Karen Burbury has had first hand experience of these issue from running Cataract on Paterson and Rupert and Hound.

Ms Burbury highlighted a perception issue that hospitality industry has when it comes to career options.

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"Is difficult across all sectors I believe at the moment [but] hospitality is being amplified with the lack of people that wanted to move into hospitality as a career option," she said.

"I think hospitality traditionally has been something that filled in the gaps where you're at university, and I think now ... we now need skilled workers."

These issues, along with the need to rest her staff, informed her decision to close Rupert and Hound for two weeks.

"The skill shortage has put a lot of pressure on my management team, if people call in sick then, then it's my management team that are picking up the extra hours," she said.

"We're focusing on our trainees that we've invested heavily into with 10 across both of my restaurants and we're going to be sending them to TAFE every day for training, as well as [being] in the restaurants in the afternoon."

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Ms Burbury bought on Nellie Liefhebber as one of the trainees, noticing her enthusiasm for the industry.

Ms Liefhebber noticed that many hospitality workers only see their employment as a temporary arrangement.

"We want more people that are full time and want to actually work here and enjoy the industry and love it, and are so passionate about it," she said.

"[Some workers] hey're not doing it because they love the career and they're not doing it because they love hospitality, they're just doing it as a sort of a gap."

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Highlighting the common experience of people calling in sick or not showing up, Ms Liefhebber said that impacted on the restaurant and staff heavily.

"We're finding that we can't giving enough to our customers because we have more tables [and] we can't give them the best that we can," she said.

Ms Burbury said that her role as business owner trying to help her staff has grown, to the point where she is considering purchasing a rental to help their living arrangements in a tough housing market.

"We're no longer just an employer, we're a counsellor, we're a financial advisor," she said.

"I think that now it's becoming desperate before, you know, we did have young people or housing together and they could room together, but the housings just not there now.

"We are looking at buying a house to be able to house our team because I'm passionate about looking after my team members."

Ms Burbury said the hospitality industry needed workers who would commit to the industry full-time.

"Unless people are willing to work, and they're willing to be trained and they're willing to enter the industry, there's nothing anyone can really do."

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