A lack of skills, a lack of staff that want to work and even a lack of housing for staff are just some of the concerns facing hospitality owners.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
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.
READ MORE: Men charged after Launceston evade
"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.
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."
READ MORE: Public Trustee caused worst years of my life
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."
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.
I think this is a problem that we're all going to be facing at some stage
- Karen Burbury
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."
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark www.examiner.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter: @examineronline
- Follow us on Instagram: @examineronline
- Follow us on Google News: The Examiner
What do you think? Send us a letter to the editor: