As customers return, restaurants missing a key ingredient: Workers
MIAMI – In normal times, chef Michael Beltran would have a straightforward plan: Take the seasoned staff from his existing restaurants and have them launch the new ones. These are not normal times.
Beltran needs to hire 85 people for the five eateries he aims to open this year. Meanwhile at his flagship fine-dining restaurant Ariete, as well as his more casual seafood-and-pasta spot Navé, both in Coconut Grove, he’s down dozens of waiters and short prep cooks.
The pasta guy failed to show up for his Navé shift, no phone call; a sous chef had to jump into the role. Both restaurants have been short on full-time help for so long in the dish room that managers are starting to bargain and cajole about who deserves a dishwasher just to get through weekend brunch service. Beltran wants Navé open seven days a week but doesn’t have the bodies to make it work.
Tourism is roaring back in Miami, vaccines and easing coronavirus restrictions filling restaurants and reservation books again. There is pentup enthusiasm to dine out, even to splurge on Beltran’s 14-course tasting menu. The days of only six customers in the dining room seem to be in the past.
But Beltran faces an unexpected new threat. He can’t find anywhere near enough bussers, prep cooks, line cooks, bartenders, servers.
A nationwide shortage of restaurant workers is emerging as one of the defining quirks of the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic. The unemployment rate remains elevated at 6.1%, but even as dining establishments aggressively hire workers, data and anecdotal reports suggest they are having trouble luring anywhere near enough staff.
In April, Chipotle Mexican Grill began offering free college tuition for agriculture science, culinary arts and 75 business and technology degrees to workers who stay on past four months. Some restaurants are dangling $2,000 signing bonuses to entice workers, while a Florida McDonald’s offers $50 to applicants just to show up to an interview.
The unusual dynamic was underscored Friday by the release of the monthly labor statistics, which found that 266,000 jobs were created in April, far short of the roughly million new jobs that estimates had predicted. Some analysts blamed an economic recovery that isn’t as strong as it seems, but others have blamed powerful forces such as ongoing health fears and robust unemployment insurance for keeping people from seeking jobs in the service sector.
“There are plenty of nights we turn guests away because we do not have enough staff to handle more volume,” Beltran said. “This is always an interesting interaction with a guest – ‘But I see tables open!’ No one will really get that, but it is the way we have decided to move forward.”
Before the pandemic, Beltran’s three restaurants employed about 120 people, not including office staff. Last March, when restaurants went dark nationwide, everyone was furloughed. Bartenders were rehired only to become delivery drivers; corporate executive chefs did dish duty; the payroll eventually crept back up to about 30.
Everyone else lost their jobs. Many filed for unemployment, an extra $300 to $600 pandemic boost and stimulus checks on top of that rivaling their salaries at the restaurants, which can range from $8.65 per hour for a tipped worker to around $14 per hour for a line cook.
Government loans during the pandemic helped Beltran tread water, but he and his partners must start generating revenue.
It was, for many unemployed restaurant workers, a scary and uncertain time, but also one that may have reordered priorities about what matters. For some, it was the first time in years they had spent dinnertime with family or exercised regularly, said Emma Neal, a bar manager at Beltran’s restaurants. She was off for two months, waiting to be called back, an unexpected hiatus she spent training her 8-week-old puppy and having quality time with her two older dogs.
“It was the first time having nights off for some, so they aren’t in a rush to get back,” she said from behind the bar, her mask muffling her voice. She understands workers’ hesitancy to return: “There’s that straight uncertainty.”
Some restaurant workers pivoted to other industries, grabbing Amazon fulfillment center jobs and driving for grocery delivery.
Some laid-off restaurant workers moved to where rents were cheaper, departing metropolises in favor of childhood hometowns, even childhood bedrooms.
For Beltran, Cuban-American and raised in Miami, the shortage means nearly every facet of his workday revolves around the problem of not enough people.
On a recent Thursday, Beltran had six hours of back-toback meetings – operations discussions that, one way or another, were all about the same thing. Staffing.
Beltran’s foot, in worn black Chucks, tapped. He occasionally checked his texts or took a puff on his e-cigarette. (He quit smoking more than four years ago and the pandemic yanked the habit back.)
During a debrief about a new employee, a “very regimented” young woman studying hotel and hospitality management, he said simply, “I call her the unicorn.” Hired for the position of maître d’, an hourly front-of-the-house job, she was polished and professional.
Beltran said that for every 10 résumés he gets, maybe one person shows up for an interview.
Beltran has a tattoo behind his right ear of a chubby pig suspended by a skydiving parachute. The image, the corporate logo for his Ariete Hospitality Group, is a reminder of a high school teacher who told him he would succeed only “when pigs fly,” but also a commitment to succeed on his own terms, in his own way. But it depends on lots of other people, and it’s not clear what is needed to bring them back.
“People feel burned. Or burned out.”