Hallucigenia wrote:AF62 wrote:On the BBC news this evening there was a pub owner bemoaning that they couldn’t find enough staff to staff the restaurant part of the pub, so were only opening for food two nights a week.
Out of interest I took a look at their website - a simple three course meal for two people would cost over £160, and that is before paying for any drinks.
Can’t find staff to hire? Hmm… And then using that as the reason why a country pub is only doing food two days a week when the food is that sort of price - perhaps a lack of customers is the real reason.
You have no idea. But maybe the owner of the business does? You don't know the other constraints - perhaps it's a small place with limited kitchen facilities that can only serve a relatively small number of covers, so they have to go the £££ low-volume route, perhaps there's a neighbouring pub doing the high-volume thing, you don't know.
No, the place was large and they said they had refurbished to appeal to the Instagram crowd.
But irrespective, they claimed they could only open two days a week *because* they couldn’t find any staff to hire.
Hallucigenia wrote:But as someone who at least knows the sector well enough to avoid such crass analysis - it's a huge problem across the industry, and lots of places are reducing kitchen hours and/or reducing kitchen-"complication" (more pre-prepared and/or simpler dishes like pizzas) because of the labour shortage. That's more than anecdote - see eg this FT article :
Crass analysis? Perhaps you could explain why you can’t find anyone to hire if you are charging £160 for a simple three course meal in a country pub, with drinks on top of that.
You cant hire anyone? Really? There isn’t enough profit margin in selling food at that price that you couldn’t pay double or treble what the other nearby pubs are paying their staff and still make a tidy profit.
How on earth do other pubs manage to find staff to hire when they are charging far far less for food. Is it because they actually have some customers willing to pay the prices being charged, and this pub can only find enough people to pay what they are asking a couple of days a week and it is nothing at all to do with hiring staff.