Vancouver restaurants hungry for workers amid staff shortage

A number of Vancouver restaurants say a staff shortage has left them scrambling to serve customers and may be taking a bite out of their bottom line.

Siddharth Choudhary,owner ofSiddhartha's Indian Kitchen in East Vancouver, said he wanted to add summer breakfast and late night service to hisrestaurant's normallunch and dinner servings, but found staffing was too tough.

"I don't have the chefs," said Choudhary. "So, I can't open my restaurant for breakfast and brunches."

Industry groups say it's a similar situation at restaurants across B.C.

Go2HR aB.C.-based tourism and hospitality association has hundreds of vacancies on itsonline job board.

"We're hearing about staff burnout because they're having to increase their hours. We're hearing about increased overtime costs," said Go2HR CEO Arlene Keis.

"We are hearing stories about some people having to reduce their service [and] maybe stop doing lunch or breakfast."

The industry says the shortfall is due to a number of factors including a sharp rise in restaurant openings, fewer young people entering the fieldand changes to the temporary foreign worker program.

While it's bad news for restaurateurs, culinary students suddenly find themselves in high demandeven landing jobs before they graduate.

"You see employers actively kind of poaching students out into the industry," said Tobias MacDonald,an instructor at Vancouver Community College.

"They go out on practicum and that's where they're finding employment a lot of the time, where we would love to have them come back and do the final four months of training with us."

With files from BellePuri