Restaurants are scrambling in the face of sharply rising food prices and looming changes in the health-care law that will mandate expanded employee coverage.

Chili's Grill and Bar—which has almost 1,300 restaurants nationwide—is hoping to get ahead of the curve with a series of new efficiencies—from the elimination of bus boys to the addition of giant rib-smokers.

Over the past 18 months, Chili's, a unit of Brinker International Inc., "started looking at our labor strategy holistically," says Chief Operating Officer Kelli Valade.

With costs in mind, Chili's studied how its kitchen operations could be more efficient. It determined employees were spending too much time performing solo tasks, such as hand-mashing potatoes in a skillet or minding ribs in the oven.

Now it is testing in 10 restaurants a new combination oven that replaces the skillet and the smoker. The chain wouldn't disclose the ovens' cost but said that they can smoke ribs and cook bacon at three times the current capacity. That, in turn, frees employees to do other things until the timer buzzes.