Line cook shortage is changing metro Detroit’s restaurant industry
Halloween may be over but many of metro Detroit’s restaurants continue to be haunted by ghosts of a different type.
“We’ve had people with relatively easy, mellow prep jobs walk off in the middle of a shift. We’ve had people that seem phenomenal on paper just not show up for work and disappear,” said Axle Brewing Company owner Dan Riley, whose Livernois Tap beer hall and restaurant in Ferndale has struggled to attract and retain line cooks.
Riley’s account has become painfully common among local restaurants feeling the effects of a nationwide skilled labor shortage that’s particularly challenging emerging culinary markets like metro Detroit.
“I had five interviews scheduled last week for a line cook,” said Samy Eid of his family’s upscale Lebanese restaurant Phoenicia in Birmingham. “None of them showed up and only one of them had the courtesy to call and say they weren’t coming.
“The most demoralizing part about this has been that last week’s scenario has happened truly maybe 50 or 60 times in 2018.”
And it’s not just affecting suburban spots. At Chartreuse Kitchen & Cocktails in Midtown, owner Sandy Levine said the 2016 Free Press Restaurant of the Year has had at least 10 people in the last six months fail to show up for their first day of work, never to be seen or heard from again….readmore