Restaurant challenges

Any of you, even if not directly affected, who read newspapers, news sites or any social media, know that since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, for the restaurant, hotel and hospitality industry, the problem of problems is the recruitment of new personnel. Huge and structural problem that unites all these three sectors so important to our tourism and economy. Hotellerie, however, often has quite different and better dynamics, especially in companies belonging to large international chains.

This difficulty in recruiting is mainly due to the sudden change in the mentality of potential workers in the sector, with respect to a job experienced as underpaid and wearing out, in the face of the large amount of work hours that employers try to impose: much more than the canonical 40 hours per week, with six working days out of seven, including all holidays, with an organization of work such that the whole day is occupied anyway, leaving no room for the rest. Be it a romantic relationship, family, children. Having an enjoyable and usable extra-work life, in short.

The Covid pandemic has opened the eyes of many, allowing them to see and enjoy a life that was previously unknown to them and not even thinkable. Now turning back is impossible. I stress this: turning back is impossible, it is unthinkable.

To the many restaurant operators who face these problems on a daily basis, I suggest that they do not take a nostalgic approach, perhaps hoping for a sudden turnaround, but look ahead and think about how to intelligently reorganize the working hours of their business, aligning them with the wishes of those you would like to hire. Yes, restaurateurs need to start immediately putting the needs of potential employees at the center of their thoughts. Perhaps start thinking about staying open more hours a day, perhaps 15 or 16, perhaps seven days a week, therefore organizing everything on clear and attractive shifts for potential employees. Because not everyone needs weekends off, or evenings, or holidays, especially if they are properly paid. And maybe a fair weekly rotation, on 5 days at 8 continuous hours per day, is attractive.

I think we need to start thinking more and more about venues that can offer their services over multiple hours per day, perhaps changing their skin and offerings throughout the day. I personally have long argued that such a restaurant, open every day of the week, 24 hours a day, is a possible important key to substantial economic returns.

The state, in all of this must champion an innovative, futuristic, movement vision for the entire sector, starting with schooling. It must rethink the teaching of Hotelier Institutes and help bring them to life with a new identity and attractiveness. They must be seen as stepping stones to beautiful, desirable, livable and properly paid professions. Without delegating this role to the increasingly sad and unlikable TV shows. The latest enrollment figures for Hotelier Institutes show us a situation that could not be more alarming.

The state must immediately regulate and incentivize all these transformations, allowing a very rapid general reconversion. Encouraging sector development, new hiring, guaranteeing restaurants, where possible, even outdoor spaces, perhaps tying them to certified and verifiable pay and contribution fairness. The historic centers of our beautiful art cities or seaside or alpine tourist resorts must not turn into a big noisy trough, but neither must they close themselves in a stale and unproductive immobility, which is moreover economically incomprehensible. Sweeping controls should be implemented that tend to make it clear that only fairness and quality are the tracks to lasting economic success. The state should then increase its crackdown on pseudo-criminal catering, which with its monstrous illicit capital undermines proper competition at its foundations. It should also boost the economic chain stemming from luxury tourism, a real driver of improvements and new employment at all levels and in a variety of collateral sectors.

A final plea: to rethink this entire sector, to implement the necessary reforms, we do not have decades to go. We need to start running right away, uniting the best minds in the country: universities, schools, trade unions, and professional associations, coordinated by a government attentive to concrete results rather than immediate electoral feedback. That is, we would need a serious and quickly pondered opening of a kind of “States General of the restaurant, hotellerie and hospitality industry.”