This study aims to empirically investigate the empowering leadership of foodservice industry managers and how it affects thriving at work and organisational citizenship behaviour. Through this study, we found that manager's empowerment leadership has a significant relationship with employee motivation and effectiveness in a sample of foodservice industry organisations, providing practical implications for establishing human resource management strategies that maximise the functions and roles of leaders and the creative skills of employees. The data for this study were collected through convenience sampling from employees working in restaurant companies located in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and a total of 254 valid samples were used for analysis. Frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, simple regression analysis, and multiple regression analysis were conducted using the SPSS 25.0 programme. First, among the empowering leadership sub-factors of foodservice industry managers, information sharing, leade by example, coaching, and expression of interest were found to have a significant positive effect on thriving at work, while participative decision-making had no significant positive effect on thriving at work. Second, Thriving at Work has a significant positive effect on organisational citizenship behaviour. Third, among the empowering leadership sub-factors of foodservice industry managers, coaching, expression of interest, leade by example, and information sharing were found to have a significant positive effect on organisational citizenship behaviour, while participative decision making had a negative effect on organisational citizenship behaviour. Empowering leadership by foodservice industy managers can be used as a strategic marketing tool to enhance employee thriving at work and organisational citizenship behaviour.