A hospitality industry without workers

We have been hearing about this for months. Business owners are struggling to find workers. A labour shortage puts catering businesses at a standstill during the busy holiday season.

Dean Pigéon, co-owner of Pigéon Catering in New Orleans, says he has enough staff to prepare food for events. But when they arrive at the event, they never know how many workers, such as servers, dishwashers and housekeeping assistants, will show up.

"We don't know until we get there and people show up," Pigeon said. "Then we just do our best to adjust."

Pigéon sales and marketing director says that 30 per cent of employees hired to attend events often don't show up.

"In such a case, management has to step up its activities," sales and marketing director said. "If the carver doesn't show up, someone has to put on a chef's coat and go out and start carving for the night. Or, if there is no dishwasher, I can't tell you how many times the owner has had to become a dishwasher himself."

Both sales and marketing director and Pigeon have years in the business and have never seen such a struggle for workers.

Industry representatives say many of the workers started going for food delivery services during the pandemic. Many found it was an easier way to make money than working at a big catering event. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the hospitality industry has the highest smoking cessation rate in the country (5.6%). The latest figures show more than 893,000 workers left in October. "We are trying to avoid this burnout as much as possible," sales and marketing directoro said. "But without extra people, our full-time staff, they work 16-20 hours a day, four or five days a week." The tight schedule is a welcome change for many caterers after last year's holiday season, when many events were cancelled.

"Last January we were just standing in this kitchen," said Pigeon. "We didn't have a single event for the whole of January." Pigéon Restaurants has held more than 100 weddings since October and has a full schedule until Christmas. However, Pigéon fears that the industry will not be able to sustain itself for long.

"Where will it end?" Pigeon asked. "When the city does go back to full-time and every hotel has events, the convention centre is up and running; I don't know how that's going to work out."