The owners of three top Auckland restaurants will be closing their businesses for two weeks because they do not have staff to keep going through the school holidays. Restaurateurs Sid and Chand Sahrawat, who own Cassia, Sidart and the French Cafe, said the closures would cost them about $300,000 in takings, but they did not have a choice.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“We just don’t have the people, and our staff have been working one-and-a-half times just to keep the business going and they are physically and mentally drained,” Chand Sahrawat said. The Restaurant Association says restaurants across NZ are facing staff shortages that are beyond critical. She said the businesses required about 65 staff to run but was now down to about 50 because of the border closures and immigration rules that made it difficult for people to renew their work visas.
“Business has definitely improved, but we are now faced with the new predicament of not having people to meet the demand,” she said.
Sahrawat said it has been impossible to find replacements, and chefs at her restaurants were doing the jobs of two chefs and washing dishes.
Some of the staff the business had lost were those on working holiday visas, who had returned to Europe after they could not get confirmation from Immigration NZ about extensions.
She said locals were not responding to job advertisements or did not show up for interviews and even agencies had no candidates to offer. “No one is available to fill the roles, even on a short-term basis.”
Chand and Sid Sahrawat will switch off their lights for two minutes at 7pm to draw attention to staffing difficulties. Sahrawat wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about her plight in May but did not get a response.
The industry is calling for urgent visa extensions, border exemptions for critical workers, and extended working hours for student visas.
It comes as Trade Me reports more than a 50 percent increase in hospitality job listings – a record high.
After struggling with lockdowns, restaurants and cafes in New Zealand say they are once again at the brink of closure. Border closures and immigrations rules are making it difficult for the hospitality industry to find enough skilled workers to run their businesses.
Veteran chef Simon Gault has also joined the chorus of voices criticising the government.
He said if the government did nothing soon, the hospitality industry would be in crisis. – with inputs from NZ Herald and RNZ, poster picture from Sid at The French Cafe
