Short staffed restaurants

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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by HCal »

The 1919 Spanish flu was followed by one of the periods of greatest economic prosperity in our country's history. This pandemic is likely to be no different. There is a ton of pent-up demand for travel and other products and services, jobs are easy to find and companies are willing to pay more to get good workers.

This means that companies that rely on cheap labor will not be able to compete and will see shortages. Fast food and restaurants are definitely in this category. So are Uber/Lyft, wait times have been ridiculous recently.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by Brian Lutz »

I just saw another interesting one a couple of days ago: Denny's is running a promotion where you can get a free Red White and Blue Pancakes meal by coming in to interview for a job. They're even putting up posters in the restaurant and sending it out in their promotional emails.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

Burger King in Reno area has had banners offering a free combo meal with job application for a while now.

They also advertise they start at $10/hr with a $2/hr bonus pay for the months of May and June. Maybe they've updated that lately.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by Alpha8472 »

What we are seeing is a wage shortage. The wages are too low to attract workers. There are plenty of people who are able to work, but the wages are so low that they choose other higher paying jobs. In the past, low wage workers consisted of college students. Now they can work at an Amazon warehouse for much more. Also, previously many immigrants worked at fast food jobs. However, due to the pandemic and the restrictions at the border, there are fewer immigrants to do those low wage jobs. Even back before the pandemic, there were many European exchange students who worked at restaurant jobs. Now they are stuck in their home countries and there is less of a pool of eager workers.

In many cases, workers in the Lake Tahoe area cannot afford to live in the area where they work. It used to be where workers could live at an Airbnb for a cheap price. Now Airbnb has cracked down on party houses and the workers can no longer use them as cheap longer term housing.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on July 24th, 2021, 12:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

I think it is a combination of wages, working conditions, and (lack of) benefits. These businesses need to somehow reevaluate their labor structure. They need to figure out how to employ more people full time and provide benefits. Yes they need to demand efficiency from the employees and not just look for a warm body that will be present.

Prices will need to rise but hopefully they can pick up some efficiencies from less turnover and not having to deal with as many employees (it is a lot easier to draw up a schedule and do overall management for 20 full time employees and 12 part time employees than a schedule for 65 part time employees).

Part of the problem in the restaurant is it is tough work physically. For someone to do an 8 hour shift serving tables is pretty hard work (happens all the time in casinos though). Maybe they need to split duties. The employee spends the first 4 hours of their shift cleaning, then spends 4 hours serving tables. Vs. the current set up where they just work a 4 hour shift serving tables and nothing else.

Some limited service hotels like the Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn or Fairfield Inn or Comfort Inn type places have figured this sort of thing out. Look at their continental breakfast program. They have the night audit employee get it set up at 5 AM or 6 AM after they are through with the audit. Then housekeeping comes in and a couple of them spend their first few hours running the breakfast and then cleaning it up, before they move on to housekeeping duties (cleaning rooms).
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by pseudo3d »

Alpha8472 wrote: July 23rd, 2021, 4:31 pm What we are seeing is a wage shortage. The wages are too low to attract workers. There are plenty of people who are able to work, but the wages are so low that they choose other higher paying jobs. In the past, low wage workers consisted of college students. Now they can work at an Amazon warehouse for much more. Also, previously many immigrants worked at fast food jobs. However, due to the pandemic and the restrictions at the border, there are fewer immigrants to do those low wage jobs. Even back before the pandemic, there were many European exchange students who worked at restaurant jobs. Now they are stuck in their home countries and there is less of a pool of eager workers.

In many cases, workers in the Lake Tahoe area cannot afford to live in the area where they work. It used to be where workers could live at an Airbnb for a cheap price. Now Airbnb has cracked down on party houses and the workers can no longer use them as cheap longer term housing.
It's a lot more complicated than that, especially in California where evictions and rent are still effectively frozen. With all that, and taxpayer-funded checks rolling in, why would they want to work? With other factors like fears of hyperinflation, a definite hike in prices of just about everything, and threats of additional lockdowns/mask mandates, you can't just handwave the restaurant shortage problem as "lol, just raise wages". Heck, even before all this, I remember legalized cannabis in the states that allowed it sniped some restaurant labor.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by Romr123 »

storewanderer wrote: July 24th, 2021, 12:07 am .

