Restrictions gut restaurant industry’s middle class
Higher-end eateries and their staffs struggle to stay afloat as challenges in hiring, patronage continue to rise
On the day in September when he was hired as a cook at Fulton Market Kitchen — a restaurant in Chicago featuring shrimp and grits and miso- glazed halibut — Jeff Danaher asked the chef about his plans for the winter.
“He was like, ‘I’m open four days a week, and I’m trying to go to seven,’” recalled Danaher, who had been out of work for months. “It was a huge relief.”
But five weeks later, indoor dining in the city came to a halt. Danaher, who made nearly $50,000 per year before the pandemic and had his pick of positions in recent years, was suddenly jobless again.
“After about the second or third week into COVID,” he said, “I got scared for my job security in a way that I never had before in 10 years of cooking.”
In sheer economic terms, few workers have stood more directly in the path of the pandemic than the roughly 10 million people employed by restaurants at the start of the year. The industry shed close to half those jobs in March and April, and was still down almost 1.5 million as of October.
The winter will likely bring another round of pain: In recent weeks, reservations have dropped substantially in cold-weather states like Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, according to data from OpenTable.
The crisis has forced many of the industry’s working poor to choose between financial ruin and harrowing work conditions. But more so than many other professions, the pandemic has also devastated the industry’s middle class: the thousands of cooks, chefs and servers who can make between $35,000 and $85,000 per year in food hubs like Chicago.
In good times, new restaurants open weekly, and workers with soughtafter skills or high- end experience often enjoy plenty of job options. But a wave of closures has hit pricier restaurants harder than fast food and other down-market establishments, which have an easier time shifting to takeout, and those workers have become increasingly desperate.
For Danaher, 29, the trouble started in early March, when he left his job as a sous- chef at a higher- end casual restaurant in Chicago over concerns about drug use and harassment among the wait staff.
He was optimistic about his prospects: During tours at nearly 20 restaurants, he had picked up a variety of in-demand skills, such as bread making, pickling and charcuterie (preparing meat items like sausages and pâté). He could butcher a freshly killed pig.
This time around, he quickly lined up interviews, but the jobs seemed to fizzle as the pandemic approached. On a Thursday in midMarch, Danaher staged — restaurant-speak for an unpaid tryout — at a restaurant called Good Fortune.
The state suspended on-site dining four days after his tryout. Danaher tried to file for unemployment, but the website was overloaded and the phone lines were jammed.
By mid-April, Danaher was inquiring at pizza joints and even a Dunkin’ Donuts, but got no takers. He scouted out grocery and retail stores. Toward the end of the month, he briefly took a contractor gig making syrups for a company that sold cocktail kits, but the work died down a few weeks later.
Around the same time, the industry was staggering back to life. In Chicago, the Michelin-starred Elske, known for its moderately priced tasting menu, began opening three days a week to offer takeout.
“Our first meal was Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and cucumber salad,” said David Posey, the chef who co- owns Elske with his wife. “We thought we’d go through that in a week. It was enough for one day.”
In Nashville, Tenn., Tony Galzin, the co- owner and chef at Nicky’s, revved up his coal-fired oven and sold housemade pizzas and fresh pasta to go. In Washington, Cork Wine Bar, an early fixture in the city’s booming 14th Street corridor, did a brisk business in Seder boxes.
Still, the restaurants could rehire only a small fraction of their workers. Nicky’s eventually brought back just over half of the 34 people it once employed; Elske brought back about half of its 16. Diane Gross, a coowner of Cork, had to lay off nearly two-thirds of her pre-pandemic team of 30.
Overall, full-service restaurants accounted for more than three times as many job losses as limited-service restaurants like fast food, according to the Labor Department.
Data compiled by ZipRecruiter show that job postings at high- end restaurants like Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris dropped nearly 45 percent from March to May, versus only about 20 percent for the likes of McDonald’s and Burger King.