Dickie Austin and Andrea Cousineau said they simply could not find the staff to keep their restaurant open.
The doors closed for good last week, after 16 years in business. Barring a flood of employees materializing, Austin said the restaurant would not be able to open again.
“We ran into the same staffing situation that’s been persistent statewide,” said Austin, who co-managed The Bearded Frog, in Shelburne, with Cousineau. “It got to the point where we just literally didn’t have the bodies to continue operating.”
The labor shortage at The Bearded Frog and other restaurants is perhaps one of the more extreme examples of Vermont’s general lack of workers. The state’s unemployment rate fell to 2.1% in July. The labor force grew by 7,000 people, but was still 20,000 people below where it was before the pandemic.
“The difficulty of hiring for Vermont businesses can be seen in the monthly job openings data which shows 15 consecutive months of total job openings above 20,000,” Vermont Commissioner of Labor Michael Harrington said in a press release accompanying the unemployment and labor force numbers last week.
When Covid hit, Cousineau said, a lot of The Bearded Frog employees left the industry and never came back. She noted that training new employees takes time.
“Know any dishwashers?” she asked.
Austin said the restaurant paid wages that were “as competitive as possible.” He declined to give specific examples.
To some extent, Vermont restaurants share the challenges facing restaurants nationwide. A National Restaurant Association survey conducted between July 15 and Aug 5 found that 65% of restaurants said that they do not have enough staff to meet customer demand.
Cousineau and Austin are keeping open the two restaurants they manage in Vergennes, Black Sheep Bistro and Park Squeeze. To do so, the lifelong friends have themselves been washing dishes, tending bar, waiting tables and working lines in the kitchen, Cousineau said.
It’s a frenetic schedule.
Cousineau said that she arrived at Black Sheep Bistro by 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. By the time she spoke with a reporter at 1 p.m., she was at Park Squeeze, where she would stay until front-of-house staff arrived for the 4 p.m. opening. Then she planned to head back to Black Sheep, which also opens at 4 p.m., to work in the kitchen.
Austin, meanwhile, arrived at Park Squeeze at 7:30 a.m., then headed to The Bearded Frog for a meeting before returning to Park Squeeze. He made another visit to Black Sheep Bistro, then the bank and the supermarket, all before a midday interview.
“Housing is a huge factor,” Cousineau said, explaining the short supply of restaurant employees.
Austin agreed: “If there’s no place for you to live that you can afford, then taking a job doesn’t seem very reasonable.”
In Shelburne, Austin said, there was the additional complication of competing for staff with Burlington restaurants.
“Very few of our employees at The Bearded Frog were Shelburne residents,” Austin said. Most, he said, commuted from Burlington, South Burlington or places south of Shelburne.
Cousineau and Austin have worked at The Bearded Frog since its opening.
“June 8, 2006,” Austin answered without hesitation when asked when that was.
He recalled being on site two weeks before construction began with the owner, Michel Mahe, with whom they had worked at Black Sheep Bistro.
Cousineau started working for Mahe at age 17 as a dishwasher when he opened Starry Night Cafe in Ferrisburgh in 2000. By the time she was 23, she was the chef at The Bearded Frog. She said she is proudest of the relationships she built with coworkers there.
Among those colleagues was Erin Wheeler, who with her husband owns The Bobcat, in Bristol. Mahe, who died in 2015, bought the place for them to run, she said, and they later bought it from him.
Wheeler worked at The Bearded Frog during its first two years. The restaurant was focused on burgers, she remembered, and diners could choose from so many toppings that it was challenging for kitchen staff to keep track of the elaborate orders. Because of that experience, they only serve one burger at The Bobcat, she said, laughing.
Wheeler said she and her husband are lucky to be in Bristol, which has fewer restaurants, easing competition for staff. The housing problem there is not as acute as in Shelburne, she added. One of the line cooks drives an hour to The Bobcat, she said, but everyone else lives in town.
Cousineau and Austin managed The Bearded Frog and continue to manage Black Sheep Bistro and Park Squeeze on behalf of Mahe’s 19-year-old son, who is starting college next week, and an investor. They said they discussed the closing with the owners.
Austin predicted that staffing issues will make it difficult for Vermont to sustain the number of restaurants it has.
“We’re holding on to hope,” he said. “But it’s certainly difficult.”
