The reasons of The shortage

Culinary World , 2029

Everything was going really well. The economic crisis had passed, our jobs were safe, and our businesses were thriving. Then 2020 arrived with a bang!

COVID-19 came, not to visit but to stay. People were asked to stay home, and restaurants and hotels around the world closed as per governmental regulations. People were left with smaller wages or no wages at all.

Fast forward to 2023, our industry is back to full operation, but something is missing. Something really important is missing, and that something is nothing less than the greatest resource of them all – human resources.

I’m positive that employers never thought of that, never feared this outcome, and never believed that we would be where we are now. But this is where we are, and I’d like to address the issue.

The first thing that we all need to understand is that quarantine gave us all (the industry’s employees) something we never actually had – time! Time came to be the most important thing in our lives, as soon as we got to know it.

We were used to working long hours and never being there for important events/holidays. Heck, during the first year of the quarantine, I didn’t actually know how to act with all this time in my hands. I got to learn, among others, about HTML, Photoshop, Illustrator, and designs. I got to spend time with my spouse. She gave birth to an amazing child, and we had all the time in the world to get to know each other better than ever.

Then the COVID-19 mess was behind us, and we were back to all the issues of being a worker in this industry. That’s why a lot of us decided never to come back, which created a shortage never seen before.

Is there a solution? Who knows? I’m still here, cooking day in and day out, with clear goals and clear visions. It might be a struggle sometimes, but let’s be honest – none of us can do boring.