After 21 years of serving Southern cuisine favorites to seated patrons at the Southern Star, the downtown eatery is changing its operations in response to the ongoing labor shortage in the restaurant industry.
The Southern Star, following the lead of many other traditional restaurants, is shifting to a takeout and pickup food model after struggling to maintain its wait staff.
"Like everyone else in the restaurant business, we have been hiring for two years nonstop," Nancy Adams, the chief chef and owner of the Southern Star, said. "We have decided instead of trying to 'make it work' any longer, we will just have to change the way we operate."
The downtown eatery, which began in 2000 in a small shop across from the Chattanooga Choo Choo, has operated for the past 14 years at Broad and 13th streets, offering both in-house dining and takeout. During the pandemic, Southern Star was forced to rely solely upon takeout sales, but the restaurant has tried for the past year to offer its previous, traditional table service and hours.
After struggling to find enough workers for such table service, Southern Star is shifting this week to take out or pickup service only at its downtown site.
"We absolutely cannot find enough people to work," Adams said. "So we are moving to a more grab-and-go concept, similar to how we have done at our Signal Mountain location."
With unemployment at or near historic lows, filling restaurant shops coming out of the pandemic has proven problematic for many restaurateurs who are having to limit their seating, reduce their hours or, in some instances, shut down altogether because of a lack of workers.
A study last year by Deloitte Consulting on the future of restaurants found that off-premises dining has emerged as a permanent fixture for many traditional restaurant patrons with 61% of consumers saying they order takeout or delivery at least once per week, up from 18% prior to the pandemic.
"The overlapping blows of the pandemic and now an inflationary economy are limiting industry operations," Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, said in a recent industry report.
Mojo Burrito, which once operated four restaurants in St. Elmo, Ooltewah, East Brainerd and Red Bank, has idled its last remaining unit on Dayton Boulevard indefinitely after struggling for years to find enough workers.
Mimi's Deli opened a barbecue restaurant on Hixson Pike last November but shut down the restaurant a few months later when it was unable to find enough workers to keep it in operation.
"We had a lot of problems getting enough employees so we had to shut that restaurant down and focus more on our deli here," Julie Crawford, one of the restaurant managers, said.
Figures released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development show that overall employment in food services and accommodations jumped by 13.1% in the past 12 months from the pandemic lows of a year ago, adding 35,300 more jobs in the restaurant and related industries across Tennessee in the past year.
But even with such gains, many job vacancies remain. Tennessee career centers on Thursday listed 470,188 open jobs across the Volunteer State on the state's jobs website, jobs4tn.gov. That's more than four open jobs for each of the 102,137 Tennesseans counted last month as unemployed but still looking for work.
Tennessee's Department of Labor and Workforce Development projects over the next decade that employment in the food and accommodations industries will grow at twice the pace of all industries, requiring 42,153 more workers over the next decade.
The food service industry is the nation's second-largest private sector employer, with a workforce of more than 14 million nationwide, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to the National Restaurant Association 2022 State of the Restaurant Industry report, roughly half of operators expect recruiting and retention of employees will be their top challenge in 2022.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow him on Twitter @dflessner1.