STAFFING SHORTAGES, THE TAKEOUT TREND, SERVER TIPPING AND THE COMMITMENT TO BUILDING A MORE EQUITABLE WORKPLACE
ANN CHRISTENSON:
Hi everyone. I'd like to dive right into this, touching on some of the harder issues you've all been faced with. Let's start with staffing. It's been a huge problem. What are you all doing to combat this, strengthen your workforce and give people the incentive to work? Also, a lot of people are asking me if shorter restaurant hours and fewer days open are something we have to get used to.
AARON BICKHAM:
I want to jump in. At Bartolotta, we're seeing a changing world. There's a stigma in the industry, and we're trying to become the employer of choice by looking at work-life balance, listening to the employees, and giving them opportunities for growth and development. And that's the way we're going to take this challenge on is to get better at what we're doing. We had many years of very long hours and [were] underpaid, and it's time for that to change and that's how our approach is going to be.
DAN JACOBS:
I think this is a multi-faceted [situation]. It's not just as simple as people not wanting to come to work. I think we're doing the best we can to make it an attractive job and to make it something that's sustainable and, like Aaron was saying, [offer some] work-life balance. We moved to a 20% service charge … at all the restaurants. It's allowed us to [offer competitive pay], health insurance, paid vacation and 401k for [full-time staff], but this still really isn't enough. I think part of it is, we let some of these people down, or are perceived to have let them down at the beginning of the pandemic. And for some people, they just decided this was a good time to get out.
AC:
Joe, what's your take on this at the Black Shoe Hospitality restaurants?
JOE MUENCH:
Before the pandemic started, we started changing our culture internally. We wanted this thing called Culture of
Excellence and we created different steps. So when we hired people, we made sure that the onboarding process was much better and easier and smoother. We've increased benefits [and] other things to give the staff a better-rounded experience for their financials. I think that a year of people getting [unemployment benefits], for some of the young people in the hospitality world, they probably made more money from the government in one year than they did any year leading into that. So either they were smart and saved their money, or when that money started running out, people started feeling [they] could get back to work. We're starting to see an uptick in people coming back to work. I don't know if anyone else is experiencing that, and it's not like they're coming in droves, but back in 2017, 2018 we started seeing a decrease in the amount of applications. I don't know if people are getting out of the hospitality industry or just jobs in general. I'm not sure why there was such a dramatic decrease two years before the pandemic. And now, getting out of this pandemic, it'll be interesting to see the next year or two, if all that free money everyone got is going to change the way people are thinking about their employment.
KAREN BELL: I agree with Joe that the trend started years before the pandemic, which could be a bit of foretelling of what everyone's trying to deal with now. At Bavette, I've been offering supplemented health insurance to full-time employees and a matching
SIMPLE IRA to any employee that has been with me for two years, for years prior to the pandemic. I decided to offer these incentives in addition to a fair pay because I started to see they were important issues for people as I was going through the hiring process for different positions. And honestly, they are important things for me, [too]. Charging a service charge is one way to [increase pay], but being a smaller business with fewer employees, I feel fortunate that I have been able to do it without that. We hear a lot of the subpar working conditions in restaurants, and although I think that does ring true to a certain degree, in a lot of cases, it is not the only
story, and I think that is important to know as well.
ZAK BAKER:
I basically have the same staff that we ended March 2020 with in my kitchen. I think the restaurant industry, it's gotten a little big. What we have going for us at Ca'Lucchenzo is, because it's so small, I don't need a lot of people. … You know, referencing the two days closing, we started off with that. It wasn't like, oh, we can't find staff. It just seemed a logical way to do it because then we would have a static schedule. I wanted to have the same people every day. We're very lucky we have almost all of our staff but again, [co-owner and wife] Sarah and I are here every day. There's never any confusion about who's responsible for making sure this place runs well, and who the staff need to go to if they need anything at all.
KYLE KNALL:
I agree with Zak. I went from running a restaurant and hotel [New York City's Equinox Hotel] that was open seven days a week, three meal periods and a huge staff. I think being open for four dinners and two brunches [at Birch], makes it obviously easier for the business to staff, but it makes it so that we can nurture the staff that we have and make sure that everyone's on the same page all the time.
AC:
During that period when you were only doing takeout, did that change the way you see your business; did your approach to food change or evolve? Justin, doing takeout was really different for Sanford. You couldn't do what
Sanford typically does for in-house dining as takeout.
JUSTIN APRAHAMIAN:
It's made us think about quantity food prep in a different way. I mean, to think about what we did on New Year's Eve [2020] for carryout [exclusively; the dining room was closed]. We did like 240 dinners for two, so we cooked for about 500 people. That's an insane jump of just pure product moving out the door. So I think it's opened our eyes up to some possibilities of things we could do. Simultaneously, it was a different animal, that's for sure.
