Local restaurants face layers of challenges during rebound, ‘your dollars matter’

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – For employers across the country there are layers of challenges hitting them at once, especially in the restaurant industry.

But unlike the beginning of the pandemic, some of the issues area a long time coming, co-owner of Great Bagel in Lexington Lara Swan said.

“I think covid has exacerbated all these issues,” she said.

For starters, a staffing shortage, which Swan says the pandemic made a lot of professionals in the restaurant industry change professions all together to a more stable opportunity.

“If we want the restaurant industry to thrive in the way that it has in the past. It can’t be, because we’re paying people next to nothing in order to keep it going, it has to be because they’re happy where they are, and the industry needs to thrive because of that,” Swan said.

And when there are fewer people to work, businesses can’t stay open as long and they need to raise wages to try to be competitive. Add this to supply chain price increases across the board and that’s a lot of numbers in the red.

“No one’s gonna pay like $20 for a bagel so it’s just like, no, we have to adapt, that’s part of what it is to run a business,” she said.

And UK’s Director for the Center for Business and Economic Research, Michael Clark said Over the last two decades it was easy to track what people were buying.

“But with the pandemic, consumer spending patterns have really changed in a way that has made it really hard for businesses to know what the demand for their goods and services are going to be,” Clark said.

Swan said she wants to see an industry change to be able to offer employees more professional grade wages, because that’s what they are.

“And the thing that I think people need to understand from the perspective of the consumer is that your dollars matters significantly,” Swan said.