For restaurants, struggles persist
Return to normalcy plagued by price hikes and staffing shortages
No one who ever tossed a rock in a pond needs a lesson in the ripple effect, but we’ve all been getting one anyway — often at restaurants, where owners grateful to see pandemic restrictions go away are now struggling to find workers and keep the kitchen stocked.
It’s translating into slower service, smaller portions, fewer hours, favorite dishes gone from the menu. The pandemic may not be the only cause of the industry’s ongoing
woes, but it is the main one, with the joy of returning to normal business tempered by the reality that supply chains — including the flesh-and-blood one of labor — were torn up over the past 15 months and haven’t been stitched fully back together yet.
“The primary challenge is staffing,” said Jeremy Bialker, the chef-owner of Two Rivers Brewing in Easton, which held a job fair Wednesday in a bid to attract more employees — chiefly for the skilled kitchen tasks of cooking and preparation.
Bialker said it’s harder to hire for those jobs than for hosting, serving and table-busing jobs that are often filled by high school and college students.
“It’s not like the days of the past where it was just some guy flipping burgers all day,” he said. “It’s a lot more skilled than that. You need stamina, knife skills, the ability to read and adjust recipes and deal with the stress.”
New schedules, higher prices
In many cases, restaurant workers have departed the industry for better wages elsewhere, or have been unable to return to work because they can’t find child care as schools remain closed.
Others are hesitating to reenter the job market because unemployment benefits padded with an extra $300 in federal pandemic money exceed the paychecks at many lower-wage jobs.
In Pennsylvania, people collecting benefits normally have to furnish proof they are job-hunting, but there is a pandemic moratorium on that requirement in place until mid-July. Many lawmakers and business owners want the moratorium lifted now to push people back into the labor pool.
While the restaurant industry added 186,000 jobs nationally in May — one of three jobs added overall during the month — it remains 1.5 million workers short of the pre-pandemic high, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
For some restaurants, that has translated into schedule changes. McCarthy’s Red Stag Pub and Whiskey Bar in Bethlehem recently announced it would no longer be open on Tuesdays.
The Scorecard Sports Bar and Grill in Wind Gap said it will open later on Saturdays and be closed Mondays. And the Kempton Hotel in Albany Township, Berks County, has closed, at least temporarily, because it couldn’t hire sufficient staff. In a Facebook post Thursday, the restaurant operators said they are taking a few days to “evaluate the situation.”
Bialker said the shortage means long, long days, for his employees and himself.
“I don’t have an a.m. staff and a p.m. staff,” he said. “I have a staff.”
Eager to retain employees and entice more to sign on, Bialker has raised wages. To do so — and to meet the higher cost of chicken, beef and other basics — he has had to raise prices. But he has refrained from reducing portion sizes, as some restaurants have, because he believes customers would rather pay a little more than get less on their plates.
“I hope that doesn’t create sticker shock in the general public, but they might have to get used to it,” he said, noting that the price of chicken alone has doubled in recent months.
So, too, has the price of a restaurant essential, fryer oil.
“We used to pay $17 or $18. Now we pay over $40,” said Spencer Cobb, co-owner of Edge Restaurant in Bethlehem and Surv in Forks Township. “There are food items that are just so expensive that we’ve had to increase what we charge by a little bit,” he added, citing lump crab meat as a notable example.
When certain foods are in short supply, Cobb said his business partner and chef, Tim Widrick, uses his nimble culinary imagination to come up with other dishes. But shortages lead to another problem.
“You can’t have a menu that’s set,” Cobb said. “So you go through a massive amount of ink and paper.”
Neville Gardner, who owns McCarthy’s, had a bout of sticker shock when he revisited his pre-pandemic plans to add a second bar to his Main Street property and learned the price of lumber and other essentials had put the project out of reach.
“My big question to the universe is, ‘Will a sheet of plywood go back to close what it was before the pandemic or stay double?’” he said.
Even items in Gardner’s retail space, Donegal Square, a Celtic gift and apparel shop, have been affected as pandemic-idled manufacturers struggle to meet the demand of the wakening economy.
It isn’t just cost, it’s availability. Gardner has had trouble acquiring certain kinds of tartan fabric from Scottish weavers. The distinctive, patterned cloth is used to make kilts, one of Donegal Square’s signature offerings.
Even more basic items can be in scarce supply. At Two Rivers, Bialker he has encountered shortages of, among other things, to-go boxes and napkins.
Temporary disruption?
Most observers expect these disruptions and shortages to subside as manufacturing and consumption return to pre-pandemic balance, though there are wild cards in the mix. Two notable ransomware attacks in recent weeks — on fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline and meat supplier JBS — demonstrated how vulnerable vital supply chains can be even absent a pandemic.
Gardner, like everyone else, is hoping for a quick end to shortages and disruptions. At the moment, though, he is concerned with managing the problems in a way that will let him avoid price increases. McCarthy’s has a loyal customer base, but raising prices is always a risky proposition, especially in the era of social media where review sites can make or break reputations.
“It’s amazing what you can get a one-star review for,” Gardner said. “People get all whacked out and go online and give you a one-star review and who knows why?”
He is also concerned about wages. Like most restaurant workers, Gardner’s employees have always earned base pay complemented by gratuities. But some large restaurant chains have begun to raise wages substantially. The Chipotle chain, for example, instituted increases of up to $18 an hour, a scale Gardner says would quickly put him out of business.
“I guess I follow the theory that I’m going to ride it out and see what happens and hopefully some of this will self-adjust,” he said.
Cobb, who has full staffing at Edge but is struggling to fill jobs at Surv, said he’s increased pay rates by 30% to 40% and spends $1,000 a month on hiring bonuses.
“It’s more difficult than it’s ever been, that I can remember,” he said. “We do our best to try to shrink ourselves into success, cutting off reservations so we can avoid providing a level of service that’s not typical of us.”
Like Gardner, Cobb is optimistic that the high winds of what everyone hopes is a post-pandemic world will ease soon, with the supply chains recovering and renewed competition driving prices down.
But he is cleared-eyed about it, too.
“One thing I’ve learned during the pandemic is not to predict what’s going to stay the same and what’s going to change for good,” he said. “The only real solution is to adjust.”