CHICAGO, Ill. (WBBM) — The nationwide labor shortage amid the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses and restaurants to cut back on offering certain services and products.
Restaurants have been trimming the amount of options on menus, while hotels and casinos are limiting their housekeeping services, breakfast buffets, and live entertainment events due to having fewer workers.
Good Stuff Eatery, a Washington, D.C.-based hamburger chain, for example, has made tough choices on their menu that they wouldn't have considered doing pre-pandemic.
"Before, we were so busy it didn’t matter," Micheline Mendelsohn, Deputy CEO of Sunnyside Restaurant Group, which owns the chain, said in an interview with USA Today.
She added that managers are now asking questions such as, "Do enough people order tuna at a hamburger restaurant" to justify the time and cost?
Labor shortages have not just affected smaller chain restaurants like Good Stuff Eatery, but has impacted McDonald’s, Denny's, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and many other major chains.
Executives have said that some of the products they removed still won't be coming back after the pandemic and supply chain issues slow down. Labor shortages are still expected to continue, even if supply issues are resolved throughout the year, economist Dante DeAntonio of Moody’s Analytics said.
Darden Restaraunts, owners of Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, added that they will likely keep the smaller menus that have been active since the beginning of the pandemic.
"It would be fair to say that all the work we’ve been doing to simplify our business, including during the height of the pandemic…has helped us deal with the staffing challenges better than most," Darden spokesman Rich Jeffers said.
There were 10.9 million job openings in December, as nearly 4.3 million workers quit their jobs, the Labor Department said this week. Economists are estimating that the government will report only 150,000 job gains on Friday, as the COVID-19 omicron variant has discouraged job searches and hiring.
Good Stuff Eatery got rid of their Portobello sandwich because of the time it takes to make along with having less workers. They swapped it out for fried green tomatoes, a menu item that is easier and faster to make.
"People aren’t coming in as much…There’s just not as much profit," Mendelsohn said.
"If you have 30 things on the menu but 10 sold the most, you have to have more customers" to justify the less popular items, she added.
She said she even expects people to go out to eat less frequently this year than they did pre-pandemic with the labor shortage still going on.
"(Workers) are not there anymore," Mendelsohn said. "Restaurant work is hard."
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