Sacramento restaurants face a worker shortage. What that means for prices and service

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A two-word call is echoing throughout Sacramento restaurants and bars right now: help wanted.

California’s economy could be fully reopened within two months, but many restaurants are overwhelmed just trying to serve 25% of their usual indoor customers with spartan staffs. Sacramento-area restaurants and bars employ 17,000 fewer people now than they did a year ago, a drop of nearly 25%, according to Employment Development Department statistics.

Qualified job applicants are rare, and back-of-house employees are particularly hard to find, Rio City Cafe general manager Scott Meier said.

“The general conversation among restaurant folks is that nobody can find kitchen staff,” Meier said. “Cooks, sous chefs, dishwashers ... we can’t get anyone to apply.”

If all this sounds like an industry’s internal problems, rest assured it’s impacting customers going out to eat and drink as well. When restaurants have to offer higher wages to draw employees into their kitchens, that often translates to higher menu prices. Many places have cut back their hours to account for staffing shortages, and some such as Midtown Sushi have reverted to takeout-only for the time being.

Even so, servers and cooks spread too thinly are more likely to bungle orders or get them out slowly, to say nothing of fresh hires who may not have prior restaurant experience. Customers eager to resume their pre-pandemic lives are running out to dine indoors, only to find the experience isn’t always quite like they remembered, California Restaurant Association CEO Jot Condie said.

“There’s great pressure on our industry in particular,” Condie said. “As consumers get back to some sense of normalcy, you ask people, ‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do?’ and they say ‘Eat at a restaurant.’ Expectations are high for that experience. We are, as an industry, the welcoming party for people coming back out to the world.”

Restaurant workers seek new jobs

So why the shortage? Well, there’s still a pandemic, not everyone’s vaccinated and studies have linked indoor dining to increased risk of COVID-19. Unemployment benefits have been relatively generous, if inefficiently distributed. And after what’s felt like an endless wave of shutdowns and changing restrictions over the last year, many former industry employees are opting for stabler careers with more consistent pay and hours.

Those factors are driving a industry labor shortage not just in Sacramento, but across the United States. Food and drink employment growth nationwide consistently grew to around 12.3 million prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but that employment base has stagnated around 10 million since August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Owners are trying to provide incentives — the average industry pay nationwide just broke $16 an hour for the first time — yet people aren’t interested in coming back to those jobs.

Several of Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine server Amanda Gaither’s laid-off friends got temp jobs at the state EDD, which they hoped to eventually turn into full-time positions. Tenured line cooks and sous chefs started their own pop-ups or food trucks, more flexible options that don’t require much staff in a time where expansive, unused dinner halls are albatrosses.

“A lot of industry veterans, it kind of took the pandemic to motivate them to take career path changes,” Gaither said. “The whole industry was shut down last March ... everyone had to pivot to takeout-only and that really only necessitated a skeleton crew. So the hours weren’t there anymore, the money wasn’t there anymore and unemployment took so long to kick in that people started looking for more stable income.”

Condie, the California Restaurant Association CEO, doesn’t know how to get employees back in restaurants, but he doesn’t see a solution coming from government intervention.

Maybe a group of ground-level Sacramento insiders can figure it out, then.

Nonprofit hopes to get workers in kitchens

A new nonprofit called All My Friends Get Fed is trying to connect those who want to work with places hiring. Started in February by Jake Truong-Jones, a former bartender at Kru, West Sacramento’s Burgers & Brew and now-closed Our House in Davis, the nonprofit’s leadership now includes Kodaiko Ramen & Bar general manager Diego Padilla, Honey & The Trapcat bartender Tyler Arstingstall and Lowbrau/Hilltop Tavern bartender Miranda Brown.

All My Friends Get Fed has bought hundreds of meals for industry employees as well as local nurses, and Truong-Jones ultimately wants it to be a multifaceted aid center for restaurant and bar employees. For now, though, the Back To Work Initiative is the nonprofit’s highest priority. Truong-Jones surveys hiring managers around Sacramento, particularly on the grid, and has curated a Google Sheet with more than 45 local restaurants’ hiring details, from the positions needed to the best time to drop off applications to hiring bonuses.

“We’re not necessarily saying ‘You need to get back to work now.’ It’s more ‘Come back to work when you’re ready and we’ll make that transition as smooth as possible,’” Truong-Jones said. “I want people to not be afraid to remain in the industry, and if they do decide this is a career path for them, to know that they have support and resources available.”

Gaither was out of work for a couple of months at the start of the pandemic but came back to Kru, where she’s worked for the last five years, in June. Yet she doesn’t fault former industrymates for leaving a world where job security has been scarce recently, benefits are minimal and pay can fluctuate wildly depending on traffic and customers’ generosity on a given night.

The pandemic has brought about a sea of customer-facing changes at restaurants, from al fresco dining to takeout cocktails, and many may last beyond herd immunity. Whether guests see it yet or not, an even more influential shift is taking place behind kitchen doors and bartops in Sacramento and across the United States.

It may result in more competitive wages and better quality of life for employees. It might mean higher prices for customers. In the short run, Condie said, it’ll likely mean shutdowns — particularly as California gets closer to full reopening, with no capacity limits at restaurants, June 15.

“Restaurants will probably close in part because of the staffing shortage,” Condie said. “After June 15, you’re likely to see a small wave of restaurant closures in following six months to a year.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Sacramento restaurants face a worker shortage. What that means for prices and service."