With pandemic as exit ramp, restaurant staff abandoning jobs for less grueling work
In spite of being open almost at full capacity, restaurants in Miami and surrounding areas are having trouble hiring workers because of lack of applicants.
Right about the time Bobby Frank would have been shucking the first of 400 oysters, peeling 100 hard-boiled eggs and planning to feed 153 hungry diners, he was putting his feet up instead.
For eight years, Frank, 33, was head chef at one of Miami’s favorite finedining restaurants, Mignonette. He had worked in restaurants nonstop since he was 15.
Then the pandemic shut down restaurants for a month and, like the tens of thousands who make up South Florida’s restaurant industry, he had time to think about whether he wanted to continue working 10-hour days in restaurants for a living. He didn’t.
Last month, he started a new job teaching an introduction to cooking to students in Western High’s culinary arts pro
gram, a career path he’d considered for years. At 3:30 p.m., he sent his wife a photo of himself in gym shorts with his feet on the couch.
“COVID gave me the opportunity to pivot, and that’s what I did,” he said. “The uncertainty of the business pushed me to make a change. And COVID just pushed me out the door.”
Many others apparently have used the time to make a similar change.
Restaurant owners say they are having unprecedented difficulty in hiring staff. Ads in mainstream and trade-industry job sites go unanswered, even as restaurateurs take advantage of Florida’s wideopen economy to open new spots here. Despite the ongoing threat of COVID, tourists continue to come as vaccine distribution ramps up.
But in an industry where 40 percent of the staff is made up of parttimers — more than twice the percentage for all other industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — many are choosing to spend that time in other jobs. Some have switched careers altogether.
“It’s not that we’re not getting qualified people. We’re not getting any calls at all,” said Jacqueline Pirolo, co-owner of Miami Beach’s Macchialina Italian restaurant, a fixture on South Beach for more than nine years. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
RETHINKING A ‘GRUELING’ JOB
Some restaurant owners groused last summer that the federal $600 weekly payment kept employees away. Instead, restaurant workers have been harder to come by in the months after the supplement phased out in July 2020. They’ve stayed away even as unemployment payments dropped to a maximum of $275 a week. A new round of federal aid approved in March will give some unemployed workers an extra $300 a week through Labor Day.
Pirolo said she spends hundreds of dollars a week to advertise on jobsearch sites like Indeed, Poach.com, the industryfocused Culinary Agents, even Craigslist. She bombards social media — Instagram and Facebook in particular — with ads. Yet her restaurant still needs at least eight more people to run smoothly.
That means even longer hours for her and her brother, chef and coowner Michael Pirolo, and for an overworked staff.
“You’re putting people into six-day work weeks, which is grueling,” she said.
Social media is full of restaurants just like Macchialina posting about job openings to the masses.
“Everybody is in the same boat,” she said.
Little Haiti restaurant Boia De got 90 applications when it first reopened in June 2020. But after a series of government closings and reopenings and COVID cases that closed restaurants for quarantine, the applicants went away, said co-owner Alex
Meyer. It took three months for Boia De to hire one line cook.
“We need people. We need bodies,” Meyer said.
Why part-timers have stayed away may have something to do with the nature of restaurants dealing with an unmasked public during an ongoing pandemic, several owners said. Servers work in the only profession where they regularly deal with unmasked people as they dine.
“People are afraid to come back to work. We’re talking about a pandemic,” Jacqueline Pirolo said.
“We talk to 80, 100 people a night who are not wearing masks,” Meyer said.
While restaurant workers were prioritized in other states, such as California, North Carolina and New York, in Florida the economy reopened before the public-facing employees were allowed to be vaccinated. Most restaurant workers are in their 20s and 30s, among the last to be eligible for a vaccine. All of that for jobs that rely on servers being cordial for tips and kitchen staff who might be making $30,000$50,000 a year.
Pirolo said none of her staff of 30, including her and her brother, have been able to get a vaccine. Florida has said it will open vaccinations to everyone 16 and older on Monday. They have kept their restaurant as outdoor dining only, except for one “chef’s table” that must be reserved in advance.
“I know people who are not looking to work in a restaurant because of COVID safety,” said All Day café owner Camila Ramos.
Major Food Group, which opened the first of five new planned restaurants with Carbone in South Beach, took a drastic approach to staffing its new spots.
Carbone brought in longtime employees from New York, where restaurants are still running at limited capacity. They also are paying at the top of the market to try to attract top talent and to train them with their outof-town staff, co-owner Jeff Zalaznick said.
“That is a smart way to attract the best talent,” Zalaznick said.
NOT LOOKING BACK
All of that forced restaurant workers to ask themselves an existential question: Is this a career I want to move up in or part-time work I can do elsewhere?
“In an industry that often feels like you can never stop, people who rarely pause in their lives, often living check to check, were met with a long time to think about whether they really wanted to continue investing their time in the industry that often overworked and underpaid [them],” All Day’s Ramos wrote the Herald.
Nicolay Adinaguev decided it wasn’t for him anymore.
A lifetime restaurant chef for fine-dining restaurants like Steak 954, Makoto and Michelinstarred Doug Rodriguez restaurants in New York City, Adinaguev, 40, left as head chef of 3 Sons Brewing Company in Dania Beach to work as a sales and operations manager at Sunshine Provisions. The stress of working through COVID drove him off.
His new job lets him spend regular hours with his wife and two children, 8 and 4. Adinaguev thinks maybe a restaurant of his own would lure him back when his children have grown.
“It gave people this first taste of real life,” Adinaguev said. “I realized I wasn’t giving the best of me to my family.”
Others aren’t looking back.
Danny Serfer, chef/ owner of Mignonette, admits selfishly he’d like to see his star head chef, Frank, stay in the industry. But on days where he, as owner, leaves the restaurant early to attend his daughter’s dance recital or is home when his son loses his first tooth, he understands.
“I understand why Bobby is doing what he’s doing because one day he’s going to want to do that with his kids, too,” Serfer said. “People used this time to discover what they really wanted to do.”
For Frank — who had the baked Oysters Frank named after himself at Mignonette — that means teaching high schoolers in Western’s culinary program how to cook in a $500,000 industrial kitchen. Another friend left a job as head chef of a corporate catering company to become a real estate agent, “and he’s doing better than ever.”
The time off allowed Frank to think about what he wanted to do next. He is teaching an important life skill, even if many of his students don’t choose a career in restaurants. He’s still working in food, creating every day, and working with kids.
And he’s home in time to cook dinner for his own family.
“Time is money,” Frank said, “and now I have plenty of it.”
IT’S NOT THAT WE’RE NOT GETTING QUALIFIED PEOPLE. WE’RE NOT GETTING ANY CALLS AT ALL.
Jacqueline Pirolo, co-owner of Macchialina