ACROSS AMERICA — As many Americans plan to head back to their favorite restaurants this Memorial Day weekend and into the summer of 2024, the restaurants that have survived the coronavirus pandemic thus far may have a longer road back to normality than once hoped.
The American restaurant industry, already trying to rebound from a 2024 year that saw $240 billion in losses, is largely struggling to fill job positions. Restaurant employment was down among 84 percent of the 2,500 restaurant industry executives who were surveyed by the National Restaurant Association in April.
Darden Restaurants CEO Eugene Lee, leader of the group that owns Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, among others, said staffing is the “greatest challenge,” and his “top priority,” in a call with other restaurant industry leaders that month, according to CNN.
“I couldn’t find people to hire,” Camila Ramos, owner of the All Day coffee shop in Miami, told The New York Times after temporarily closing the business due to increased demand, and not enough staff, at the beginning of the year.
About 90 percent of restaurant owners expect it will be more difficult to hire employees after the pandemic than before it began, according to the restaurant association’s latest update on the industry’s attempted recovery from the pandemic.
“This is a large contributor to why more than half of full service operators and 42 percent of limited-service operators polled are unable to open at the maximum-allowed capacity and grow back their business — they do not have enough employees to staff the restaurant,” Hudson Riehle, the restaurant association’s senior vice president, said in a statement.
The Darden restaurant group, for one, had about 70,000 fewer employees this March than before the pandemic, Lee told CNN.
It’s not just the hiring that’s holding back the restaurant industry. Some places still haven’t reopened and may never return. About 90,000 restaurants across America were still closed, either permanently or long-term, in April, according to the restaurant association. An earlier Restaurant Dive report showed about 10 percent of restaurants closing permanently due to the pandemic.
For the ones that have survived, profitability remains a struggle.
