Established and new Spartanburg restaurant owners struggle with staffing shortages

Sugar-n-Spice has served customers for more than half a century, but even the iconic downtown restaurant has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Spartanburg eatery has changed its hours from six days to five days a week because of staffing shortages. The restaurant doesn't have enough workers to operate six days a week without paying some workers overtime, so the owners decided to close on Saturdays.

"We've had nobody apply for jobs," owner John “JC” Copses said. "People used to come in all the time. It's been about a year and a half."

Staffing shortages also have been a problem for other restaurant owners. As more restaurants hang up "Help Wanted" signs, fewer people are applying for the jobs. The lack of job applicants have left owners and managers to figure out ways to deal with the understaffing.

"It's been a rough road to hoe. I used to average five to seven applications per week before the pandemic, and from January through May, we had six applications," said David Szustak, general manager of CityRange Steakhouse. However he said he had seen more applicants as of mid-June — mostly college students.

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Established restaurants aren’t the only ones struggling — some new restaurants are having staffing issues before they even open.

"We had our 'hiring now' sign out there for two or three weeks and a couple of people stopped in, so it's not like we have a large pool to choose from," said Brian DesLauriers of TeaStar Cafe, which he and his family soon are opening in the former II Samuels building. "It's a big deal because when we first open we're going to have to close up (a) section; we're not going to be able to do table service. We don't have the people to do it."

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Seeing the issues

Some attribute the lack of applicants to the extra $300-a-week in federal benefits provided. However, others within the food industry say there are other reasons why available jobs are remaining unfilled.

Of the restaurants interviewed, most pay between $11-13 per hour for kitchen staff, but significantly less for front of house staff, like servers, who usually make around $2-3 per hour, and bartenders, who make around $8-9 per hour. It has always been the case that restaurant owners allow servers and bartenders to make up the rest of their pay in tips.

Cody Steves, a Spartanburg Panera Bread manager, said some families, like his, had to make changes in their work situations due to the pandemic.

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Steves said he and his girlfriend, who was also in the restaurant industry, decided it would be best for her to take unemployment so there would be someone to take care of their two children, ages 4 and 7.

"The cost of daycare, got to be more expensive than myself and her were making at the same time, and so we elected to go ahead and keep our kids at home. So she is basically taking on that job of staying at home with them and making sure schoolwork is done," Steves said.

Steves said there was probably three months or four where his girlfriend was making more from unemployment than he was in an entire month of working.

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Steves didn't anticipate many of those workers with children coming back once their unemployment ran out.

"I think a lot of people are still going to be stuck in the fact of, 'I don't have a means to be able to take care of my kids, or somebody to watch them while I go to work,' and so therefore they're not going to be able to go back to work," Steves said.

The understaffing has also made an already difficult industry harder, Steves said.

"It's a constant battle of getting employees in there and keeping the employees, just because they are having to work harder because we sometimes have to run with the skeleton crew," Steves said.

Szustak said he lost a number of his former employees to other industries. When the pandemic started, CityRange switched to selling bulk family meals and raw products to stay afloat and laid off all but five managers. The restaurant went from about 70 employees in 2019 to now around 40.

Szustak said some used their time on unemployment to train for a different profession.

"A lot of people moved on from the hospitality industry. I had two or three who went to the insurance business or real estate," he said. "They did something where they had either a consistent income or they could better figure it, especially since we had to close down and everything went away."

Samantha Swann covers Spartanburg County K-12 schools and colleges and the food scene in downtown and beyond. She is a University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College alumna. Contact her at JSwann@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Spartanburg restaurants struggle with staffing shortages