CURRY SHOPS FEEL THE HEAT
As the U.K. prepares for Brexit, an increasing number of Britain’s iconic curry shops have shut their doors due to the flight of staff — a bitter twist, given the shops’ heated support of the leave campaign,
• Syed Joynu was in for a rude shock on a September morning when he walked into Indos, his curry house just outside London. It was 10:30 a.m. and not a single employee had turned up.
He called four of his Romanian staff. Nobody responded. Two others, who also quit their jobs the same day without notice, later told him the Romanians had left the country for good.
Almost two decades after chicken tikka masala was unofficially declared Britain’s national dish, Joynu was forced to shut down the business that earned more than $677,000 a year.
This was nothing like what he was promised in the Brexit campaign he supported. Joynu was told there’d be plenty of workers from South Asia and that restaurants specializing in spicy vindaloos would thrive if only the U.K. could break free from rules allowing the free movement of people between European Union member states.
“We didn’t realize what would happen after Brexit and thought we’d be better off,” said Joynu. “If there’s a second vote now, I’d vote to remain in the EU.”
British curry houses are closing at a pace of one a day as a shortage of specialist kitchen staff makes the business impossible to run.
The Brexit effect is clear in official data. The number of European Union citizens working in the U.K. fell by the most on record in the third quarter, and they’re not being replaced.
Prime Minister Theresa May has a target of reducing net annual migration to the tens of thousands from more than 200,000 currently.
Pro-Leave politicians promised restaurants higher inflows from South Asia with easier visa rules, shutting the door on European workers, allowing lower salary thresholds to hire overseas staff and even regularizing undocumented workers.
Current rules mandate paying salaries of $59,000 to offer a curry chef’s job to a South Asian, an amount out of reach for most restaurants, said Bajloor Khan, President of U.K. Bangladesh Catalysts of Commerce and Industry.
Conservative lawmaker Paul Scully says he’ll lobby for relaxing the rules for chefs as Britain revamps its system, but he sees the answer closer to home.
“The only long-term viable solution” is “finding a more effective way to recruit chefs in the domestic U.K. market,” said the chair of the parliamentary group on the British curry industry.
That’s not what restaurants had in mind. Three years ago, award-winning chef Oli Khan marshalled 150,000 workers from 12,000 restaurants and campaigned hard for Vote Leave.
“We have been given lots of false hopes. We’ve been used,” he said.