Why Restaurant Benefit Structures Are Unique

3 Min Read By Trion Group

This edition of MRM's "Ask the Expert” features advice from Trion Group. Please send questions to Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine Executive Editor Barbara Castiglia at bcastiglia@modernrestaurantmanagement.com.The logic with high deductible plans and consumer-driven strategies in healthcare used to be that participants would be more judicious in spending their dollar for medical services. Why doesn’t that logic work in the hospitality sector – especially in the current labor environment?

If the objectives for any benefit program are to build plans that are 1. well perceived by the participants, and; 2. are offered at an affordable and stable cost, then High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP) fail at both for the hospitality workforce. 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) “encouraged” hospitality employers to offer health coverage to all full-time employees and not just their managers. To accommodate the law, most employers in this sector either extended their…