The Rusty Compass has covered up its lunch menu board ever since the coffee shop lost its panini chef in March. Owner Lee Robinson is one of many restaurant owners who have had to modify their business operations due to an ongoing labor shortage.
Worker shortages are making it hard for some restaurant owners to open as much as they want, even as patrons are returning after the past two pandemic-infected summers.
Community members have noted what seems like increasingly limited and variable hours of operation among restaurants. The Haines Visitor Center has even started posting a spreadsheet of hours on its Facebook page to help confused consumers.
Christy Tengs, owner of The Bamboo Room, said her restaurant’s hours change multiple times a month because of limited staff.
“We’re going two weeks at a time,” she said. “I’m putting posters on a sandwich board outside the restaurant and the Bamboo Room Facebook page and Haines Chatters. I don’t even know what our hours are coming up.”
Before the pandemic, Tengs employed as many as 20 staff in the summer season. She currently employs 12 people – some of whom have other jobs, which contributes to scheduling difficulties. She said she’s had to close the restaurant two nights a week because she doesn’t have an evening cook. If she could find another cook, she could make two or three more hires to cover the additional hours.
Customers are “showing up in hordes,” Tengs said. “If we had a full staff we’d be open every day all day.”
Lee Robinson, who opened the Rusty Compass in 2017, has not had to adjust his business hours because of the labor shortage but has cut back his offerings. He said he believes it is the most pressing challenge this summer.
He had to discontinue lunch service on April 1 when his panini grill chef, who had worked at the coffee shop for a year, left in mid-March. His replacement quit after 10 days. Since then, Robinson has decided to focus on his coffee and breakfast services rather than actively advertising for a chef.
He would like to resume lunch service when the right candidate appears. “It’s a bummer that we can’t offer what we used to offer to the community,” he said. But he’s surveyed the market and knows finding qualified applicants isn’t easy. “Past summers I would have filled it like that.”
Other local businesses have had to entirely close for the season. In April, Sarah Jaymot shut down Sarah J’s Espresso Shoppe for the season after four months of actively searching for staff, including recruiting through the drive-through window.
Mountain Market also suspended its espresso bar and kitchen services for six weeks in the spring due to short staffing. This was the first time in over 30 years they had to completely close the kitchen, owner Mary Jean Sebens said.
For now, the kitchen is sufficiently staffed by college and high school students, but Sebens already foresees that she will again have trouble filling her shifts in September. She said she would like the kitchen open every day, but “I don’t want to be a business that’s constantly changing its hours. I want to be consistent.”
She said she had to change the schedule far more often in the past six to eight months than in previous years.
Other business owners in Haines stick to limited hours by choice. When Sarah Bishop expanded Old Field Kitchen’s brunch service to include two weekly dinners in September, she was not intending – or hoping – to scale up to a full-time schedule.
“I’ve worked full-time in restaurants long enough that I know that’s not what I want to do,” she said. “I have to balance it so that I don’t get burnt out.” She said she thinks many restaurant owners also want to have time for other sides of their lives — like spending time with their families, gardening, fishing and otherwise enjoying Alaskan summers in the same ways their customers do.
Bishop chose to run her service on Sunday mornings and Monday evenings because she knew other restaurants weren’t open.
Alaska’s unemployment rate fell to a record low in April, at just below 5%. In Haines the figure was 7% as of May.
The statewide labor shortage has hammered employers including schools, federal agencies, visiting centers and tourism companies, the Anchorage Daily news reported earlier this month. Hiring difficulties forced Princess Cruises to close its 85-room Copper Center lodge at the start of the busy summer season.