Restaurant owner Damian Wawrzyniak spends more time worrying about where he will get the trained staff for the new restaurants he plans to open in Peterborough and London than about what he will serve on the menu.
The Polish-born chef, who came to fame when he appeared on the BBC to teach Mary Berry how to make his signature “babka” cake, understands only too well how the current boom for the British restaurant trade could be at an end.
“We are struggling at the moment to find staff because of Brexit, there is no doubt,” Wawrzyniak said.
“We rely on young people really in central London – mainly from the EU – and a lot have never really been in love with the way of life, weather and the expense, so if they can move they would and other countries are opening up to them now.”
They’re looking, for example, at Paris, where it looks like the labour laws might change and where Wawrzyniak believes the culture of one-dimensional restaurants is ripe for change.
EU citizens make up a quarter of Britain’s 3m hospitality workers, according to a report by professionals services firm KPMG. That includes 25% of chefs and a remarkable 75% of waiting staff.
As the clock ticks down to the UK’s departure from the EU senior figures in the hospitality industry agree with Wawrzyniak that staff shortages brought about by an exodus of European workers and a dearth of new arrivals post-Brexit is a crisis in the making for Britain’s fourth-biggest employing industry.
Some outlets have already been forced to close for part of the week because of staff shortages. Others are pulling down the shutters permanently. Factors such as higher rents, the weak pound and the rising cost of ingredients such as butter that are traded on the international market are backing many in the hospitality sector into a corner.
The alarm bells are also being sounded by firms ranging from the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, which says it would find it virtually impossible to find enough staff if Brexit forced it to turn its back on EU nationals, through to the pizza chain Franco Manca, which warned this summer that it is already finding it harder to recruit staff.
As the Brexit negotiations grind along with little progress the hospitality sector’s representatives have warned that the Government has acted far too late by proposing to introduce new qualifications in 2022 as part of efforts to create an army of British-born waiters, chefs and baristas. The result, according to the British Hospitality Association (BHA), could be that hotels, restaurants, bars and cafes across the UK go to the wall.
“We’re a labour-intensive industry so if you don’t have a chef, for example, there is no restaurant -it’s that simple,” said Ufi Ibrahim, the BHA’s chief executive, who said the problem was most acute in London and the south-east but was being experienced across the country.
“There is grave concern in rural areas, for example, where public transport is lacking. Being able to find individuals – either British workers or others who would be restricted by access – is a problem. We also have a culture of restricted social mobility. It’s very difficult to see what contingency plans could be put into place to serve in the timelines that have currently been given.”
The BHA’s concerns were shared by individual business owners, larger chains and town authorities. At the Chestnut Group, which operates six restaurants, pubs and hotels across rural Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, various moves are already being made to make the sector more attractive to employees. A 10% stake is being given away to its 140 staff, who can also use an app to swap shifts.
“Hiring in the sector is not easy so we’ve set out to address it in every way, whether it’s to do with helping people find the hours that work for them, or providing training with our own academy,” said chief executive Philip Turner.
by Bob Graham
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