Jeff Hankin passed through the area Thursday from Boston and stopped for lunch at Panera Bread in Wilkes-Barre Twp., where he found the dining room was closed.
A Panera Bread manager, who asked not to be identified, would only say the dining room closed because of a “staffing issue.”
A big “now hiring” sign was on display next to cars lined up at the drive-thru that remained open. Customers also could order takeout inside.
Hankin ordered a sandwich on a kiosk and sat at an outdoor table to eat it while he worked remotely on a laptop after seeing job interviews take place inside.
“I’m fine with it. We just got to do what we got to do,” Hankin said. “Businesses have to figure out ways to operate in this time.”
Similar scenes played out Thursday at other nearby restaurants including Popeyes Chicken and Chick-fil-A in Wilkes-Barre Twp.
Cars lined up at the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A while a few people picked up their orders inside. A sign on the door at Chick-fil-A said, “Dining room seating remains temporarily closed. Safe service is our top priority.”
The dining room also remains closed at Popeyes Chicken but the drive-thru is open. Signs outside the restaurant said people could order food through platforms like Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash or pick up orders inside.
The McDonald’s restaurant at 1950 N. Memorial Highway in Shavertown announced on Facebook Wednesday that it would return to takeout from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. “staff permitting” and would no longer offer indoor dining.
The restaurants add to many throughout Pennsylvania and the U.S. shutting down dining rooms amid worker shortages and rising COVID-19 cases.
John Longstreet, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association, said a “huge staffing crisis” remains in restaurants and other industries.
A National Restaurant Association survey said although the industry added back many of the jobs lost during the pandemic, a majority of restaurants remain understaffed.
Eighty-nine percent of Pennsylvania operators say their restaurants do not have enough employees to support existing customer demand.
Among the restaurants that are understaffed, 91% of operators say their restaurants are more than 10% below the necessary staffing levels and 41% say they are more than 20% below necessary staffing levels.
Restaurants remain understaffed despite the fact federal pandemic unemployment compensation benefits that provided an extra $300 per week came to end earlier this month, Longstreet said.
“We are hearing members say there has been a slight uptick in applications but it certainly hasn’t solved the problem,” he said.
Longstreet said one of the top reasons restaurants have been struggling to hire employees is because of child care issues since schools closed for much of last year and many day care centers couldn’t survive the pandemic.
Since restaurants were ordered to shut down at various times throughout the pandemic, Longstreet said some workers also went to work in other industries.
By closing dining rooms and offering takeout, delivery and drive-thru service only, he said restaurant operators can reduce their staffing considerably. Some restaurant owners have chosen to cut the days or hours of operation.
The National Restaurant Association found through a survey that a majority of consumers have changed their dining behavior due to the delta variant, putting acute pressure back on the restaurant industry.
The survey found that 6 in 10 adults have changed their restaurant use due to the rise in the delta variant, 19% of adults have stopped going out to restaurants, 19% have chosen to sit outside instead of inside when going to a restaurant and 37% have ordered takeout or delivery instead of going out to a restaurant.
Restaurant operators said in the survey that business conditions deteriorated in recent months with 56% of Pennsylvania operators saying conditions for their restaurants are worse now than they were three months ago.
According to the survey, 77% of operators said their restaurants experienced a decline in customer demand for indoor on-premises dining in recent weeks.
Costs for restaurant operators are up and profits are down with 92% saying their total food costs are higher and 84% saying their labor costs are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most Pennsylvania operators said they do not expect a return to normal business conditions anytime soon with 21% of operators saying business conditions will never return to normal for their restaurants.
“The rise of coronavirus variants like delta threaten to push these restaurants closer to permanently closing their doors,” Longstreet said.
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Some area restaurants shut down indoor dining again - Standard Speaker
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