Elizabeth Turnbill and her husband, Roberto Copa Mato.

Credit: Photo by Caitlin Penna

Durham’s independent restaurants have helped turn our city into one of the most desirable destinations in the Southeast. In truth, the entire Triangle is filled with excellent dining experiences and nationally recognized chefs. 

Our food and beverage industry has stepped up and taken the lead on important social reforms from living wages to supporting local farms to an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is nothing new; we’ve been doing this work for years.

So why can’t we find anyone to come work for us?

The issues plaguing the labor shortage in the service industry reach far beyond the boundaries of the Triangle and infiltrate nearly every aspect of our society.

The pandemic didn’t break the restaurant industry—it simply exposed our vulnerabilities and pierced us at our weakest points. 

The hemorrhaging that ensued came from the pervasiveness of low wages, no paid time off, virtually no access to healthcare, and the high cost of childcare layered on top of arduous working conditions, long hours, unpredictable schedules, and often abusive employers. The reward for those who took their chances and joined the service industry anyway was a constant questioning from loved ones and others about when they were going to “get a real job.”  

The pandemic has forced me to reconcile some hard facts about how society values my industry.

My timeline will forever be divided by “before the pandemic” and “after the pandemic.” So many of us want to return to “before.” Looking back, I’m not sure I do. 

Personally, I believe that if we go back to the way things were before, it will be a step backwards. We must move forward and build back better. Here’s what it’s going to take to save the restaurant industry: 

Safety first. We must protect each other from a deadly virus by continuing vaccination campaigns and ensuring that the COVID-19 vaccines are free and accessible to all. Thanks to President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, we have already vaccinated 50 percent of adults across the country. We must continue encouraging one another to get vaccinated and speak out against dangerous, false information surrounding vaccines.

Dignified pay for dignified work. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a step we must take if we want to provide sustainable employment. 

Thanks in large part to the current labor shortage, the going rate for a line cook in a Durham restaurant is now $16 to $18 an hour. This is a move in the right direction, but the stakes are too high for it to be left to a capricious labor market. We need our leaders to step in and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. 

Universal preschool. Study after study has shown that the investments made in pre-school age children pay off multifold throughout their lives. The right to a free, public education is perhaps one of the least controversial topics across the American political spectrum. So why can’t we all get on board with free pre-school? 

President Biden’s American Families Plan will provide universal access to high-quality, free pre-K for three- and four-year-olds. This is a huge step in ensuring that children have a strong start. It will also invest in child care so that low- and middle-income families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on high-quality child care, which will go a long way in helping working families make ends meet.

“We cannot afford to simply go back to normal.”

Investing in health. It doesn’t take a doctor or an economist to figure out that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. But the world of private group insurance is too expensive and inaccessible for most of our nation’s independent restaurants and small businesses. Since President Biden opened a special enrollment period through the ACA, more than one million people have gotten the health coverage they need. But we still need to do more to create a solution that honors every human’s right to health and levels the playing field.

Of course, the best healthcare solution, I think we can all agree, is to be healthy. We need better public health policies that help prevent chronic illnesses, give access to proper nutrition, and fight food insecurity. One place to start is by creating policies that protect and strengthen our small, local farms. They are the real breadbasket of our society. The food raised on small, sustainable farms is safer, more nutrient-dense, and fresher than food sourced from industrial farms. Local farms provide a buffer from national food shortages and make a healthier lifestyle more accessible to all members of our community.

Paid time off. The benefits of paid leave are widely known and recognized. It’s credited with reducing racial wealth gaps, improving child health, increasing employee retention, and boosting women’s workforce participation. But among the country’s lowest wage workers, many of whom are in the service industry, 95 percent are without paid family leave and 91 percent without paid medical leave. In other words, those who can least afford unpaid time off are the ones forced to take it.

What isn’t reflected in these numbers is that paid leave for an hourly employee costs a restaurant double. The business must pay for that employee as well as the one stepping in to cover their shifts. The American Families Plan will create a national, comprehensive paid family and medical leave program to ensure that workers receive partial wage replacement from the government. That would allow our industry’s workers to take the time they need to care for themselves and their families and then get back to work.

It’s easy for all of us to lament the hardships of the restaurant industry and to sing the praises of the hard-working folk cooking our food and pouring our wine. But it’s another thing altogether for us to unite and address these deeply rooted issues head on.

In 2020, tens of thousands of restaurants closed their doors forever and hundreds of thousands more are now barely hanging on by a thread. If we learned anything from the shuttered doors and empty tables, it’s that we cannot afford to simply go back to normal. We must do better. 

I’m thankful for the work that the Biden administration has done, and will continue pushing our elected officials and industry leaders to make meaningful changes, including by passing the American Families Plan. We must come together to protect some of the most vulnerable workers in our country—and when we do, we will also be protecting our most treasured spaces for gathering and breaking bread together.

Elizabeth Turnbull is the owner of COPA in Durham. Comment on this story at [email protected]. 

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