Labor shortages in Carson City and beyond are causing problems for businesses

Both in Carson City and across the nation, restaurants are struggling to find enough staff to work, whether it be in the kitchen or customer service positions.

Some believe the reason is because people simply don’t want to work anymore and would rather collect unemployment, while others say it’s a matter of low wages that are encouraging workers to find employment elsewhere.

In Carson City, it seems there are help wanted signs at most restaurants and fast-food locations throughout town whether, they’re corporate franchises or independent locally-owned businesses. Labor shortages have been in an issue in our region for years.

Carson City’s Mom and Pop’s Diner is one location that is having a difficult time finding workers. Early in May they posted a sign on their storefront window stating: “Closed Tuesdays. We can not find kitchen help to work. As most people know, when you’re getting more money on unemployment than when you work, why work?! Sorry, Owners of Mom and Pops.”

A photo of the sign was shared over a hundred times on social media, with some agreeing with the sign while others criticized the restaurant industry for not paying a living wage to their employees.

Mom and Pops did not respond for comment on this story.

One local restaurant owner, however, has not had the same issues of finding and retaining employees that other businesses are facing.

Chef Mark Estee, who owns multiple restaurants in the region, including Carson City’s The Union and Cucina Lupo, says that while no one is immune to employee shortages, his businesses also put a lot into their culture at work.

“We really care about a few things. First, our employees, we care about our customers, we care about our products, we buy local, shop local, promote local including other businesses and restaurants; we try to be a good community player. Our people feel proud to work at our locations. Our best marketing is our employees. For the most part the people we keep are masters at hospitality, they have balanced lives, they know we care about them and they care about us.”

One way that Estee says they were able to keep the retention of their employees during the shut down is immediately after they shut down their businesses, they brought in computers to the restaurants and helped each employee fill out unemployment so they would be able to get their benefits.

He also says that they pay attention to the market rate of what other employers are paying, and over the past two years the hourly wages have gone up tremendously for his workers.

However, Estee says he “makes a good living not speculating what other people are doing, saying or thinking.”

“I know what we’re doing, and whatever works for the people, works for the people,” said Estee. “I think it’s a long stretch to say that people would rather be unemployed than employed but that’s not for me to make a judgement call. I know we work really hard to give our employees benefits and retain them and have a good community, a good culture and a family atmosphere and I think we’ve done that. I think restaurants in general are resilient.”

Carson City’s Sassafras has had struggles for years in finding enough staff to work, but once they find them, retention is remarkably high, according to owner Jayme Watts.

“We have many people who have been with us since the beginning, almost 11 years ago,” said Watts. “Once we find the right people, they generally stay for a long time.”

When the pandemic hit, Sassafras switched to a to-go only model and were forced to lay off some of the waitstaff. Some of them moved out of the state, said Watts, but the core staff remained and almost all of the existing kitchen staff remained through the pandemic.

Sassafras is currently looking to hire two workers for the kitchen and three to four people for front of house. At this time, they have just enough staff to barely operate five days a week, said Watts, with most of the staff working extra hours and the owners working doubles, five days a week.

“We are frequently having to turn away business, for example to-go orders,” said Watts. “During peak times, we often must turn down to-go orders to take care of our guests who are dining in at the restaurant. I wish every customer could understand how incredibly frustrating this is for us as well as for them. We do not want to turn away business and make people angry. We are in a real bind right now and it feels like we are taking one step forward and two steps back daily. Another frustration is the long wait times at the door for a table. Because we have a self-imposed limited capacity, we often have long wait times. However, there is nothing we can do about it at this time, and we look forward to the day when we can accommodate our guests the way we used to be able.”

Watts says there are multiple factors at work for why it’s so difficult to find staff. While they advertise locally and by word of mouth, places like Indeed or Zip Recruiter are “wildly expensive” according to Watts, and they just don’t have the time to be aggressive in their search for staff while running the restaurant. Additionally, she believes many people have left the restaurant industry to move on to other fields, and there are people that are still being extremely cautious of COVID and don’t want to have contact with people.

It’s not only independently owned shops that are having issues finding and retaining people; many of the local chains are having a difficult time finding enough employees to serve their locations. For Starbucks, the Topsy Lane location located at 921 Topsy Lane was closed for several weeks due to an employee shortage, and is now only open until 2 or 3 p.m. on weekdays and 4 p.m. on weekends. Jimmy John’s has had to close on Sundays in Carson City due to labor shortages.

Many corporate franchises nationwide are offering additional incentives to retain workers, such as paying for college tuition or offering extended benefits like parental leave.

There are current historic highs in housing costs and a huge shortage of affordable housing units in Northern Nevada. In order to afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Nevada at $1,065 per month, a household would need to earn $3,549 per month or $20.48 per hour, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Median home prices in Reno have reached half a million dollars and in Carson City this year median home prices have peaked at $430,000.

As housing prices continue to rise while wages do not, there will almost surely be a continued shortage of workers in the Silver State and beyond.

"I don't know what the solution is," said Watts in 2019 when first asked about the worker shortage. "If I did, we'd be doing it.”