Help wanted: Restaurants’ surprising new labor shortage
Diners are returning to America’s restaurants, but not the workers who would serve them, said Carlos Frías in the Miami Herald. As the country reopens, “restaurant owners say they are having unprecedented difficulty in hiring staff.” Ads for chefs, prep cooks, and servers go unanswered. Some owners blame lucrative unemployment benefits for encouraging workers’ disinterest, but the reticence seems to run deeper. For 33-year-old Bobby
Frank, who was star chef at Miami’s Mignonette, the pandemic provided a forced sabbatical during which he asked himself if he wanted to continuing working 10-hour shifts, missing time with his family. He didn’t, and has transitioned into teaching. His old boss Danny Serfer says he understands: “People used this time to discover what they really wanted to do.” Others are deciding that there are better ways to make a modest income than facing dozens of unmasked strangers every worknight.
There is a potential bright side to all this, said Brett Anderson in The New York Times. The tight job market is lifting wages and improving working conditions in an industry whose underpaid labor force gained greater attention during the shutdown. The competition for employees has prompted Asheville, N.C., chef Katie Button to offer $150 signing bonuses at her two restaurants, while Atlanta chef Hugh Acheson has raised the entry wage in his kitchens to $15 an hour, up from $12 pre-pandemic. Camila Ramos, co-owner of All Day, a Miami coffee shop, says she is pleased that the market has forced her to put her staff’s well-being first as she budgets her operation. “Before it was like, We need to pay what we can afford,” she says. “Now it’s like, We need to charge what’s necessary.”