U.S. Restaurants Face Shortage Of Cooks, Servers, Dishwashers

In New York City, restaurateurs like the Union Square Hospitality Group are skipping culinary schools and hiring high school interns willing to make lower wages in exchange for experience.

“Look at how many great food cities there are out there for someone graduating from culinary school,” said Sabato Sagaria, the group’s chief restaurant officer. “Instead of having to go to San Francisco, New York, or Chicago, they can go to Charleston or Nashville where the cost of living is more affordable.”

Job Fair

New York-based Union Square, which employs 3,500, is holding its first-ever job fair on July 19.

The shortage is also being felt in states experiencing an energy boom. In Midland, Texas in the Permian Basin, workers at Firehouse Subs can earn $15 an hour, almost twice the average hourly pay at stores elsewhere, said Don Fox, chief executive of Jacksonville, Florida-based Firehouse of America LLC.

“Because of a robust economy and a real tight labor market it’s tough to attract people,” he said. “Restaurants there are doing significantly higher sales volumes, so they can afford to pay the wages.”

Firehouse Subs replaces as many as 10 of the 15 employees at each of its 31 company-owned restaurants each year, Fox said, adding the turnover rate is lower than the industry average of 200 percent. In these stores, Fox rolled out health care this year, a “substantial benefit and raise for full-time employees,” he said.

At San Francisco’s Aveline, Thompson, who competed on the Bravo cable television network’s Top Chef and relies on local farms, artisans and wine purveyors, said a fruitless search for staff requires existing employees to work overtime.

“My pastry chef hasn’t had a day off since before we opened -- she’s been working almost two months without a day off,” said Thompson. “It’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”