The Real Cost of a Bad Hire in Hospitality

By Marlowe Bennett

I have spent 30 years deeply involved in the Australian hospitality industry.

Over that time, I have worked across every level of the sector - from five-star hotels and fine dining to bars, events, and multi-venue operations.

I have overseen operations, HR, and recruitment, and across my own teams, the businesses I have run, and the operators in my network, I have been involved in managing, hiring, training, or assessing well over a thousand hospitality professionals.

From The Ritz-Carlton and Merivale to The Star Sydney, and my own businesses, I have seen it all.

And I can tell you with absolute certainty:
The most expensive cost in hospitality is not rent, cost of goods, or energy.
It is the wrong person in the wrong role.

The Cost

Australian research shows that replacing a manager costs between $23,000 and $40,000.

In hospitality, where staff turnover can reach 60% per annum, that cost compounds quickly.

Let’s break it down for a Venue Manager earning $85,000:

Recruitment costs: $8,000 – $15,000
Lost productivity: $10,000 – $25,000
Training and onboarding: $2,000 – $5,000
Team disruption: difficult to measure, but significant

Total estimated cost: $20,000 – $45,000+ per bad hire.

Now multiply that by every manager you have replaced in the past three years. You start to see the real impact.

Why This Keeps Happening

For 13 years, I ran BENCHMARQUE, where we were the exclusive hiring and training partner for The Star Sydney.

Between venues like BLACK by ezard, SOKYO, Momofuku Seiobo, BALLA, MARQUEE, and the Star Event Centre, we hired, onboarded, and managed thousands of hospitality professionals.

Here is what that experience made clear:

A confident communicator will almost always interview well.
A highly capable but introverted operator often will not.
An impressive CV tells you where someone has worked but it does not tell you what they actually know.

I have interviewed:

Candidates who could speak confidently about wine but could not calculate pour cost
Chefs with exceptional resumes who could not explain allergen management or food safety protocols
Venue Managers who did not know their target GP percentages

You do not discover these gaps in a 45-minute interview.

You discover them three months later when performance drops, numbers are off, and the team starts to feel it.

The Question No One Asks

Operators will:

Spend $15,000 on a recruiter
Conduct reference checks
Verify certifications and compliance

But very rarely do they test whether a candidate can actually do the job.

Think about that.

You would not hire:

An accountant without confirming they can read a balance sheet
A pilot without confirming they can fly

Yet in hospitality, we routinely hire managers based on how well they present themselves in conversation.

And then we act surprised when it does not work out.

What the Industry Actually Needs

The solution is not another generic personality or aptitude test.

Hospitality requires role-specific, practical assessment.

We need to know:

Can a Restaurant Manager operate across key competency areas?
Can a Head Chef manage compliance, product, financials, and team leadership?
Can a Venue Manager run a business—not just a shift?

That is exactly what we have built with Peritiv.

A Peritiv capability assessment costs $349.

It will not guarantee a perfect hire, but it provides structured, role-specific insight before you make the decision, not after.

Compare that to the $20,000–$45,000+ cost of getting it wrong.