Some limited service hotels like the Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn or Fairfield Inn or Comfort Inn type places have figured this sort of thing out. Look at their continental breakfast program. They have the night audit employee get it set up at 5 AM or 6 AM after they are through with the audit. Then housekeeping comes in and a couple of them spend their first few hours running the breakfast and then cleaning it up, before they move on to housekeeping duties (cleaning rooms).
you've hit upon something--when there used to be a "signature" breakfast at these hotels (cinnamon rolls/pancake machines) they needed a dedicated staffer to handle; with the cra&&y bagged granola bars, water and juice, they can get it done w/night audit and half a housekeeping head.

Unfortunately, that gets old fasssst...we took a driving trip earlier in the spring and it was annoying as fu$$ to not know what the breakfast situation was. We were trying to cover some ground, and in one branded hotel, it would be granola bar/Spunkmyer muffin/juice bottle shoved at you in a bag; the next night it would be the signature breakfast item (cinnamon roll, I seem to recall) in a clamshell with hard boiled eggs, yogurt, fresh fruit available for the taking; in the next it was a wrapped Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich warmed in the convection oven (they're actually good that way) with fresh fruit and a sweet-natured server giving the lay-of-the-land. Two of those three were satisfying breakfasts in the current idiom, and let us get on the road as we'd hoped to. Granola bars/muffins in a bag...not so much---better allow 1/2 hour to get through the McDonalds/Dutch Bros/... line.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by veteran+ »

pseudo3d wrote: July 24th, 2021, 2:08 am
Alpha8472 wrote: July 23rd, 2021, 4:31 pm What we are seeing is a wage shortage. The wages are too low to attract workers. There are plenty of people who are able to work, but the wages are so low that they choose other higher paying jobs. In the past, low wage workers consisted of college students. Now they can work at an Amazon warehouse for much more. Also, previously many immigrants worked at fast food jobs. However, due to the pandemic and the restrictions at the border, there are fewer immigrants to do those low wage jobs. Even back before the pandemic, there were many European exchange students who worked at restaurant jobs. Now they are stuck in their home countries and there is less of a pool of eager workers.

In many cases, workers in the Lake Tahoe area cannot afford to live in the area where they work. It used to be where workers could live at an Airbnb for a cheap price. Now Airbnb has cracked down on party houses and the workers can no longer use them as cheap longer term housing.
It's a lot more complicated than that, especially in California where evictions and rent are still effectively frozen. With all that, and taxpayer-funded checks rolling in, why would they want to work? With other factors like fears of hyperinflation, a definite hike in prices of just about everything, and threats of additional lockdowns/mask mandates, you can't just handwave the restaurant shortage problem as "lol, just raise wages". Heck, even before all this, I remember legalized cannabis in the states that allowed it sniped some restaurant labor.
"Why would they want to work" is a broad stroke and inaccurate perspective. And the data does not support that idea.

It's way more complicated.

:)
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by DFWRetaileWatcher »

Its going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

It is indeed a wage problem for workers who can't afford to support themselves with what restaurants are paying. But understandably, restaurant owners / franchisees are also under pressure to keep their labor costs under control with the price of the goods/services they use rising.

I suspect our future will be that of fewer, more expensive restaurant locations with less frills restricted to select high growth/high income areas, similar to the way retail has been going.
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Re: Short staffed restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

Or on the other side of this you will see small independent restaurants staffed by the owner/owner's spouse and a few family members to help out when it is busy be able to survive as they do less business and have a much lower expense structure. You already see a lot of this either in smaller towns or with ethnic restaurants. The challenge for these businesses is going to be as they survive and the chains die out they will have more customers than they know what to do with.

It is the chain restaurants that relied on running their business paying serves $2/hr+tips and serving food straight out of the freezer/into the microwave and charging $12-$15 a plate that are going to be under some real pressure. Add to that many of these chain restaurant franchisees are up to their eyeballs in debt from loans on the business and royalty payments and this is not going to be sustainable for a lot of these places. Frankly, I am surprised many of these places have survived as long as they have.

The bigger thing nobody wants to talk about is how many of these businesses are built on debt. It isn't only their operating costs- it is also the cost to service the debt the business owner has taken on. People think these business owners are sitting there making a ton of money and can afford to just increase everyone's pay, but in many cases that is not what is happening at all and debt service costs are a huge expense. Yes the business owner chose to sign that loan agreement but it was either that or not open that business...
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