Variant spurs new round of restaurant closings
Staffing shortages shut dining rooms
It’s starting to look like 2020 again for the restaurant business as omicron takes a bite out of an already tight workforce.
Then, restaurants closed under government orders aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. Now, they’re closing or shifting back to takeout only as the latest variant of the coronavirus infects employees, leaving the restaurants without adequate staffing to open their doors.
“Things were already stretched pretty thin, and then when you add omicron on top of that ... it doesn’t take too many employees getting sick before you’re in a position where you really can’t provide the service that you want to provide to your customers,” said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, spokeswoman for the Texas Restaurant Association.
Terry Corless, CEO of Mad Dogs Restaurant Group — which includes six restaurants, bars and a drinks to-go operation in downtown San Antonio — put it this way: “Add omicron, and you’ve got an almost untenable circumstance.”
Across the area, would-be diners are finding more restaurants closed or no longer serving in dining rooms.
Bill Miller BAR-B-Q, which has locations across the region, said it was temporarily closing its dining rooms in San Antonio and Austin because of persistent staffing shortages. The San Antonio-based chain said last week that it was planning to reopen in-store dining today. Customers were using its drive-thru, curbside and delivery services.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding,” the chain said in a post on Facebook.
Jim Guy Egbert, CEO of Bill Miller, did not respond to a request for an interview.
Restaurants, hit hard by the pandemic, have been struggling for months to attract and keep employees. Seventy-eight percent of
operators surveyed last year by the Texas Restaurant Association said they did not have enough workers to keep up with customer demand, Streufert said.
In response, many are raising wages and offering hiring bonuses and other incentives. Bill Miller said in April that it would raise its starting pay to $12 an hour from the roughly $10 previously offered for many positions.
When dining rooms closed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, many employees lost their jobs. Higher pay and better hours and benefits elsewhere, health concerns and a desire to return to school or try something new have prompted some to temporarily or permanently leave the sector.
“Many of those folks went on to other industries,” Streufert said. “Some of them will come back, but many of them likely won’t because they’ve already got a good situation somewhere else.”
Parents are also dealing with day care and school closures or reduced capacity, making it harder for them to return to work, she added.
The San Antonio metro area added 4,400 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent, the lowest since February 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The city added 1,900 leisure and hospitality jobs in November, an indication of the industry’s ongoing recovery, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported.
The pandemic wiped out more than 61,000 jobs in the sector, which employs about 12 percent of the city’s workforce. There are still nearly 11,000 fewer workers in the industry than there were before the pandemic, according to the Dallas Fed.
As the pandemic nears the end of its second year, the highly contagious omicron variant’s spread is the latest curveball the sector is facing.
As employees fall ill, restaurants are seeing no options beyond shutting down and scaling back operations. The new variant is spreading rapidly, infecting people at a rate seven times higher than the delta variant and prompting more breakthrough cases among vaccinated people.
Corless said three of Mad Dogs’ restaurants have closed because managers and staff are ill and finding testing kits to make sure remaining workers are safe has been difficult.
But staffing challenges are nothing new, he said. It’s been the reality for the past 18 months. In response, the company has increased pay and is offering a $300 signing bonus, among other perks, to try to fill jobs. Pay varies by position, but wages have generally gone up 20 to 25 percent, or an extra $3 or $4 for hourly workers.
Despite the latest challenges, Corless said he’s thankful to be operating again after reeling from mandated closures early in the pandemic. He’s also banking on San Antonio’s location, cost, weather and attractions to continue to draw tourists.
“There will be life after COVID,” Corless said. “I feel we’re very well positioned.”
Streufert is also optimistic. “We are very much in the trenches of this variant right now, and we’re going to see more restaurants have to pivot and adjust their model because of the employee shortage,” she said. “We’re going to be able to work through this and get back to a much more normal pace hopefully fairly quickly.”
The story is the same across the sector.
Meadow Neighborhood Eatery + Bar said in a Facebook post that it was closing Dec. 23 because of rising COVID-19 cases and an employee testing positive for the virus. The restaurant, located at The Alley on Bitters, reopened Tuesday.
Rosella Coffee and Wine Bar near the San Antonio Museum of Art announced that it would temporarily shut its doors starting last Wednesday because of increasing cases.
“Rosella will be closed until we are confident it is safe for the community and our staff to reopen,” it said in a Facebook post. “Thank you for your support and understanding!”
Cappy Lawton, patriarch of the family behind Mama’s Cafe, Cappy’s, La Fonda on Main and Cappyccino’s, said all 260 or so of his company’s employees are fully vaccinated and that many have received a booster. So he was surprised when some started testing positive for the virus a couple of weeks ago. About 20 were ill by early last week, and the Lawton family decided to temporarily close the restaurants.
They were already
Lawton said the businesses are “very, very picky” about hiring and have had difficulty finding employees. They pay at least $15 an hour and have offered hiring and referral bonuses, but he said it has not made a dramatic difference.
“It’s a very, very challenging time for everyone in every business I think, not just the restaurant business,” Lawton said. shortstaffed.