MIAMI – All Day, a downtown café and restaurant, got the year off to a good start. January was the busiest month since the pandemic began. “It was like turning on a light switch,” said Camila Ramos, an owner.
Business was so good that All Day employees were almost on the brink of crisis, said Ms. Ramos. When she struggled to hire reinforcements to help the increasing traffic, she had to make a counterintuitive decision: she closed all day for the month of February.
“I couldn’t find any people to hire,” she said outside her café last weekend, which reopened on March 1st. “I just wanted some time to reset operations.”
Ms. Ramos discovered early on what full-service restaurant owners across the country are now experiencing: an ongoing labor shortage amid a boom in business as mild outdoor dining weather spreads across the country, along with reduced Covid restrictions, they came to South Florida early and can now be felt in the USA
“I don’t think anything like this ever happened,” said Katie Button, the cook and co-owner of two restaurants in Asheville, NC.
A staff shortage doesn’t seem intuitive in a pandemic-ravaged company with mass layoffs and an alarming number of permanent closings. It is just as the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a $ 28.6 billion grant for small restaurants, bars, and restaurant groups, prepares for applications and diners who have been eating at home for a year are increasingly feeling vaccine-free.
Restaurant employment has increased every month this year, according to the National Restaurant Association, but full-service restaurant headcounts were still 20 percent, or 1.1 million jobs, lower in February than a year ago. (Employment in fast-service restaurants and fast-service restaurants decreased by only 6 percent over the same period.)
Full service restaurant owners and chefs say the number one reason staff stays stubbornly low is because there are simply many more vacancies than available labor.
Hugh Acheson, a head chef with restaurants in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, is the food and drink manager at the new Effie Sandestin Hotel in Miramar Beach, Florida. Around the time it opened in February, there was an online job site advertising more than 300 line cooking openings in the same area. “And these listings had been around for about two months,” he said.
The Pinch of Workers even inspires social media memes. Chef Jeremy Fox recently posted jobs on Instagram at his three restaurants in Santa Monica, California. The ad includes a photo of Mr. Fox in an empty restaurant under the heading: “If you hire chefs, so does any restaurant.”
All Day’s new head chef, Madison McClaren, joked that she was considering posting on the Tinder dating site, “Responsible cook looking for the same thing.”
However, intense competition for workers is only one reason for the labor shortage.
Restaurateurs say many former employees choose not to re-enter the world of work when they can earn almost as much or more by collecting unemployment benefits.
“There are times when it’s more profitable not to work than to work, and you can’t really blame people for wanting to hold onto it for as long as possible,” Fox said.
Others have left the restaurant business to get better paying jobs in other areas, further narrowing the pool of potential applicants. Greg Wright, 34, said he decided not to return to his job as a sous-chef at Marlow & Sons in Brooklyn shortly after it closed last March. He has since moved to the Bay Area and started training as a computer programmer.
“For me it was, ‘Am I just sitting here on my hands and hoping to have a job in the next two, three, five years?'” Said Mr. Wright. “The answer was, ‘Absolutely not.'”
Liz Murray, director of human resources and communications for the company that owns Marlow & Sons, said employees left the company for a variety of reasons. Some moved from New York to their hometown – and stayed after finding work in restaurants there.
A spokeswoman for Crafted Hospitality, the company that runs chef Tom Colicchio’s restaurants, said 80 to 85 percent of the group’s kitchen staff have moved out of New York City.
Sean Xie is the chief financial officer and managing partner of a company that operates 13 Sichuan restaurant locations in Chengdu Taste and Mian in California, Nevada, Washington, Texas and Hawaii. In most of these states, he said, government support and competition from companies like Amazon make it difficult to compete for talent without raising salaries to levels its businesses cannot support.
“We might even close a store or two just because we don’t have staff,” said Mr. Xie. “We want to stay open and even expand.”
Erick Williams, the chef and owner of Virtue, a southern Chicago restaurant, said its 22-strong staff was about half the size of what it was before the pandemic. “People don’t even come for interviews these days,” he said.
If he can’t hire more help before the outdoor meal growth business grows, Mr. Williams said, “All of a sudden, you’re paying more overtime and you run the risk of burning your people out.”
The tight labor market has helped accelerate the changes that restaurant workers pushed for during the shutdowns, including higher wages and better working conditions. Ms. Button raised wages based on recommendations from One Fair Wage, a service worker advocacy group, and pays a $ 150 bonus to employees who transfer new hires and stay at work for more than 90 days.
The starting wage for kitchen workers at Mr. Acheson’s Atlanta restaurants is $ 14-15 an hour, up from $ 12 prior to the pandemic. “People are going to be walking down the street to make more money – and they should be,” he said.
Mike Traud, program director for the food and hotel management department at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said intense competition for talent makes this a good time for people to get into the restaurant business. He said this is particularly true of the northeast, where restaurants on the coast are setting for the tourism season.
“You have more influence,” he said, “and there are more ways to get into upstairs kitchens.”
However, many people may be reluctant to start or resume work in the restaurant because some studies have health risks to customer care, especially indoors. Many restaurateurs are also concerned that resuming food indoors too quickly could lead to a further increase in Covid infections. (This week the Aspen Institute’s Food and Society Program released a set of safety guidelines it worked with other industry groups to help diners and restaurant staff continue to follow them.)
Some restaurants, like All Day in Miami, still only serve outdoors, even as restrictions on indoor eating relax because of concerns about unvaccinated employees and customers – and because opening more tables only leaves the already overworked staff heavier burdened.
In Miami, the battle for restaurant workers is unlikely to end anytime soon. New York restaurant operators like the Major Food Group are rushing to open locations in South Florida where the population is booming.
Macchialina, a popular Italian restaurant in Miami Beach, had to close for a day in January due to a staff shortage. Chef Niven Patel owns two restaurants in Coral Gables and is opening another one this summer. “Finding people is our top priority in our meetings each week,” he said.
Ms. Ramos said she was glad market forces pushed her to make changes that she wanted to make to create a better job in her all-day coffee shop. “Before that happens, we have to pay what we can afford,” she said. “Now we have to recharge what is needed.”
But even with higher salaries, the 32-year-old Ms. Ramos has started looking for potential applicants from her customers. One new employee is a former real estate agent. Another was a day trader.
“I usually need at least three years of experience, with zero exceptions,” said Ms. Ramos. “Now I think, ‘You have been here a couple of times? I will train you. ‘”
Tejal Rao and Rachel Wharton contributed to the coverage.
