For 58 years, Taco Al’s in Topeka has been serving Tex-Mex staples to locals and visitors alike.
Before the coronavirus pandemic — and even for a while this year — the family-owned restaurant was a seven-days-a-week type of joint.
“Normally, we’re only closed 11 days a year for special holidays,” said Al Ward, who co-owns the business with his wife, Sandra.
But due to a shortage of staff at Taco Al’s, the Wards recently made the decision to reduce their operating hours. They will be closed on Sundays moving forward.
“I sure don’t like being closed on Sunday,” Ward said. “I have a good church crowd that comes in, and Sunday is a good day for us.”
The Wards aren’t the only local restaurant owners facing such a dilemma.
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As restaurants and bars have reopened for dine-in this year during the pandemic, many have found themselves without enough staff to meet demand. That is causing some to cut back on their operating hours, as they look for ways to keep customers and employees happy amid a changing labor market.
43TEN Pizza Co. in Topeka, for instance, posted on its Facebook page July 26 it would be closing early that day because the restaurant didn’t have enough staff to stay open until its usual closing time.
And other places, such as Henry T’s and AJ’s NY Pizzeria, have made longer-term adjustments. AJ’s, according to its answering machine service and signage posted at the restaurant, has done away with weekday lunchtime hours for now due to its limited staff.
Meanwhile, Henry T’s will be closed on Sundays moving forward and won’t be open as late in the evenings.
“Every general manager out there right now, and every owner, it’s something we’ve never experienced before,” said Danny Burnison, Henry T’s general manager. “It’s stressful. We have a lot of stress just on figuring that out, and we have also the stress of COVID still. There’s a lot on our plate right now.”
What’s behind the restaurant staffing shortages?
What is causing the shortage of employees at restaurants, though — an issue that isn’t unique to the Topeka area — may be more nuanced than expected.
According to Jeremy Hill, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University, Topeka’s employment level has rebounded and is actually higher than it was prior to the pandemic.
He pointed to data made available through the research center that shows 115,414 people were employed in the Topeka area in January 2020. In April 2021 — the most recent month for which data is available — 117,586 people were employed in the Topeka area.
“So you added 2,172 people with jobs,” Hill said.
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The rise in employment, he added, has resulted in a tighter labor market.
“We’re at a point where jobs are plentiful, and everyone available who wants and is able to work is out there,” he said.
But that doesn’t explain the staffing issues some sectors, including hospitality, are experiencing.
According to Hill, the labor pool available to certain industries has shifted since the beginning of 2020.
“Everyone’s employed, so there are sectors that then get squeezed when you’re in a tight labor market situation,” Hill said. “Unfortunately, leisure and hospitality is one of those that will get squeezed.”
That means there are fewer people working in leisure and hospitality now than there were pre-pandemic.
During the pandemic, many workers in that sector were furloughed or laid off, as restrictions on capacity limits at restaurants went into effect and fewer people were eating out due to local and statewide stay-at-home orders. As a result, some of those workers may have picked up new skills or searched for employment in other industries.
And as the economy has rebounded this year, some of those folks may not be returning to their pre-pandemic workplaces.
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Hill said workers in leisure and hospitality may also have left the sector this year for better employment opportunities, upward mobility in their careers or higher wages.
“You can go in, and you can exit (the industry) really quickly in leisure and hospitality,” Hill said. “You might have worked in leisure and hospitality, and all of a sudden, construction looked better because of the housing boom, so you left leisure and went over to construction.
“Or you left leisure and went over to the health care industry, which is paying better. Or left leisure and went over to the other service sectors like banking and things like that, because they were in high demand.”
Hill said CEDBR data show transportation, warehousing and utilities; manufacturing; and construction are all sectors that added new jobs over the past year.
And such a shift hasn’t boded well for leisure-and-hospitality employers, as it has left them competing for a fewer number of workers.
Higher wages may be key to standing out
Ward, at Taco Al’s, said he wants to hire at least three more employees to cover nights and weekends at the Topeka restaurant. Burnison, at Henry T’s, said their kitchen is close to being fully staffed, but he needs a couple more front-of-house folks.
Part of the reason Henry T’s cut hours, he added, is because they’ve hired a bunch of new people recently. When that happens, they have to ensure a manager or someone with more experience is available to work with the newcomers.
“We can’t have our veteran staff, our core trainers working seven days a week for two shifts,” Burnison said. “That’s what we’re running into right now.”
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Whether places like Taco Al’s and Henry T’s will be able to attract the right people for their open positions — and keep them on board — remains to be seen.
“People will come in and apply,” Ward said. “I’ve hired probably seven or eight recently, but none of them stayed. They may work a couple of days; they might work a couple of weeks and quit.”
Because there are more jobs available in leisure and hospitality than workers to fill them, Hill said, employees have greater flexibility and negotiating power when it comes to finding a good job. Higher wages, he added, may be one way to attract them.
“Wages play a very significant role in this particular sector, and in the context of what’s going on now,” Hill said.
He said this dynamic in which power rests with the employee rather than the employer is a reversal of what the Topeka and Kansas labor markets, including the hospitality sector, have seen over the past decade, as wages have remained fairly stagnant.
“The market is being very healthy and fixing itself,” Hill said, “and saying, ‘OK now you have more power on the household side, the labor side.’ And they can now negotiate up wages because they can go to the best opportunity. We’re seeing that in real time.”
Ward said employees at Taco Al’s typically start at $8 an hour, with the potential for raises after they’ve stayed a while.
Burnison indicated Henry T’s is already starting to adjust to the changing labor market.
“Right now, we’re hiring $13-15, based on experience, in the kitchen,” he said. “We were starting at $10-12 an hour. So we are having to raise our hourly just to get them in the building.”
Burnison added the bump in wages hasn’t yet reflected in Henry T’s menu prices.
“But in the future, once we get everybody settled in, we will have to readjust our menu prices to cover something like that,” he said.
What if restaurants can’t attract more staff?
According to Hill, restaurants that find themselves unable to attract adequate staff may have to rely on other mechanisms to meet customer demand.
“Innovation and productivity and big data are the big solutions, particularly if you’re in hospitality,” Hill said.
He added that may come as a surprise to many restaurant owners, as the industry hasn’t necessarily embraced technology and data use in the past.
“A tight labor market means you’re not getting more labor,” Hill said. “If you can’t get more labor, you have to get more efficient with your labor.”
Getting more efficient could mean rethinking hours, like some places are already doing, or being more strategic when scheduling employees.
It could also mean a restaurant decides to refocus on what it does best, starts offering catering if it didn’t before or even looks for new, creative ways to get food to customers.
Regardless, Hill said, the old way of doing things may not cut it.
“There’s quite a few businesses out there that want to keep the old models,” he said, “not realizing that with every recession, including COVID, the market changes.”
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