Central Pa. restaurant owners go to extremes to combat labor shortage

Char's at Tracy Mansion

Customers dine at Char's Tracy Mansion during Harrisburg Restaurant Week.Sean Simmers PennLive.com. Sept. 16, 2015 2015.

Don Carter Jr. is keeping the tight labor market in mind as he rebuilds Dockside Willies in Wormleysburg following a fire.

The kitchen design incorporates automated elements such as a timed track oven and video monitors. He’ll still have to hire chefs, just not as many.

“It uncomplicates it for everyone in the kitchen,” Carter said.

“We’ve been adding so many restaurants in our area and the competition for employees is fierce. It makes it difficult hiring, and that’s never going to go away,” he added.

Across central Pennsylvania restaurants are on the hunt for employees.

A falling unemployment rate coupled with a booming restaurant scene has created a tighter labor market in the hospitality industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 909,000 job openings in the hospitality sector at the end of July, the highest level on record.

“It’s probably the No. 1 issue of restaurants across the country and here in Pennsylvania,” said John Longstreet, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association in Harrisburg.

It definitely hurts such a heavily-employed industry. In Pennsylvania, there are 582,800 restaurant and food service jobs, representing 10 percent of employment in the state.

Unfortunately, statistics indicate the labor situation will get worse. In the coming decades, the growth in the working-age population, those ages 20 to 65, is on track to be considerably slower.

“It’s a terrifying demographic,” Longstreet said.

To entice hires, restaurant owners are going to extremes, from hosting job fairs and raising salaries to poaching employees from competitors. A few hundred job listings fill sites such as Craigslist and Indeed.

The crunch is being felt industry-wide.

Longstreet said a restaurant chef-owner in Pittsburgh recently relayed he’s exhausted and too busy to leave the kitchen, while some restaurants are closing sections of dining rooms because they don’t have enough servers.

In addition, Longstreet said he is hearing some chain restaurants are paring down menus to accommodate smaller kitchen staffs.

Restaurant owners say the problem started several years ago and has grown worse in the past year. Restaurant jobs across the board, from kitchen staff to servers, are being impacted.

Gilligan’s Bar & Grill owner George Lois said it took one year to establish full staffing at his new Hampden Township restaurant. He said when you don’t have enough employees, quality of service and food suffers.

Gilligan's Bar & Grill West opened earlier this year on the Carlisle Pike in Hampden Township. (Sue Gleiter, PennLive.com)HAR

“It’s very tough to find good help because a lot of the good help is established or working and it’s hard for them to make changes. We have to keep trying and hiring, and hopefully come up with a few good people,” Lois said.

One of the reasons for the shortage is the labor pool is spread thin by the number of new restaurant openings.

In central Pa. more than a half a dozen restaurants including Primanti Bros., Freshido and Iron Hill Brewery have opened at the Hershey Towne Square in Derry Township.

In Lancaster, the Shoppes at Belmont has welcomed about nine restaurants including PF Chang’s, Chick Fil A, Core Life Eatery and Zoe’s Kitchen as well as a Whole Foods. Lancaster also saw its first Wegmans open earlier this fall.

People are eating out in record numbers. It’s the first time in history so many people have been dining out, Longstreet said, adding in 2016 the number of meals purchased at restaurants exceeded dollars spent at grocery stores.

Labor shortages are forcing employers to raise wages to fill positions. It has become more competitive as retailers like Target and Walmart raise minimum wages upwards of $12 an hour.

Neato Burrito’s co-owner Shayne Edmunds said it became a challenge to hire and maintain employees at chain’s Lancaster location when restaurants and Whole Foods opened down the street at the Shoppes at Belmont. Several employees left to work at Mod Pizza, he said.

“One thing we’ve done, our starting wage is now $12.50 per hour,” Edmunds said.

Dockside Willies' Carter said when Amazon and other companies started raising hourly wages it hurts the restaurant industry.

“It really puts everybody in a bad situation. We can’t compete,” he said.

At Char’s at Tracy Manor in Harrisburg, owner Char Magaro said she treats her employees well but, even so, has lost several sous chefs who left for executive chef positions at other establishments.

Fortunately, she’s filled the positions but said the response isn’t like it was several years ago. It hasn’t helped that fewer people are entering the culinary field, she said.

“The Food Channel and Top Chef craze died. When it was hot to be a chef everyone went to culinary school and everyone went into the field and saw what it was really like,” Magaro said.

Longstreet said the industry is not painted to be glamorous.

“I think we have a problem. We have to do a better job of educating the population this a terrific industry to be in,” he said.

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