restaurants have written this wild economic roller
coaster and new white house numbers show the industry
growing sales up 9% over pre pandemic levels but
everything is hunky Dory national correspondent Jas
Bellini is live tonight in san Francisco. Jason there's
this cycle we are caught in right now. It's like three
parts. So employment is going up. People are getting
higher wages at this time more livable. But in the
costs are passed on to consumers higher prices, whi
makes these new wages a little less livable. We're
caught in this cycle. Is there a break we can pull.
Yeah, right now we're talking about real wages. What
wages are, how much they're increasing when you tak
into account inflation and when will the break comes
from that It's hard to tell but it's a really difficul
time now for restaurants and for their workers, the
restaurants, it's getting enoug people. I'm at a
restaurant in the Noe Valley section of san Francisco
It's sort of an upscale area. I can tell you
restaurants have been packed lately while the weather
is good. But we'll see what happens in the coming week
as restaurants deal with all those macroeconomic
factors that you just described esteban bay is a chef
and restaurant brand creator in san Francisco says he's
doing the best he can right now to keep the orders
coming. He's a chef but he's also lending a hand in
front of the biggest issues finding skilled workers.
There's a lot of people that want to work but that
might not have necessarily skill level or the
experience in front of the house, especially bays is
far from alone according to the trade group
representing restaurants nation Three and four
operators rank recruitment and retention as their
toughest challenge. I,I used to have a network of five
or 10 people that could call anytime like hey guys, I'm
opening a new place in a job and now that network is
pretty much gone at last count. There were more than
1.7 million job openings in the accommodation and food
services industry. That's nearl double the number two
years ago before the pandemic hit, COVID shut down city
for like a year and a lot of people that worked here
the industry have moved away. So there's been this like
mass exodus like people that, you know, I can't afford
to live here anymore. And I think a lot of those people
were service people nationwide in september a million
people in the accommodation and food services industry
quit their jobs. Restaurant owners say they're having
to offer higher wages. Some help wanted ads online that
Newsy reviewed are touting no experience required and
higher wages than restaurant workers typically ge
considering they also earn tips. Some restaurants are
turning to technology in grand haven michigan a robot
is employed to help bus tables really that first night
after the busters saw, hey, I don't have to walk
constantly back and forth and we're getting to our
tables and resetting them quicker. We noticed right
away and our first weekend. hey, this is actually, I'm
gonna save us some time hopefully get us more people at
our tables and the mics, supply chain issues and the
rising prices of ingredients in Ohio, for example,
where 3000 restaurants closed during the pandemic, 95%
of owners surveyed say they've experienced signifi
supply delays or shortages of key food items. There are
so many things that we can't get and so many things
that we could get before that we can get, that the
price has gone up, the price for me, the price for
seafood paper products. So in some cases the menus are
shrinking and also the hours that restaurants are open
those are going down to in many cases how many people
expected that after federal unemployment benefits r
out in september that there'd be a lot more applicants
going for these jobs at restaurants. Well, that's no
materialized, chance