CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – After months of staffing shortages and burnt-out staff, concerned restaurant owners are seeing signs of relief.
“We’ve been able to add on some new people and feel we are in a pretty decent place right now,” Poppy’s Bagels owner Ronald Rippner said.
Rippner said an increase in pay is not only attracting more workers but keeping them.
“Hopefully the people that we have hired stay and if need to find additional people, which we still feel like we could use additional people,” Rippner said.
The U.S. added more than 467,000 jobs last month despite record increases in COVID cases.
Friday, job posting site Indeed showed nearly 77,000 job postings within a 25-mile radius of Charlotte. 17,000 of those jobs were posted within the last 14 days.
“We need a couple of people here and there, but we are certainly not in dire need like some of the other stores that I am hearing out there,” Mac’s Hospitality Group president Shang Skipper said.
In August, Skipper chose to close the restaurant for a day to give over-worked staff a break. Since then, he has upped pay, added bonuses, and tweaked schedules to benefit workers.
“I think we are probably reaping the rewards of that at this point,” Skipper said. “We started seeing the uptick right before Christmas, and I think it hasn’t stopped. We are getting great application flow. I am hiring for a position here in my home office and we have over 140 applicants at this point.”
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