The career server who would've stayed five years gets passed over because they "didn't seem fancy enough" on paper.

02 · How it works

Two workflows. One restaurant that runs better.

Ascot AI runs alongside your team across the full hiring lifecycle, from sourcing a new line cook to growing your best server into a shift lead. Two workflows, working continuously.

01

Hiring

Find people who fit the role, the floor, and the team.

Apply
200 résumés in
Score
Fit · Culture · Growth
Rank
Top 5 surfaced
Interview
GM books in one click
02

Roster

Grow the ones you already have. Catch risks early.

Onboard
Day-one setup
Track
Shift-by-shift signal
Detect
Risk · Growth signals
Act
Promote, coach, intervene
A real result

Every candidate ends up with a scorecard like this.

Concrete signal, ranked alongside everyone else in your pipeline, with a clear next step for the manager.

Ascot AI · Candidate scorecard
Jordan M.
Server · Maison 41 · Brunch service
87
Composite
Role fit92
Culture fit88
Growth potential81
Reliability signals84
Recommendation: Strong hire. Cross-train for bar in 90 days. Jordan has the highest growth-potential score in this week's pipeline.
03 · Who we want

We're looking for engineers who want to build something real.

Ascot AI is early. No big team, no fancy office. Just a massive, underserved industry and the chance to shape every part of the product, the stack, and the company from day one.

Founding engineers

Full-stack, frontend, or backend. You like shipping. You make calls instead of waiting for spec docs.

AI / ML minds

You're excited about turning interview signals into something a GM can actually act on, without the hallucinated nonsense.

Designers who code

Product instincts over pixel-pushing. Help us make hiring feel less like a spreadsheet and more like the craft it is.

Anyone curious

Not sure if you fit? Reach out anyway. Early teams are shaped by the people who show up.

Help us rebuild how restaurants hire.

Tell us about yourself. What you're working on, what you'd want to build, or just say hi. We read every message.

Join us