A Chicago pizzeria said it temporarily closed because of the labor shortage, costing it $5,000. Its owner said job applicants weren't turning up to interviews.
A Chicago pizzeria couldn't open on Sunday because it lacked staff, costing it $5,000, its owner said.
The owner of Coalfire Pizza said some staffers had quit for higher-paid jobs at larger restaurants.
He said some were avoiding jobs in restaurants partly because of their reputation as toxic workplaces.
A pizzeria in Chicago couldn't open on Sunday because it didn't have enough staffers, and the owner told CBS Chicago that it cost him about $5,000.
"We are closed today. I simply do not have enough people to open," Dave Bonomi, the owner of Coalfire Pizza in West Town, tweeted on Sunday. "In nearly 15 years of selling pizza, this has never happened."
Bonomi told CBS Chicago that he was struggling to find new employees during the labor shortage and that he had to close the pizzeria after two staffers called in sick.
He told Block Club Chicago that job applicants weren't showing up for interviews.
He said people were avoiding jobs in restaurants because of their reputation as toxic work environments and because of harassment from customers, challenging work, and low pay.
Some of Coalfire's staffers had quit for higher-paid jobs at larger restaurant groups and hotels, Bonomi added. Coalfire boosted its starting salary for cooks with little to no prior experience to $18 an hour from $15, he said.
Staff members also got paid time off and overtime pay and were able to enroll in a health plan with half the costs covered by the company, he said.
Independent restaurants have said they struggle to compete with bigger companies on wages and benefits.
Businesses across the US say they're suffering from a labor shortage, making it harder for them to find last-minute coverage when their workers are ill.
Other restaurants have had to close with little notice after finding themselves short-staffed - a Pennsylvania chicken restaurant closed for a day last month, and a Georgia burrito restaurant temporarily cut its opening hours after its entire staff quit.
Americans are quitting their jobs in search of better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The spread of the Delta variant is also deterring some people from applying for jobs.
In the hospitality industry in August, workers in the accommodation and food-service sectors quit their jobs at twice the national average rate.
Bonomi told Block Club Chicago that Coalfire, which also has a pizzeria in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, had been "running on fumes" for a few years with a skeleton staff. He said that the staffing problems got worse during the pandemic and that the pizzeria had barely enough staff to stay open.
Bonomi said a surge of people who had been laid off from higher-paying restaurant jobs applied to work at Coalfire at the start of the pandemic. But now huge numbers of applicants aren't turning up for interviews, he said.
This was "like nothing I've ever seen," Bonomi said.
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