» Area restaurants are struggling to staff up.
Owners say hiring is ‘challenging’; some workers don’t want to return
Houstonians may feel ready to return to restaurants, but restaurants are having a hard time getting ready to serve them en masse. The problem: finding employees.
Even as restaurants roll out incentive packages to coax workers to take the jobs, restaurants are still running thin on staff.
“It’s brutal to hire right now,” said Aaron Lyons, chief executive of the Dish Society, a local restaurant chain. “It’s been really challenging for us.”
The reasons for restaurants’ hiring woes remain uncertain. Fortified unemployment benefits, which pay jobless workers an extra $300 a week, may play a role in sustaining workers and delaying their return to a job on the pandemic’s front lines, where they are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19, analysts said.
Workers may also be fleeing for work that’s more reliable, given the ups and downs of the restaurant industry — even in good times.
Despite the risks faced by hospitality workers, they were low on vaccination priority lists, said Lindsay Rae Burleson, longtime bartender and owner of Two Headed Dog, a bar in Midtown. Then came shutdown after shutdown, and long waits on the phone to get their unemployment checks.
“There are a lot of service industry professionals that don’t want to go back,” she said. “Can you blame them? They didn’t really get the support they needed or deserved.”
The good news for workers in consumer-driven sectors — in addition to the state opening vaccines to all adults — is employers are now competing for their attention, said Mathieu Stevenson, CEO of the hiring platform Snagajob. “It’s actually a very, very tight labor market for employers right now,” he said.
That is driving up pay and incentives for restaurant workers, and forcing employers to think about safe work environments that make employees feel comfortable enough to return.
So far, incentives are not quite doing the trick, said Lyons, the Dish Society CEO. He opened a new location in West University late last year and also opened a location in Katy last week. To attract staff, he’s had to offer $100 bonuses for incoming workers and $100 referral bonuses to existing employees who recommend them.
Still, he is understaffed at each of his five open restaurants as he looks to hire about 20 more people across the company.
“You’ve got a lot of people exiting the industry,” Lyons said.
He cited a year of particular instability, as restaurants were closed, reopened and required to operate at reduced capacities. That meant fewer tips and lower earnings for servers, bartenders and other employees who depend on tips.
And with so much of restaurants’ business still coming from takeout, he added, “The tips aren’t really there.”
Trong Nguyen, owner of Crawfish & Noodles in Chinatown, said it was much harder than usual to recruit workers last month ahead of the rush that comes with crawfish season. So far, his sales are about 90 percent of a normal March.
Nguyen, too, offered incoming workers more cash while hiring, but still came up short. So, he’s working more hours to fill in the gaps.
“We have to work around it,” he said. “I work along with the staff and help them out with everything.”
If Burleson wasn’t obligated to her watering hole in Midtown, she said she would go back to teaching — a profession facing its own challenges, but at least one that won’t soon be shut down.
“I think this is very much a personal decision for people,” she said. “Painting it with a broad stroke just doesn’t apply here.”