GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — People are getting more comfortable going out to eat in Wisconsin, but that doesn’t mean restaurants are finding it easy to stay staffed.
“It’s like you stand around twiddling your thumbs for a year and then all of a sudden it’s back,” said Troy Metzler. “Kind of like a light switch.”
He isn’t the only one.
Metzler is an owner at Julie’s Cafe on Green Bay’s west side.
Like many local restaurants, he welcomes returning business, although he says it’s been a struggle to hire enough staff.
“We have seven positions to fill and very few candidates to fill them with,” aid Metzler.
Not all local restaurants have the same hiring challenges. While Julie’s needs servers and hosts, another local staple needs people behind the scenes
“If you know anything about the Pancake Place,” started Dallas Butt. “We generally don’t hire new servers because the servers we have here have been here for years.
Butt is a supervisor at the Pancake Place.
About a month ago she says the majority of staff was brought back.
But when it comes to filling spots like dishwashers and line cooks, those positions can be hard to hire.
“Just because it is more of a “go, go, go” kind of tedious job that not a lot of people are built for,” she said .
“We pretty much have the same staff we did originally before COVID so it hasn’t really impacted us a lot,” said west side Bay View Restaurant owner Ari Abazi. “They were just itching to come back.”
He’s one of few not facing hiring challenges at all.
Still Abazi says he understands other business’s struggles.
It’s why he thanks his staff for returning.
“I’m just happy to have all my workers here,” he said.
As for Julie’s and the Pancake Place, both say with school letting out soon, they hope to attract high school and college students to fill some of their open positions.
The unemployment rate in Wisconsin fell to 3.8% in March.
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