‘Business is booming.’ Why are these SLO County businesses still struggling?
Some motel managers are cleaning rooms. Restaurant owners are manning the grills and serving customers. Some shops and eateries have had to curtail their open hours, restrict specific services and even close on certain days.
As North Coast businesses are in the midst of a summer boom time for tourism, they’re coping with worker shortages similar to those seen across San Luis Obispo County and the country.
There are simply not enough employees to fill staffing rosters and provide high-quality service to customers.
Shanny Covey of Robin’s Restaurant in Cambria even took the radio waves recently to plea for potential workers.
“Business is booming, but we don’t have enough cooks to cover,” Covey wrote via email. “The shifts are harder because it’s been so busy, so I have to be mindful to try my best not to overload my staff. But it’s hard sometimes because I can’t call in additional help” when there’s no additional help to call in.
“This is the reason we are closed Wednesday for lunch,” Covey wrote, noting that that meal “impacts us the least in terms of revenue.”
Even so, she added, “we lose $2,000 to $3,000 on this shift” alone each week.
Robin’s has also “had to randomly close on other lunch days,” Covey added, “because someone couldn’t come in and there was no one to cover” the shift.
San Luis Obispo eateries Luna Red and Novo Restaurant and Lounge, which are affiliated with Robin’s, also have employee shortages, she wrote, “but not as much as Robin’s.”
“They have not had to close, but staff is working hard and there’s a lot of overtime for all of us,” Covey wrote.
Worker shortage comes as businesses recover from COVID
Not having enough employees is worrying for other entrepreneurs struggling to fight their way back after coronavirus pandemic shutdowns and restrictions.
“Business is exceedingly good right now,” Mel McColloch, president of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce, said in a phone interview.
But with reduced staffing levels, he said, “the businesses are having to reduce their hours, might even have to shut down partially during the week. They’re grasping for what they can continue to do to keep their businesses alive with the lack of employees.”
The chamber’s new executive director, Lorienne Schwenk, said by phone that she’d heard that motel general managers are having to clean rooms themselves.
Dirk Winter, whose Moonstone Hotel Properties holdings include Cambria Pines Lodge and J. Patrick House in Cambria, had to shut down the larger hotel’s popular outdoor, wood-fired oven because there’s nobody to prep, cook and serve the pizzas, according to a social media posting.
It’s far from Winter’s only shortage of employees.
He wrote via email that “we have having a very difficult time with staffing.”
Like Covey, Winter is “aggressively increasing wages to attract employees,” he wrote.
Winter added that he’s “trying to focus on our core business of renting rooms,” but “food and beverage operations are both suffering because of staffing shortages.”
Linn’s of Cambria, which includes a restaurant, cafe and gift store, is “really blessed with good, quality employees,” according to manager Aaron Linn, but “our labor pool is getting smaller and smaller.”
While Covey had hoped to hire more students, Linn said via phone that he has some top-drawer Coast Union High School grads on staff.
The teens will be leaving Aug. 1, heading for college, adding another 13 shifts a week for Linn to fill with staffers that aren’t available and prospects that aren’t applying.
Linn feels that a lack of affordable, in-town housing, as well as workers’ unwillingness to commute from where housing is available, rising gas prices and continuing pandemic-related unemployment payments are among the factors contributing to the current employee shortage.
In fact, because of employee shortages and other factors, Linn’s has had to keep Linn’s Fruit Bin shuttered at 6275 Santa Rosa Creek Road, even though this would normally be the farm stand store’s busy season.
Linn’s closed Linn’s Fruit Bin during the COVID-19 pandemic, but hasn’t been able to allocate enough staffing there to reopen the shop or stock it.
McColloch understands about the employee housing problem. The chamber is about halfway through a survey period for its members, a survey requested by San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson in a chamber board meeting.
In the survey, business owners were asked to share their opinions about the North Coast’s employee housing situation.
So far, McColloch said, about 87% of the 46 respondents have said they believe the cost of housing has affected their ability to hire, and their employees’ average commutes are between 30 and 45 miles each way.
“Something has to change on a federal legislative level, and our communities need to plan for affordable housing,” Covey wrote. “Otherwise, we’ll see prices continue to rise” so the business owners can “be able to afford to pay (employees) a livable wage that just keeps getting higher.”
Linn said it’s counterproductive, businesswise, “when your chef is working as a line cook,” he said, but there are times when that’s his only option.
He figures he’s “probably running with 10% less labor overall” at Linn’s Restaurant, Easy as Pie Café and food production and shipping facility, all in Cambria.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like for other businesses, with their smaller staffs,” Linn said. “Yes, it takes a lot more people to run our businesses, and we serve a lot more plates a day, so we can kinds suck it up, up to a p oint. It falls on the few of us still working.”
When smaller businesses lose an employee, or have just one vacancy, he added, “that can be like 15 to 25% of their staff.”
Plus, he said, operating a food-service business is made even harder these days because of increasing costs for food and other products, as well as a general lack of those commodities.
Linn said he’s also observed that some motel guests are having to wait longer to get into their rooms because the facilities have so few housekeepers that them longer to clean everything — even with management pitching in to help.
And about those pandemic-related unemployment benefits, due to expire in September?
“I am not sure what will happen after the government stops encouraging people not to work,” Winter wrote. “Many of our mid-level employees have left the state.”
Eventually, “I think we will be able to attract front-line employees,” he added, “with sufficiently higher wages.”
Covey wrote that the extra unemployment benefits “probably has a part to play” in the worker shortage.
“Some folks have simply left this industry for more stable jobs, and a tightening of the border immigration is not helping fill entry-level positions,” she said.
