Because restaurants happily receive busy dining halls after closing them for more than a year, many companies face another pandemic-related problem: lack of staff.
Two Chick-fil-A locations in Alabama have been forced to close their dining halls because they can’t get enough staff to keep them running.
Both McCalla and Madison, Alabama restaurants posted messages on their respective Facebook pages explaining the situation that the number of customers willing to eat at the time, only exceeds the low number of workers to provide adequate service.
The problem is part of a broader trend of fast food chains, restaurants, bars and other customer service companies struggling to fill vacancies after their staff spent much of the pandemic on unemployment COVID- 19.
The Chick-fil-A restaurant in McCalla, Alabama, said in a Facebook post (pictured) that it would close the dining room for employees to be worked on and possibly exhausted.
Madison’s Chick-fil-A revealed that he is currently “in the midst of a labor crisis.”
According to the message, the fast food restaurant said it is receiving a lower volume of job applications than it normally does. To make matters worse, many applicants don’t even show up for their interviews.
The message added: “Unfortunately, due to this problem, we have to temporarily close the dining room, deactivate our mobile order option, as well as our mobile transport option.”
The Chick-fil-A of Madison, Alabama, (pictured), said he wanted to reopen his dining halls, but did not have a date for when that could happen, as the restaurant has no staff for the future. predictable.
“This was done to help reduce stress on the team members we currently have, but also to be able to provide you with the Chick-fil-A experience you expect, only through a limited venue . ”
‘We have some of the best team members in the world. They work hard every day, but they are tired and over-extended. We have grown enormously, but we have to add to our list.
At the end of its long and unfortunate post, the restaurant said it hoped to return to normal as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, McCalla’s Chick-fil-A explained its closure for similar reasons.
As the autumn season approached, which was relatively busy due to the return of students to school and the holidays, the restaurant admitted that it could not schedule enough workers to offer “the excellent service that the students deserve. our customers ”.
“We are very grateful, but our team cannot continue at the pace we are,” the publication states. “Our team members are exhausted and there is no relief on our list.”
The Chick-fil-A McCalla management team (pictured) said they had no choice but to close the dining room as the fall season approached, the busiest time of year for places of fast food.
As of March 2019, the average weekly payment to an unemployed person was $ 348 when combining federal and state unemployment payments. That nearly tripled to $ 938 in April 2020. Now it’s still $ 638 a week, $ 300 more than before. It means someone who worked 40 hours a week before the pandemic now earns nearly $ 16 an hour for doing nothing at home, which is more than double the federal minimum wage of $ 7.25.
In eight states, the unemployed can earn at least $ 600 a week in benefits. Massachusetts offers the most generous benefits
Chick-fil-A is not the only success in terms of staffing, as other fast-food giants have found a similar situation during the pandemic, as several have relapsed into unusual measures to occupy positions.
In April, a local McDonald’s gifted job seekers $ 50 to simply apply for job interviews.
Blake Casper, owner of the franchise of 59 other McDonald’s restaurants in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, told Business Insider that a general manager came up with the idea of trying to convince job candidates to join the interview after telling them to do whatever needs to be done ’to hire workers.
He also said he is considering raising starting salaries to earn the interest of more potential employees. Before reviewing the salary, the initial rate was $ 12 per hour, which is $ 3 above the Florida minimum wage, but Casper said he planned to raise the salary to $ 13.
Like many other fast food companies, McDonald’s is once again using unorthodox means to hire potential employees at the time when franchise managers conduct interviews.
That said, three key pandemic-era unemployment benefit programs established by the CARES Act of March 2020 will expire on Sept. 4, potentially boosting the hiring of fast-food businesses and restaurants.
The CARES Act of March 2020 founded three new unemployment assistance programs at the federal level: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which covers those who are not traditionally eligible for aid; Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, or PEUC, which extends aid to those who have exhausted their state’s benefit period; and the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), a weekly push to help people recover more from their lost wages.
These federal programs end on September 4th.
Governors in 26 states already tried to withdraw from those federal benefits in June and July, but many faced legal challenges, according to CNBC.
Under the CARES Act, all people receiving unemployment benefits were entitled to a weekly supplement, which began at $ 600 per week and was subsequently reduced to $ 300 per week.
But on Sept. 4, the Century Foundation estimates that three million people will still be eligible for unemployment insurance and will no longer have that weekly boost.
The debate over increased support for the continuation of unemployment benefits is unclear, as critics in the United States believe that the weekly wage deters people from finding work.