Heather Trump spent part of a recent morning typing a letter to officials in Sullivan University’s culinary program asking if they had students seeking night work or management roles. For the past eight months, Trump, co-owner of two Lexington Shamrocks Bar & Grille locations in addition the Cellar Bar & Grille, has tried various tactics toward fully staffing her restaurants, including posting ads on online job board Indeed, in University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, Kentucky Kernel; on social media; and anywhere else she can think of.
But mostly she remains frustrated.
Heather Trump
“I would say out of 50 applications a week, maybe one is for a cook and they don’t return phone calls, or we set up interviews and they just don’t show up,” she said.
Staffing servers and bartenders is manageable, she said, but management and back-of-house positions like cooks and dishwashers are scarce. The Cellar has discontinued its lunch service to keep existing employees from working too much overtime. About 24 positions were available among all three restaurants as of early May.
Trump’s experiences are echoed among other restaurant owners/operators, as wide- spread staffing shortages have hit restaurants hard in an already trying year.
Cole Arimes, executive chef/owner of Coles 735 Main and Epping’s on Eastside, said he sorely needs bakers, servers and cooks. With so many looking to hire both in and out of the restaurant realm, Arimes said job seekers can basically pick and choose, even if they have little experience or are switching from another career.
For others, it’s just not feasible right now.
“I think with the pandemic, on top of it is childcare, and you have a lot of parents who normally would work if their kids were in school,” he said.
After restaurant restrictions relaxed in the months following mandated closures in spring of 2020, he said 95 percent of employees returned to both restaurants. Epping’s had to close again at the end of 2020 because business levels just weren’t there, he said, but it’s since reopened.
Cole Arimes
Arimes said he tries to stand out from other prospective employers by offering better work-life balance, with a predictable, reasonable schedule and health benefits.
Parkette Drive-In co-owner Randy Kaplan says he’s fortunate to have flexible employees willing to cover shifts as needed. He’s also glad that his restaurant already had an outdoor drive-in dining format.
“People were comfortable eating in their cars because they could social distance,” he said. But he has about 22 employees when usually this time of year there are 30.
“I’m paying more overtime than I have been in probably forever,” he said.
Kaplan said people who genuinely need unemployment should be able to receive it through the existing system, but he said sometimes the system itself becomes a disincentive to work.
To attract and retain good employees, he said some restaurants are offering higher wages, but that can put a financial pinch on owners as restaurants typically operate on slim margins. Many owners and operators, including those we spoke with for this article, say it’s also difficult to compete with subsidized unemployment benefits, which are designed to provide relief for workers impacted by the pandemic.
Ronnie Berry
Dublin, Ohio-based City Barbecue and Catering is trying a fun, new companywide approach to lure in new employees — a BBQ hiring party. A two-day hiring party in Lexington washeld in early May with open interviews for five to eight positions in the chain’s two local restaurants for the busy summer months ahead, Chief People Officer Ronnie Berry said.
Participants were asked to dress casually, stop by and have a job interview on the spot, tour the restaurant, sample some barbecue, perhaps even get an offer and start the on-boarding process, he said.
The party environment was designed to be more casual and welcoming to attract younger employees, with a faster transition time from applying to actually starting work.
“Our business is filled with young people,” he said. “Eighty percent of our staff is 16 to 30 years old, so by nature we’ve got a younger generation.”
Known for operating restaurants like Bella Notte, Bella Café and Grille and Smashing Tomato, Kuni Toyoda said while he appreciates his many longtime employees, “it has been very challenging to say the least” to find qualified new workers lately, particularly kitchen staff.
Kuni and Carol Toyoda
“We provide the health insurance benefits with 75 percent company contributions and the other key benefits, however, I am further enhancing our employee benefits by rolling out retirement benefits starting very soon,” he said.
Toyoda doesn’t expect staffing difficulties to improve immediately but places faith in a human resource manager tasked with recruiting qualified workers.
A number of programs were unveiled to help struggling restaurants over the past year, including the Lee Initiative’s Restaurant Reboot Relief Program and Restaurant Workers Relief Program, the Team Kentucky Food and Beverage Relief Fund that distributed more than $37 million in federal pandemic relief money in the form of one-time grants, and the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
Kaplan, Trump and Arimes say they successfully applied for PPP funds last year to help meet payroll obligations.
“It’s not quite what we were out compared to the year before, but listen, it’s been amazing and it’s helped us tremendously,” Trump said. “Without it we couldn’t have stayed in business.”
Arimes said he’ll apply for any other available grant funding like the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund announced as part of the American Rescue Plan. Successful applicants can receive funding equal to their pandemic-related revenue losses up to $10 million per business and a maximum $5 million per physical location, according to an SBA press release.
For now, Trump said she’s trying to be patient and asks customers to do the same. She’s offered existing employees signing bonuses if they refer new hires, but she says they’ve mostly come up empty-handed.
“We’re hopeful that when school lets out some more people are looking for employment, but who knows?” she said.