Where is my waiter? UK restaurants scramble for staff after Brexit – 04/19/2023 – Market

Jordan Frieda knew he would struggle to find waiters and kitchen staff for his three Italian restaurants. But the depth of the crisis was not clear until he hired a recruiter to try to attract employees from other restaurants. Of the 100 or so people his agent typically contacted in a day, he recalled, fewer than four responded, and often only one agreed to show up for a trial shift.

“It’s worse than Covid, worse than energy prices,” said Frieda, a well-connected actor turned restaurateur who worked briefly with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. “It has been the most traumatic event of my restaurant career. It is an absolutely devastating and life-changing event.”

Frieda is not the only one. Restaurants in London are so understaffed that they have had to reduce opening hours, close on certain days of the week and, in extreme cases, close their doors altogether. While the city’s once-thriving food scene has also been hurt by the coronavirus pandemic and rising energy prices, the labor shortage is almost entirely a consequence of Brexit – a notable example of how Britain’s exit from the Union European Union is reshaping its economy.

London restaurants used to recruit many waiters, chefs and bartenders from Italy, Spain and Greece. That mine of talent has dried up since Britain ended the free movement of labor in the European Union. An estimated 11% of jobs in Britain’s hotel and restaurant industry are vacant, according to a recent industry survey, compared with 4% in the wider economy.

With several jobs open, Frieda initially cut her restaurants from seven days to five days. He eliminated the double shifts his chefs worked. But with labor costs rising 10%, he has had to raise prices and worries about the long-term future of his restaurants.

There is also a human detriment. For many young people from Mediterranean countries, waiting tables in London for a few years was a rite of passage. “Brexit was a disaster economically, culturally, personally and in every other way,” Frieda said.

Regret over Brexit has mounted in recent months as the UK has plunged into a severe economic crisis. Polls show that a clear majority of Britons now believe the vote to leave was a mistake. A new report from the British Chambers of Commerce said that more than half of their members were having problems doing business in the English Channel. However, quantifying the negative impact of Brexit, at a time of multiple upheavals, can be tricky.

Some of Britain’s economic problems, such as stagnant productivity, predate its decision to leave the bloc. Others, like inflation, are plaguing many countries. Immigration statistics can paint a misleading picture: net migration to Britain hit a record 504,000 in the 12 months to last June, swelled by refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan as well as overseas British passport holders from Hong Kong. Kong.

However, when it comes to EU nationals, there was a net outflow of 51,000 over the same period – and these are generally people working in restaurants.

By default, Britain’s post-Brexit immigration policy has changed the nature and origin of new arrivals, moving away from less skilled migrants from European countries towards more skilled people from South Asia and Africa.

“Labor shortages are a feature of the new system,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at Kings College London. By opening jobs in sectors such as hospitality to Britons, he said, the government’s aim was to generate “higher productivity, wages and more training for workers residing in the UK”.

But the risk, he said, is that companies hit by staff shortages simply reduce their production and jobs. Around 40% of restaurants have cut their hours, while more than a third of restaurants, bars and hotels could face insolvency or even close by early 2023, according to a recent survey by UKHospitality and the British Beer and Pub Association.

Industry insiders are pressing the Conservative government to issue more two-year visas to young people from the European Union to work in restaurants in Britain. They are also calling for the process to be less onerous and bureaucratic. Restaurant workers, they argue, are productive, generally not a burden on the National Health Service, and most return home after a few years.

“They are usually young and spend their money in the country,” said Nick Jones, founder of Soho House, a chain of private clubs that started in London and has spread around the world. “I really think there are people who come because they have skills in certain things.”

The government’s refusal to address the problem, according to Jones, threatens the future of one of Britain’s most prosperous industries. “It will discourage people from investing in restaurants and opening restaurants,” he said.

The problem is that immigration has become an even more complicated issue in recent months, after an increase in the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under pressure from his party’s right flank to reduce the number, not increase it.

Britain, in any case, is now a less attractive destination for its European neighbours. Some returned home after the Brexit vote; others left during the pandemic and never returned.

Ruth Rogers, owner of the River Cafe, a famous Italian restaurant in Hammersmith, west London, used to recruit waiters from Italy during her summer trips there.

“Usually when I’m in Italy and I meet a really nice waiter, I say, ‘Why don’t you come to London?'” she said. “I said that to someone in Venice last year and he said, ‘I can’t. You don’t want us.’

Frieda’s restaurants –Trullo, in Islington, and two Padella outposts, in Borough Market and Shoreditch– are not short of customers. Lines form in front of Padella, which does not take reservations, for its tagliarini with slow-cooked tomato sauce or pappardelle with eight-hour Dexter beef ragout.

But with the lack of recruits from the mainland, Frieda was forced to look for workers closer to home. It’s a training challenge, he said, because young Britons aren’t immersed in the food and wine culture of Mediterranean countries.

“They’ve never seen anyone have a glass of wine unless they’re drinking it themselves,” Frieda said with a laugh. “They get there, but it’s a journey.”

For some restaurateurs, the labor shortage reflects a lack of imagination in their industry. They say restaurants could employ more women if they offered more flexible working hours. They could also recruit elderly people, for whom working in restaurants could be an interesting activity after retirement.

Jeremy King, one of London’s best-known restaurateurs, who until recently owned Wolseley, Fischer’s and Delaunay, said British restaurants had also had to overcome a cultural bias in the country against jobs such as waitering.

“For the British there seems to be shame and stigma in serving the people,” said King, who plans to return to the business with a new home in the spring. “I still blame restaurateurs for not believing in our people, for not showing them that restaurants can be a career.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves