Too few cooks: Quebec restaurants facing a labour shortage
Alex Bastide describes the challenges of finding workers in places like Quebec City and smaller towns with a pair of expletives.
“It’s madness,” he continues. “It’s a big problem right now.”
Bastide is an owner of L’Gros Luxe, a small Quebec restaurant chain that has locations in Sherbrooke, Victoriaville, Quebec City and the Montreal area.
Although finding workers in Montreal isn’t that much of a challenge, it’s difficult outside the city, Bastide said.
“The economy is very healthy right now, which is a very good thing, but it is pretty challenging,” he said. “I know a lot of people who can’t open their restaurants at certain hours, like during lunch, because they don’t have enough cooks.”
Bastide isn’t the only restaurateur facing hiring challenges.
“What we are seeing is the development of a new labour shortage that will grow year after year,” said Martin Vézina, a spokesperson for the Association des restaurateurs du Québec (ARQ).
If current trends continue, by 2020 there will be more than 8,700 unfilled jobs in Quebec’s restaurant industry, he said, citing statistics from the Conference Board of Canada.
“It’s a labour-intensive business. Right now, it’s mainly cooks that we are missing,” Vézina said.
Cooks are harder to hire because of the skills and training required, he said.
Some restaurants have resorted to training their own cooks.
Boefish, a high-end restaurant in Sherbrooke that opened in September, delayed its opening to train staff.
“We struggled at the beginning,” said Alain Campeau, the director of operations for the Boefish brand.
The skill sets required in his kitchen just weren’t available in Sherbrooke’s labour market.
“I hired two chefs. We almost became a school for training,” he said. “We needed to have professional people.”
Kitchen staff received a month of training to teach them how to make things like tartare, Campeau said….Readmore