restaurant

Texas Restaurant Shuts After Staff Left for $5K Pay Rise: Labor Shortage

Robert C. Williams 5 hours ago
  • A Texas taco restaurant shut because it couldn’t find enough staff in the labor shortage, its owner said.
  • Staff were poached by bigger companies and job applicants didn’t show up for interviews, he said.
  • Restaurant staff have been leaving the industry in search of better wages and benefits.

A taco restaurant in Texas closed down after being left with just three kitchen workers, its owner told Insider.

Paul Horton, the owner of Taco Crush in McKinney, about 30 miles north of Dallas, said that larger companies had poached some of his staff by offering much higher wages, or benefits.

“I know we lost half a dozen that were offered an extra $5,000 a year to go somewhere else,” he said.

“Or even just benefits – being a small, independent business, I can’t compete with wages on bigger companies, let alone offer them any kind of benefits,”

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New restaurant report shows worker shortage affecting ‘guest satisfaction’ and sales

Robert C. Williams 23 hours ago

Black Box Intelligence, a Dallas-based restaurant analytics company, found a downturn in sales growth and customer satisfaction nationally, as well as in Dallas, for the month of August.

Sales growth dropped after two months of progressive growth in June and July, nationally and locally. To calculate sales growth, Black Box compared metrics to pre-pandemic numbers in 2019 from a data set that includes 30,000 chain restaurants in 25 cities. Sales growth nationwide was 6.1% in August, a 2% drop from July. The dip is likely due to the “rising number of COVID cases and wide media coverage of its delta variant,” the report states.

In Dallas, guest satisfaction fell, too. With the use of natural language processing, Black Box classifies online reviews into positive, neutral and negative mentions, and Dallas ranked 20th out of the nation’s top 25 markets for quality of service, and 21st in restaurant “ambience”.

Regarding

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One of Portland’s best Persian food carts will reopen with new Beaverton restaurant

Robert C. Williams 2 days ago

When Caspian Kabob, one of Portland’s best Persian food carts, closed at the end of 2019, the plan was to reopen someday with a full restaurant.

Nearly two years and a pandemic later, Victor and Tracy Darchini have finally broken ground on a brick-and-mortar location in Beaverton.

“I never thought I’d be able to do this, especially when COVID hit and things went really south,” Victor Darchini said. “But then the opportunity came and we took it.”

Victor Darchini taught himself how to cook after moving from Iran to New York City, where he had difficulty finding Persian food. After moving to Portland, Tracy encouraged Victor to turn his cooking skills — honed during summer vacations — into a food cart at the since-closed Southwest 10th and Alder pod. But despite the prominent location, Caspian Kabob’s cut-no-corners cooking style struggled to stand out in a sea of quick-service shawarma

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Top restaurant ‘gems’ named; 2 are in Indiana – WISH-TV | Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather

Robert C. Williams 2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS (Inside INdiana Business) — Online restaurant-reservation service OpenTable has revealed its top 100 Best Neighborhood Gems in America for 2021, and two central Indiana restaurants made the list.

OpenTable says the places that made its list contribute to the character of their neighborhoods and welcome diners in with “exceptional hospitality.”

The two Hoosier locales are Iozzo’s Garden of Italy, which is south of downtown Indianapolis, and The Italian House on Park in Westfield.

Open Table says the restaurants that made their list offer outdoor dining and have safe dining practices.

“The time to ‘dine on’ with safety top of mind is now,” said Debby Soo, chief executive officer of OpenTable. “With the proper precautions, we want people to get back to their favorite restaurants and support local businesses while enjoying the last bit of summer.”

The list of honorees was determined after analyzing internal data generated

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