Like many restaurant pros, Boston native Matt Jennings began his career as a teenager in the dish pit. After graduating from Montpelier’s now-shuttered New England Culinary Institute, he opened two lauded restaurants, Farmstead in Providence, R.I., and Townsman in Boston; and penned an award-winn ing 2017 cookbook, Homegrown: Cooking From My New England Roots. Also like many in his industry, Jennings — now 50 and living in Shelburne — struggled behind the scenes. Even as accolades rained down, the chef found himself hiding in Townsman’s walk-in freezer, “sweating through my kitchen shirt, anxiety pumping, and wondering why I felt so hollow inside,” he disclosed in a 2025 Food Wine article. That nadir prompted Jennings to get sober, lose 200 pounds, close his restaurant, and become a hospitality consultant and coach. These “major life changes,” as he described them to Seven Days, included a 2019 move to Vermont with his family. They also planted the seeds of his latest project, MAJC (pronounced “magic”), an AI-powered restaurant workforce platform that launched in February. Matt Jennings Credit: Courtesy of Matt Keidaisch Developed in partnership with Andy Coughlin, a former Townsman regular and tech industry veteran, MAJC is billed as a tool for hospitality workers to find jobs, training and career guidance; and for operators to more effectively hire and support employees, furthering their own success. In the post-COVID-19 era, Jennings noted, restaurateurs grapple daily with a three-headed hydra of existential threats: relentlessly rising food costs and overhead expenses, workforce shortages and churn, and shifting consumer demand. The former restaurant owner knows any seemingly nonessential new expense is a tough sell — especially yet another platform to add to the already-teetering tech stack. But Jennings sees MAJC as providing an essential service that the restaurant sector has ignored for too long. “Hospitality is known for taking care of everyone,” he said, “but nobody takes care of the people doing the work.” When Jennings was reevaluating his professional priorities, Coughlin asked him what he still enjoyed doing. “I love to build teams. I love to encourage people to find their career path,” the chef recalled saying. “I want to find people’s superpowers and amplify them.” For Coughlin, pairing his tech know-how with Jennings’ deep knowledge, experience and industry network was a no-brainer. “Andy’s solution was technology,” Jennings said. “That’s how you scale those ideas.” Funded by an initial investment round of $2 million, MAJC has signed up about 2,000 users so far, according to Jennings. The platform is free for workers who join individually. Pricing for restaurant operators has gone through several iterations since launch, but Jennings said it will soon be $99 monthly per location. That fee includes memberships for all employees, whose learning activities are visible on an operator dashboard. “MAJC gives every restaurant worker a personal AI agent in their pocket. A career coach, if you will, that supports them and helps them grow,” Jennings said. Once a user inputs their work history, strengths and goals — which become part of a dynamic “trading card” — the app matches them with appropriate job openings, learning modules and career advice. Hospitality is known for taking care of everyone, but nobody takes care of the people doing the work.Matt Jennings Annual fees of $1,200 may seem steep in the context of ever-thinner margins, but Jennings believes that if MAJC can help retain even one employee, it pays off. Restaurants average a 70 percent workforce turnover annually, and “every employee they replace costs them $6,000” in hiring and training costs, Jennings said, citing data from Cornell University and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. MAJC’s AI-assisted job-matching algorithm highlights opportunities based on fit and skills, while dozens of “academy” learning modules cover topics from de-escalating a difficult customer interaction to mastering point-of-sale systems. With those tools, Jennings said, “We have this opportunity to support our people better in hopes that they stick around longer.” Jennings emphasized that MAJC’s educational and training content is informed by thousands of hours of conversations with his network of industry friends and colleagues, who range from household names such as Food Network chef Tyler Florence to CEOs of successful quick-service restaurant groups. “This is not just coming from the open internet,” he said. “This is a proprietary thing we’ve built.” Beyond helping operators retain and cultivate talent, MAJC aims to build an engaged network of colleagues nationwide with whom they can trade ideas, tips and strategies. The goal is to provide both workers and operators with “a place to go, to feel connected to their peers, so that nobody feels like they’re on an island, doing it alone,” Jennings said. MAJC trading cards of chefs Steve Iadevaia, Matt Jennings and Erika Bongort Credit: Photo Illustration: John James Steve Iadevaia, executive chef and partner in two restaurants in Punta Gorda, Fla., heard about MAJC from Jennings’ Instagram, where he has about 57,400 followers. Iadevaia said he appreciates connecting on MAJC with other “restaurant nerds,” with whom he can discuss anything from equipment recommendations to menu promotions to mental health management. “It’s kind of like Facebook meets Reddit,” he said — but with qualified participants and sometimes a star moderator such as Jennings. Iadevaia is in the process of hiring for his busy season, during which he’ll employ about 75 people at River City Grill and Italia at River City. He hasn’t yet used MAJC to find employees but said he might if it builds critical mass in his area. Mostly, he tries to hire by word of mouth, he said, but the platform would “kind of give you a bigger mouth.” The executive chef acknowledged that smaller, independent restaurants such as his “are pretty notorious for being frugal … Paying for a service to help develop people or find more people is sometimes a bit of a hard sell.” At the same time, Iadevaia said, he’d like to help valued employees build skills and industry knowledge to show them the bigger picture. “I don’t always have time to sit down and explain all the nuances of food and labor costs and insurance,” he said, “but if they understood more, that could be a good thing.” He has run through a number of MAJC’s learning modules himself to check them out. “It’s very intuitive and something you can do on your phone,” he said. “Everyone’s on their phones anyway. They might as well be doing that.” For a two-restaurant group such as his, Iadevaia said, MAJC could provide a small competitive advantage when hiring. “We’re not in a position to give dental, but we could roll it into a benefits package as a way to continue to grow your skill set,” he said. Hospitality veteran Erika Bongort also learned of MAJC by following Jennings on social media; they share NECI as an alma mater. Currently a cheesemonger for the Central Market group in Austin, Texas, Bongort has also taught culinary skills in that city. She recommends the platform to former students as a way to upskill themselves. Over her 30-year career of working for hotels, independent restaurants and even a few chains, Bongort said, she’s noticed that very few employers have designated trainers or training resources. What she’s seen so far in MAJC’s learning modules looks promising to her. Compared with generic job-search sites, Bongort sees potential in a platform that is customized to the field and, in her words, “speaks culinary.” She has suggested that former students try MAJC to find better matches for their credentials and goals. “The culinary industry as a whole has become ‘warm body, plug in’ when it comes to jobs,” she said. “That’s why employees wind up leaving.” With a touch of MAJC, Jennings hopes to change that. ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “A MAJC Bullet?” The post Chef Matt Jennings’ MAJC App Aims to Ease Resto Worker Churn appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less