Mark Frier owns two restaurants: The Reservoir in Waterbury, and The Bench in Stowe.
But at times, he said, he feels like he’s in the car business.
He said he has probably bought five cars in the last two years to help employees get to work because they cannot find places to live near work.
“Even finding apartments is almost impossible in Stowe, now,” Frier said, with pressure on the real estate market from people coming in from out of state. “With the pandemic, there’s a bunch of people that moved to Stowe from larger cities and can work from home.”
Frier said he sees similar housing pressures in Waterbury.
“A lot of my employees no longer live in town,” Frier said. “They’re commuting on the darkest, most difficult nights to drive down the road and get to work or get home safely.”
In order to live in a place they can afford, Frier said, employees at The Bench drive from as far away as Burlington, 35 miles away.
As the cost of used cars has soared, some employees have been unable to buy one when their car breaks down or they have an accident, and so Frier said he has loaned employees money to buy a car or bought cars for them if they commit to work for the restaurants for a period of time.
Unaffordable housing near work and lack of transportation are but two pressures the pandemic has exacerbated as restaurants scramble to attract and keep workers.
Another is that employees expect better pay and working conditions.
At Honey Road in Burlington, all employees make between $25 and $30 an hour even during the slowest time, owner Cara Tobin said. That’s because in October, when it reopened, the restaurant changed to sharing tips among all employees.
“Certainly an incredible increase for the kitchen staff,” Tobin said.
Frier said it is hard to find people to work, especially in the kitchen, despite higher wages. He said he was hiring kitchen staff at $15 an hour before the pandemic. Now, he said, it’s $19 or $20 for someone with no experience.
Servers and bartenders make half the minimum wage of $12.55 an hour, plus tips. Frier said that, including tips, servers and bartenders at his restaurants can easily make more than $20 an hour, sometimes $40. He said servers earn, on average, $30 an hour.
Frier said the pandemic has led him to offer more flexible hours to new employees.
“If you want to work one day a week for four hours and it works for what we need, we’ll take you for a day,” Frier said.
Randy George, who owns Red Hen Baking — a casual cafe and bakery in Middlesex — found another way to be flexible around employees’ concerns: He remodeled.
He said he cut a hole in the wall and started doing takeout orders. Last summer, with the illusion that the pandemic was over, he reopened the cafe, but when the Delta variant and colder weather arrived, he rented out an adjacent space just for customers to sit at tables without being in the same room as employees.
George said the layout and the requirement that workers and customers wear masks appeal to prospective employees, who feel safer working at Red Hen than they might in other restaurants.
“It’s clear to people that working here, they’re not going to be in a high-exposure situation,” George said.
Food prices jump
Restaurants face another increased pressure, Frier said: They are paying more for food.
“Just like everyone’s seen at the grocery store, we’re seeing increases on everything we buy, especially protein,” meaning meat and seafood, Frier said.
Take chicken wings. Historically, Frier said, he paid $40 to $50 for a case of chicken wings, with the price spiking to $90 or $100 around the Super Bowl.
“And we would always panic, but you know, it would come back down,” Fried recalled.
Last summer, chicken wings peaked at $160 to $180 a case, he said.
Frier said he has raised prices as a result of increased food costs, “but we’re very conscious of the consumer and not trying to price a menu that is a big sticker shock to customers.”
Omicron hit restaurants especially hard.
“I would say the last two months have felt like the hardest and scariest part of the pandemic,” said Tobin, of Honey Road. “For restaurants, it’s like rebuilding from the ashes right now and it feels intense.”
Frier said when the Omicron wave began, he was scrambling for rapid Covid tests to test everyone on staff, whether they had symptoms or not. He closed The Reservoir for Christmas week.
“The restaurant industry, including mine, is at a dire tipping point when it comes to being able to continue to be profitable and survive,” Frier said. “There’s a lot of things working against us right now.”
Tobin closed right after Christmas, and only reopened on Tuesday. Some of that time closed was planned, and some was because she and her staff did not feel comfortable reopening as Omicron crested.
“We knew that if we opened and we had Covid cases within the staff, we would close again,” Tobin said.
Federal help a lifesaver
Tobin said she was able to pay her staff the entire time, thanks to a grant she received last year from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. But she cannot sustain that if forced to close once more.
“It still feels like that money is dwindling and we just really need this pandemic to be over and the restaurant to be busy again,” Tobin said.
Amy Spear, vice president of tourism at the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, said only about 30 percent of restaurants that applied for funds from the federal Restaurant Revitalization Fund last year received money.
“So when we look at Vermont, that means that 581 were left behind shouldering more than $121 million in pandemic-related losses,” Spear said. “And those losses don’t even account for pandemic-related losses beyond the middle of last year.”
Spear said Congress should replenish the fund.
The National Restaurant Association estimates the fund saved more than 3,000 restaurant jobs in Vermont and its replenishment would save 4,000 more jobs.
The same survey, conducted Jan. 6-18, found that in the previous weeks, because of the Omicron wave, 56 percent of Vermont restaurants had closed on days they would normally be open.
Tobin said Omicron has made winter — not normally a great time for Burlington restaurants — especially hard.
“I don’t think people particularly want to go out to eat right now,” Tobin said.
