Desperate Idaho restaurants are begging you to work for them, and they’re raising pay
Caffé Luciano’s closed temporarily in December, the victim of winter weather and the lingering coronavirus pandemic.
Now, as the Italian restaurant located next to the Boise River in Garden City looks to reopen, it faces another challenge: finding a kitchen staff to operate. Manager Cody Craig said his former employees found new jobs, and he’s looking for 10 kitchen workers but hasn’t found anyone.
“We’ve gone the gamut: We’ve done Facebook, Craigslist, word of mouth. I’ve cold-called people,” Craig said by phone. “And either I’m not getting any response, or they won’t show up for interviews.”
Even bumping up salaries hasn’t helped. Craig is offering $1 to $2 an hour more than he was before the pandemic. He’s reluctant to say precisely how much he’s offering so that he doesn’t scare away potential candidates. He said he has some leeway and wants to be able to negotiate rather than have someone not apply.
Caffé Luciano’s isn’t alone.
“Restaurants, hotels and other lodging properties and retailers are all having an extremely hard time hiring people, even with offering much higher wages than ever before, along with benefits and/or incentives,” Pam Eaton, CEO of the Idaho Lodging & Restaurant Association and the Idaho Retailers Association, said by email. “Anyone who wants to work can find a job right now.”
Restaurant employment up despite worker shortages
Restaurant employment across the country rose in March for the third month in a row. Even so, the number of filled positions is 1.8 million — down 15% — than before the pandemic struck in March 2020, according to preliminary data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Full-service restaurants have been hurt the worst. Employment in February was down 20% from prepandemic levels, accounting for 1.1 million jobs. Staffing at coffee shops, doughnut and ice cream shops was down 10%, while fast food and fast casual restaurant employment was down 6%.
“We’re kind of back in the same situation we were before the pandemic, which is just there’s a limited supply of workers,” Craig Shaul, a research analyst supervisor for the Idaho Department of Labor, said by phone.
The state’s unemployment rate peaked at 11.6% in April 2020. By February, it had gone down to 3.3%, nearly half the 6.6% national rate.
While 19% of Idaho’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and 29% of Idahoans have received at least one dose, Shaul said there still may be people concerned about catching the virus in the restaurant industry. While most servers and other restaurant workers continue to wear masks and gloves, they serve diners who aren’t wearing masks while they’re eating or drinking.
“They might be struggling with that,” Shaul said. “There’s also more competition from other industries that are also really struggling with a need for workers such as electricians and construction workers. Amazon is now a player, and they have a pretty good minimum wage they start people at ($15 an hour).”
Across the state, for all industries, there were listings for 41,756 open jobs in March, according to The Conference Board/Burning Glass Help Wanted Online, an index monitored by the Idaho Department of Labor. That’s up from 30,554 in March 2020, when the pandemic started, and 19,682 in March 2019.
A number of people retired after the pandemic started, Shaul said, and some parents left the workforce to home-school their children while public and privates schools were closed.
“What a perfect storm of issues from all sides,” Shaul said. “It can be kind of a challenge for employers.”
The owner of Eagle restaurant Bacquet’s told the Idaho Statesman earlier this month that it might have to close because of a shortage of workers.
“This is absolutely 100 percent a threat,” Michele Bacquet said.
Meridian Mexican restaurant calls in former workers
At Café Olé in Meridian, manager Brandt Casey has seven or eight people working in the kitchen. He should have 13 or 14. The wait staff totals eight. Before the pandemic, it was 16.
Like Craig at Caffé Luciano’s, Casey has found it difficult to find new workers, posting listings on Facebook, Instagram and Craigslist, with no success.
“I’ve had to call people who worked for me 10 years ago and see if they have any free time, even one shift, where they could help us out,” he said.
Construction in the Treasure Valley is booming, Casey said, and he thinks some former restaurant workersmight have switched industries.
“If you can swing a hammer, you can go make $25 an hour,” he said.
Casey said he was too is reluctant to reveal actual wages, but said his average hourly wage has increased 4% over a year ago.
Economists at Yale University dispute the notion that some people may have stopped working because they can make more money on unemployment. But Casey said he can’t help but think that’s contributing to the worker shortage.
He said someone receiving $150 a week in state unemployment benefits and $300 in supplemental federal benefits may not have much incentive to work in a restaurant.
“Most of our employees are part-time,” he said. “If you’re making close to $2,000 a month on unemployment for sitting on the couch, I don’t see where the motivation is to go and be a busboy or host or wait tables.”
Shaul said that is possible, but he doesn’t think that’s keeping people from working.
“Even after those payments expire in September, I suspect we’re still going to see the same employers trying to find the workers they need,” Shaul said.
Café Olé has operated in the Treasure Valley since the early 1980s and has restaurants in Meridian and at the Boise Towne Square mall. The locally owned company has increased its pay and is offering full-time workers, new and existing, a $4,500 bonus to work between April and August.
Business at Café Olé dropped by 50% at the start of the pandemic and was down 30% after the restaurant began offering to-go service and delivery by Uber Eats and Door Dash. By now, even with half the capacity due to tables closed to ensure social distancing, sales are about where they were before the pandemic, he said.
“Even if things were to go back to normal tomorrow, I don’t have the staff to be open 100%,” Casey said. “We couldn’t wait on all the people. I don’t have enough cooks to make that amount of food. I don’t have enough servers to bring back all the tables and the bar.
“It’s really a bad situation.”
The Sonic fast-food chain announced this week that it’s seeking 55 employees for the company’s Boise-area restaurants. Nationwide, the company wants to hire 20,000 people.
Sonic has openings for cooks, carhops, crew members, multi-unit leaders, general mangers and assistant managers.
A Sonic news release did not say what the jobs pay, but data from Indeed.com show carhops, cooks and crew members earn $10 an hour or less. Assistant managers, general managers and shift managers make between $12.22 and $13.38 an hour.
Chef Lou’s drive-in closed Sundays, may close Mondays
At the Westside Drive-In at 21st and State streets, business increased 50% during the pandemic. Customers can stay in their cars or walk up and have their orders passed through a window. There’s no inside seating to increase the chance of exposure to the coronavirus between workers and customers.
“It’s nonstop busy, I mean it’s nonstop,” owner Lou Aaron said. “It’s ridiculous the number of cars that are out there on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s good for us.”
But Aaron faces the same hiring problems as the others. He’s placed ads, posted signs at his business and offered higher pay — giving cooks 25% more and dishwashers $2 more, to $12 or $13 an hour — but that hasn’t worked.
Before the pandemic, Aaron employed 32 workers at his State Street location. Soon after Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed an emergency declaration on March 13, 2020, seven of Aaron’s full-time workers quit, unsure of the risk of catching the virus.
While two later came back, over the months other employees also quit. Today, he has 21 workers.
“Psychologically, it’s been very tough on employees,” Aaron said by phone. “When Covid hit, everybody went into closure, everybody went in isolation, and here we were still working 50-60-70 hours a week. It’s hard to relate to people that are in closure. It’s like you’re living in two different worlds.”
For over a year, the Westside has been closed on Sundays, something that hadn’t happened in Aaron’s previous 26 years of ownership.
“We’ve actually talked about closing on Monday, too,” he said. “We’re not there yet. But we had to have one day where we had to give everybody a day off.”
