A national labor shortage is affecting many local restaurants and other businesses in the upstate.
Many of them feeling the brunt of the labor shortage are having to reduce their hours, or even days of operations in some cases, due to a lack of employees to reasonably cover their full normal hours.
Tristan Mikhail, the Talent Acquisition Specialist at Carrols Corporation, who recruits for 80 different Burger Kings, said the labor shortage has been taxing on many of the managers at their restaurants.
"The managers have just been just overworked and really stressed out," Mikhail said. "There's a lot of shifts that can't be covered. We have some restaurants that can't even open in the dining room at times."
The blame for the labor shortage is also being pointed in a couple different directions.
“The COVID pandemic, we don’t think affected our staff here,” said Kimberly Swayngham of Greer’s Lakeview Steakhouse. She explained that her restaurant remained fully staffed during the pandemic and after the restrictions were initially lifted. “But when the checks and the money started coming out freely and just given, people decided that ‘yes I can get money without having to work for it at this time, so I’m going to sit at home and accept it and not show up’. Our staff went from 100 percent to about 30 percent."
You can listen to the full interview with Lakeview Steakhouse's Kimberly Swayngham below:
One upstate convenience store owner shared similar beliefs behind the source of the labor shortage, stating that “I used to get two or three applications a week. And I’m down to maybe getting two a month,” he said.
“They’ve made it too easy for people to stay at home.”
Divided into a 40-hour work week, the 600/week benefits equate to roughly $15/hr. These benefits will return back to the pre-pandemic amount, which is roughly half of this, at the end of June.
However, many other local restaurant owners have different ideas of its source.
“Obviously, people are still getting unemployment benefits,” said Julia Scholz, who co-owns Stella’s Bistro and Stella’s Brasserie alongside her husband. “So there’s that, but also I get responses from prospective employees that say they’ve left the industry. So a lot of food and beverage employees left the industry during the shutdown as well.”
You can listen to the full interview with Stella's Bistro's Julia Scholz below:
Kristina Murphy, the Executive Vice President for Larkins Restaurant Group expressed similar observations.
“Some people decided to get out of the industry all together because it was so uncertain. Line level people were having a difficult time paying their bills when we opened back up with the amount of business, cause we didn’t have any,” Murphy said.
She continued that it may make more financial sense for some to not return and to instead collect unemployment. “We had to look at it from all angles. So think about it. If you could get $900 a week, pull your kid out of daycare and save all that money, why would you work? So you have to look at it from all angles, not just lazy people.”
You can listen to the full interview with Larkins Restaurant Group's Kristina Murphy below:
Many of these restaurant and business owners expressed that they offered "competitive wages", and some offered additional incentives to employees that signed on.
Those who offered these incentives or increased employee wages noted slightly better labor situations, but all were still notably impacted by the labor shortage.
Some restaurants have had to cut hours, such as the slow hours between lunch and dinner, due to the lack of employees to fully cover those hours.
Others, such as both of Scholz’s restaurants, have even had to cut an entire day from their weekly schedule as a result of the labor shortage.
“We have successfully reopened, but we have a hard time even putting a shift together,” Murphy said. “Lack of cooks, servers, bartenders. Even people applying don’t call back. They don’t respond. I think they just have to show that they’re trying to get a job, as far as unemployment’s concerned. So even if we hire them, they don’t show up.”
Most have also expressed that substantially increasing wages in an attempt to bring workers back to restaurants is a very limited option without notably increasing the cost of their food in response.
