The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Help wanted in worst way
Hospitality industry experiencing worker shortages
SYDNEY — Veteran restaurateur Danny Ellis owns several high-profile eateries in Cape Breton, but last week he found himself up to his elbows in dirty dishes.
He had no choice. His Portside Beer Garden, an outdoor pub located on the Sydney waterfront, is short-staffed.
“I can’t take my eye off the ball for one minute because someone will be calling off and we’ll have a staff shortage,” said Ellis, whose businesses also include Daniel’s Alehouse and Eatery and the Boardwalk Taproom and Eatery.
“I haven’t had any time off, but at least when I’m here I can recruit or track down workers or jump in myself. There was a day when I did dishes for two hours. It’s just the way it is right now.”
Down the road from Portside, Ardon Mofford is also struggling to find enough workers to staff his Governor’s Pub and Eatery, which also boasts an outdoor beer garden that has proven very popular, especially when the skies are clear and temperatures are high.
“We’ve definitely been under-staffed but not yet to the point where we are at a critical stage,” said Mofford, who has been involved in the hospitality business since he was a child growing up with the family restaurant in St. Peter’s.
“We have turned away lots of business. I’ve completely stopped the catering side of things because we just can’t do it. The demand is there but we just don’t have the people to fill the positions so we basically now focus on feeding our guests in the dining room and beer garden.”
INDUSTRY STRUGGLES
The challenges facing the hospitality industry are not confined to the busier and larger population centres.
In the Margaree Valley in western Cape Breton, the popular Dancing Goat Café and Bakery recently closed temporarily because it didn’t have enough staff to keep the Cabot Trail establishment operating. (The same applies in the popular tourist village of Baddeck, where eateries are struggling with an almost non-existent labour pool.)
The business posted this message on Facebook: “Due to staff shortages we have to close the Goat for one week. We will reopen Wednesday, September 1. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
On the other side of the Cabot Trail, dining establishments in the Ingonish area are also facing the same dilemma. The Seagull Restaurant, the Main Restaurant and Bakery, and the Coastal Restaurant and Pub have all been shortstaffed at one time or another in recent weeks. The situation is so dire that restaurants in that area have been working together and are taking turns having “days off.”
ACROSS THE PROVINCE
Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia executive director Gordon Stewart says the problem is provincewide.
“It is right across Nova Scotia. It’s hitting everyone, it doesn’t matter about size, it’s everywhere, it’s in fast food, it’s in fine dining, everywhere,” said Stewart, who identified staff shortages as the top issue facing the hospitality industry at this time.
“The labour pool is just too shallow. Finding properly trained kitchen staff has always been difficult, but it has been much more difficult since the pandemic started.”
The association recently surveyed restaurants across the province in an effort to identify the biggest challenges facing the beleaguered industry. Not surprisingly, the results showed that most establishments find it very extremely difficult to recruit employees in general, with full-time positions being harder to fill than part-time, although the latter has also been problematic. Employee retention is also a problem, although it is much less so than new employee recruitment.
Unfortunately, Stewart said, the shortage of workers is not the only issue plaguing the industry.
“It’s been a perfect storm. The industry has labour shortages, it’s still affected by COVID, the supply chain is not reliable and prices are higher for the supplies the restaurants need.”
SOLUTIONS
Stewart suggested that one way of expanding the labour pool is through immigration, although he acknowledged that the number of newcomers to Nova Scotia has declined since the pandemic began.
Mofford also mulled over the possibility of bringing in temporary workers next year to deal with a labour shortage that he attributes to instability in the industry.
“I heard that in Ontario, one of every three workers is leaving the industry, while here the number is probably closer to one in five,” he said.
“It’s a tough situation. We’ve always had local kids looking for work all the time. This is the first time I put out a job posting for every position in the restaurant and I only received 10 resumes. Normally, I would get about 150. And the ones I did get were from people with no experience who just wanted to work.”
CAUSES
Mofford and Ellis agreed that Covid-related government programs have inadvertently made the retention and hiring of employees that much more difficult.
“A lot of this is about people leaving the industry after getting into the unemployment program where they qualified with low hours,” said Ellis.
“If you are on the lower end of the wage scale, why would you come to work for $560 per week when you can sit home and get $500 for doing nothing?”
Mofford said he fully endorsed government programs such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit but added that worker shortages have become an unexpected side-effect of supports like the CERB.
“The government did its thing to help us through a very tough time, but it came back to nip the industry in the butt and has really exposed the vulnerability of the hospitality business,” said Mofford.
“I truly believe that what they did was right. I think that as a society we might have collapsed if they didn’t do what they had to do. Nobody could foresee the problems that it could cause at this point. It’s more about instability within industry.”
Then there is the student issue. Many high school and post-secondary students are on the verge of returning to the classroom and that has restaurateurs like Ellis worried about how to serve customers through the end of the traditional tourist season.
“I am going to lose a ton of students and that’s scary,” said Ellis.
“Most of them work at Portside, but I’m just hoping enough of them stick around long enough to see us through the rest of summer.
“The irony is that Portside is having its best season ever.”