Thomasina Miers: "We could open more restaurants if we had the staff"
The restaurateur and former MasterChef winner has also warned that restaurants face a future without week night and Sunday dining as the hospitality staffing crisis deepens.
Speaking in the latest Hospitality Rising podcast, Miers described the challenges her Mexican restaurant group faces due to not having enough staff. “Quite simply, we can’t take as many bookings,” she said. “We have people wanting to have bookings at our tables, and we don’t have enough staff. However, we could feed more people, open more restaurants, and create more jobs if we had the staff to do it.
“Sadly there is a massive shortage of staff. I think the future of restaurants is in a crisis right now. Unless culturally something shifts in this country, we won’t be able to get to that amazing service. Monday nights, Sunday nights, Tuesday nights, forget it - restaurants will be shut because there just aren’t enough people to support the industry.”
Miers, along with fellow chefs including Tom Kerridge, Angela Hartnett and Raymond Blanc OBE, is backing the Hospitality Rising campaign, Rise Fast, Work Young, launched to help fill the industry’s 400,000 vacancies. “I am 100 per cent behind what Hospitality Rising is doing,” she added.
“Until we tell people, and people really understand, that working in hospitality is infectiously creative, engaging and feels amazing, things aren’t going to change.
“Young people should work in hospitality because it’s the fastest way for people to skill themselves up with people skills, managing skills accounting skills, finance skills and it’s the fastest way to run your own business.
“This industry is made up of a lot of very bright, very creative, energetic, brilliant people – and if they could all come together and harness their collective talent pools and get up and go – we can make real change here.”
Hospitality Rising has so far raised £850,000 to fund a wide scale recruitment campaign for the hospitality sector.
