Local restaurants struggle to attract workers

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Quirk Hotel is the first boutique art hotel to be established in Charlottesville’s historic downtown.

499 WEST MAIN STREET, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, 22903 434-729-1234 | QUIRKHOTELCVA

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Now hiring

Local businesses try to lure workers back

Restaurateur Will Richey says he’s offered a $500 signing bonus to attract new employees.

Little Buckets Farm Sanctuary is a nonprofit 501c3 vegan sanctuary. Little Buckets shows the public how farm animals have loving, fun, sweet personalities, have strong family bonds and friendships, and that they feel the same emotions as your domestic pets. We show there is no difference and that we should love all animals by living compassionately.

By Brielle Entzminger

reporter@c-ville.com

For nearly a year, a “now hiring” sign hung at the entrance to Baggby’s on the Downtown Mall. With the arrival of the coronavirus vaccine, owners Jon and Erin LaPanta hoped that applicants would start rolling in—but none came.

“Now that business is coming back, we’ve had to turn business away,” says Jon LaPanta, who has operated the sandwich shop with his wife entirely on their own throughout the pandemic. “We’ve had 15- to 20-minute waits...and I’ve had to turn down catering, because I just don’t have the staff.”

Across the country, many businesses, particularly in the service industry, are also struggling to find workers. Though around 10 million Americans are currently unemployed, massive numbers of jobs at restaurants and retail stores remain unfilled, sparking debate over the impact of expanded unemployment benefits.

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, qualifying workers can receive $300 per week on top of state unemployment insurance through September 6, adding up to $600 per week—or nearly $16 an hour. In Virginia, the minimum wage for restaurant workers is $2.13 an hour before tips.

At his array of local eateries, restaurateur Will Richey says it’s been “astonishingly hard” to bring in new employees as the economy has opened back up.

“Just nobody was looking for work [and] replying to the ads at all,” says Richey, who manages The Bebedero, Brasserie Saison, Revolutionary Soup, and other Charlottesville restaurants. “I’ve heard rumors that it’s just people sitting and still collecting unemployment, but I don’t know what it is. It almost seems like there aren’t people to take the jobs.”

Some business owners blame this staffing crisis on the extra unemployment benefits.

“We have employees who refuse to go back to work because they are getting more money collecting unemployment, but I don’t think they realize some of those jobs are going to disappear,” says Rebecca Haydock, director of the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center. “We have seen businesses that have had to close their doors because employees won’t come back to work.”

But according to University of Virginia economist Leora Friedberg, “there are