Finding food workers is tough
SHARON Campbell has been operating Real Food Dubbo since September 2012, but she says she’s never found it more difficult to find workers and says so many other food and hospitality outlets in the city are in the same boat.
“At the moment it’s a struggle to find people when employees leave, and most of the (other business along the) street are like that as well,” she told Dubbo Photo News.
Her business was very different when it kicked off. She said it started off very busy with a lot of interest because it was a new, unique business. It was a place where people could get exactly what they wanted and exactly how much they wanted, she explained.
“Since then, it’s been a consistent growth with catering and building the reputation and it’s quite a successful business, but when Covid hit we were really struck with being unable to find employees and, most importantly, finding the right people – people who want to work, who love food, who want to learn how to do things properly in the food sector,” she said.
“There’s all sorts of different parts of the business that people can be in, so it’s not just food prep or kitchen or cleaning or customer service. There’s different areas for people with different skillsets, but I struggle to get anyone with suitable skills, and then they often don’t want to work the hours the industry demands,” she said.
Sharon Campbell is a great advocate of hospitality as a career path for school leavers as a way to get that vital frontline experience in the industry, whether they’re going to look for a career in hospitality or just use those skills to obtain employment while they’re studying tertiary education.
“Absolutely, my background is big event management so I teach the people who come here the skills for moving on as well.
“It’s not just about the ‘now’ job, they can take so much from what I have to offer in areas such as business management, event management, food preparation, nutrition, you name it – they’ll learn that running a business isn’t just about serving customers with food,” she said.
“This industry can be as big or as little as you want, it’s an industry where you can be a business owner, you could be an event manager, there’s so many different levels which can help you move into other areas. It’s just a great way to start for kids, and for parents looking for work it’s a great industry with potentially flexible hours, it’s an industry that lends itself really well to fitting in to various lifestyles.”
Because it’s not a simple 9 to 5 Monday to Friday business, the hours aren’t just a standard 38-hour week, and there’s the flexibility of being able to work part-time.
“I will teach them the background of the industry, and we’re really looking for someone with a passion for the industry who wants to work, and learn and get paid at the same time.”