MUENCH:
For us, takeout has dramatically decreased over the past months, certainly from its summertime [2020] high. But before that, you know, we rebuilt
all of our systems, we bought new POS [software] to handle online ordering, we changed our reservation [system], going from Yelp to OpenTable, and things like that, so we've kind of rebuilt our restaurants to handle all the new, diverse ways you have to feed people. But to-go, at its height, was 30% of sales on a Saturday or Sunday. Now it's less than 6%.
BELL:
Like others, we've done take-home holiday meals. I don't know if we'll keep doing that. We've gone back to normal as much as we can. I haven't seen much of a decline in in-house dining.
AC:
Dane, how did you handle requests for takeout? I know you were closed for a while during the pandemic.
DANE BALDWIN:
Yeah, so we did exclusively takeout for about a year. [By] sticking with a takeout model, we got into a cadence with it. And the irony behind it is pre-pandemic we would not do any takeout whatsoever. I think what it's taught me is that we can do it from time to time, depending on the volume we're in the middle of, but it's something to lean back on. That might be something that we will be looking at late winter or early spring.
AC:
Do you think tipping is an antiquated system, and that we'll get to a point when those fees are folded into the bill? Dan, you implemented an added service charge at your restaurants in summer 2021. How is that working?
JACOBS:
You know, it's the right thing to do. I'm more than happy to have a conversation about how we've been able to do it successfully and still make money. A friend of mine has a restaurant in New York City and has been doing it for a long time. She said that you're going to lose [some] people. But you're going to gain people that believe in what you're doing. And I think that's been the best piece of advice I've gotten along this road. And it also gives them a balance to go with that whole sexist thing, like this ends the weird dude being creepy on a server. If the
gratuity is already there, they're going to get paid for it. [The service charge] is used to pay both the front and back of house staff. I mean, historically the back of the house is definitely the underpaid version. We pick our battles – the back of the house guys, we do this because there's a passion for it.
BICKHAM:
[Tipping] helps the owners be able to pay [servers] beyond a living wage. The United States is one of the only countries that do it and it's something we're going to have to deal with. We currently have 14 restaurants [in the Bartolotta portfolio], and tipping is the way we operate as of now.
AC:
Several years ago, we saw a reckoning – women, people of color, speaking out about working conditions in restaurants. Do you think restaurants are in a better position in terms of structural equity and opportunity as it pertains to staff ?
MUENCH: I'm really happy about [where we are with] diversity and inclusion. We have such a broad mix of individuals on our staff. In 2016, we established this Culture of Excellence, and it's given us a tool to survive. We are a community-based organization that focuses on community. I hire people based on personality, not skill. I can teach you [kitchen] skills. I can't teach you how to be a good person.
BICKHAM: As an industry, it's getting better but it has a long way to go. I represent diversity. I'm biracial. We talk about [equity and inclusion] often in leadership meetings.
AC: Karen, what are your thoughts on this issue from the standpoint of a woman-owned restaurant?
BELL:
I've always had more women on staff and I don't know if that's because I am a woman. But it's never been anything I've searched out. A lot of times, what I'm looking for is interest and passion.
AC:
COVID exposed, among other things, how little our government knows about the food and beverage industry. But at the same time, I think there have been more independent restaurants speaking up, pushing for change and asking for help. What are your thoughts on this?
MUENCH:
The Wisconsin Restaurant Association has been a big help these past couple years. If you're not involved, you should be because they really stepped up and kept people informed and also went to bat for quite a number of issues. And I think the small, independent restaurants have a big voice through that organization.
APRAHAMIAN:
Yeah, I think we've seen how restaurants are taken for granted, in a way, but we're a huge industry and we're an industry where 90-some percent of the money that comes into our restaurant leaves the restaurant and supports the local economy. And we didn't get the love and support that we should have. So it's frustrating, and then to also be the first people in a society tapped for fundraising events and things. It's like we're the last ones to get it in so many ways.
JACOBS: This isn't really new. We're the spoke or the hub of a giant economic engine. We touch so many other industries that don't have anything to do with food – you have your obvious ones, like your butchers, your farmers, but also carpenters, plumbers, HVAC guys, truck drivers. There's so much that restaurants do. For a lot of us, this was our first job and will be our last. Restaurants are important. We're the gateway to communities and how people get to know different ethnic groups. You first learn about that group through that group's food, and to lose those places – and I'm talking about the small guys like your taquerias, your Middle Eastern restaurants or Indian restaurants – to lose those guys is the biggest mistake we could make. I'm on the phone and writing emails every week to representatives, not just in our state but in other states, trying to get the Restaurant Revitalization Fund refilled [a national program created to give aid to businesses impacted by COVID-19]. It's important. It's the difference between a restaurant being open in April of this year and not being open at the end of this month. It sucks to think that way, but I believe that. This is our community, man. If we're not looking out for us, who the hell is?