Restaurants are opening up and people have started going out to grab a bite at their favourite places. The sector is recovering from the pains of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, all is not well within the industry as it is struggling to find staff to be able to function properly. Experts and industry players attribute the shortage to reasons induced by the pandemic. The predominant one being a lot of people working at these restaurants have left with a one-way ticket to their hometowns. Many others, at the same time, have switched to jobs with higher pay and better work-life balance.
For instance, burger joint Wat-a-Burger is on an expansion spree with a goal to reach the mark of 100 outlets by the end of this fiscal, according to its co-founder Rajat Jaiswal, who adds that given the consistent rate of growth, the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) chain is usually 10% short of the employees required to function each month.“As we cater to the demands of many outlets, we frequently run out of workers to maintain and keep the kitchen running. We are facing difficulty hiring well-read billing staff as we are expanding to remote locations,” says Jaiswal.
The most likely explanation for the shortage, according to him, is a sudden increase in demand from all businesses following the return of normalcy after the Covid-19 pandemic. Another reason he adds is that the Covid-19 period resulted in nearly no or minimal training of employees, which has contributed to a temporary fall in the availability of trained labour or even freshmen in some sectors. “Managing businesses with fewer staff while aiming to generate higher revenues is currently increasing management stress,” Jaiswal adds.
Jubilant Foodworks, which operates Domino’s Pizza and Dunkin’ restaurants in India, also stated labour shortage in the company’s latest earnings call. “We are seeing some pressure on labour and on manpower, nothing that is unmanageable, but there is some inflation on manpower as minimum wages get revised,” Pratik Pota, CEO of the company said.
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post by ChefandCookJJobs
