Bavarian hosts are plagued by staff shortages: "It's scary"

Created: 06/09/2022, 20:50

By: Armin Forster, Andrea Beschorner, Bastian Amann, Helmut Hobmaier

Hosting their guests is currently difficult for many innkeepers in the region.

It's not because of the motivation.

© picture alliance / dpa

The gastro crisis also affects the district of Freising: How did the hosts there get through the "summer of the century"?

An inventory.

District

- Closed restaurants, more days off - the blatant shortage of staff in the catering trade is making headlines all the time.

At the end of the outdoor season, the daily newspaper asked the innkeepers: How did you get through the summer?

Shortage of staff in gastronomy: Employees switch to Munich Airport

Thierry Willems, the head of the Bräustüberl Weihenstephan, got bad news at the start of the season: three service employees resigned and switched to the airport, “who had been waving big bills”, as Willems puts it.

But one came back, and then Willems was also able to sign reinforcements.

"The fact that we invested a lot of money in staff apartments early on, in 2016 and 2017, has now secured our survival," says the Bräustüberl boss.

"Otherwise we wouldn't have made it."

As it was, however, one got through well and even mastered a “summer of the century” for the beer garden.

"It was hard work for everyone," reports Willems, "there was no longer a rain break, as there used to be.

It went through toujours.”

A magnet for beer garden fans - even from afar - is the Bräustüberl Weihenstephan.

Boss Thierry Willems has mastered the season because he converted parts of the building into staff housing years ago, giving him a competitive edge on the job market.

In this way, he was also able to recruit new trainees.

© Lehmann

Gastro crisis: Young people would like to work longer, but are not allowed to

Thanks to the available apartments, it has also been possible to hire trainees, even from France.

However, Willems is aware that only a few of his gastro colleagues can afford such real estate investments.

In general, the situation in the catering industry is “worrying, even frightening”.

And the crisis is affecting all sectors.

“There are no more electricians, no carpenters, no tax consultants.” Many negative factors come together: low birth rates among young professionals, a glut of pensioners and the decreasing willingness to “work long hours and at uncomfortable times”.

During Corona, many forces had migrated and no longer wanted to "return to hell gastronomy, with work in the evening and at the weekend".

Willems says: “But the pinnacle is our own legislation, which prohibits young, hard-working people from working longer hours.

I have some young workers who want to work 10-12 hours a day and I would like to pay any overtime hours too.

But: You mustn't.” And that in Germany, which worked its way out of the deepest crisis after the war with immense diligence.

"Our laws here are a disaster," says the restaurateur from the Nahrungsmittelberg.

Shortage of staff in gastronomy: got through well despite bottlenecks

"Well staffed would be an exaggeration," says Günter Maisberger, owner of the hotel of the same name at Neufahrner S-Bahn station.

But as far as the personnel situation is concerned, he cannot complain at the moment.

"We always have hot meals.

That's why we're double staffed anyway," explains Maisberger.

It paid off that “no one was exhibited” during lockdown times.

However, according to Günter Maisberger, there is currently nobody on the job market – “that applies to the kitchen as well as to the service”.

And so you're happy when the beer garden outside is as full as it was this summer.

But because the hotel employees also want to go on vacation, bottlenecks can quickly arise.

Maisberger: "Nevertheless, it is of course nice to see how people are pushing outside again - no matter where." Even at the in-house wine festival there were more guests this year "than actually ever before".

The gas and electricity crisis is not yet a big issue at Gasthof Maisberger.

"We don't even know what we're going to face in terms of cost increases or shortages," admits the boss.

But it is probably inevitable that by 2023 at the latest something will come to the family business.

Because: "A few decades ago, we switched almost the entire supply to gas." Electric cooking is only used in the kitchen.

But these days you have “too much work” to think about the topic.

Michael Jungbauer, landlord of the Gasthof Sempt in Spörerau (Wang), looks back on a “very good” three to four weeks.

The months before that, in terms of the number of guests in the restaurant, beer garden and hotel, were almost at the pre-crisis level.

"This year we had the catch-up weddings of 2020 and 2021."

Gastro crisis: host frustrated - guests have no understanding of the situation

However: "In order to be able to cope with this in terms of personnel, we had to skip Sunday lunch twice." The catering on Sunday evening was also given up.

"During the pandemic, the life situations of some temporary workers changed - from moving to retirement, everything was there," says Jungbauer.

“This year we filled in the gaps with part-time students as best we could.

We were able to get the permanent employees through Corona, some with short-time work.”

But the situation is tense - "like everyone else in the industry," complains the landlord.

"In between there are always absences due to illness, only today a lunch worker had to cancel because she is positive." The uncertainty and the bottlenecks in personnel planning, which his wife Renate takes care of, are "simply annoying".

What the Gasthof Sempt particularly hurts: "We haven't booked a single wedding date for next year," reports the restaurateur.

"We could take reservations on a large scale, but we definitely don't want to accept - and then have to cancel again.

We are now on hold and are looking for employees first.”

If everything doesn't run smoothly and perfectly, then the big complaint comes straight away.

Don't people see what's going on in the world?

Host Michael Jungbauer

The host finds it “terrifying that some guests have no understanding of our situation.

If everything doesn't run smoothly and perfectly, then the big complaint comes straight away.

Don't these people see what's going on in the world?” Michael Jungbauer asks in frustration.

"Of course we have to pass on rising prices to the guests, we can't cut it out of our ribs and want to pay our employees well.

Everyone has to realize that the times are over when roast pork costs less than ten euros.”

Gastronomy in crisis: online reviews without understanding

A guest on Google recently complained publicly about the fact that this currently costs 14.20 euros in the Gasthaus Sempt, as Jungbauer explains.

"Then he described himself as a bread dumpling specialist and accused us of buying our dumplings ready-made or making them from breadcrumbs." Jungbauer can only laugh ironically.

"What nonsense.

If he were a specialist, he would know that this is not possible.

And if he reported his criticism directly when he visited, he could personally see how the dumplings are rolled by hand in the kitchen: with fresh ingredients and regional eggs.” is another bad habit the industry has to deal with.

However, the landlord doesn't like painting everything completely black either.

"Working in gastronomy is actually a lot of fun and it was a really nice last six months." You just have to adapt to the new circumstances.

The effects of the energy crisis, Michael Jungbauer believes, will only have an impact after the holidays.

"Thank God we have a broad base with heating oil, solar thermal energy and wood and can cushion quite a bit."

Shortage of staff: Schuhbauer makes the guest responsible

For Benedikt Schuhbauer, the lack of staff in the catering industry does not come as a surprise.

The head of the traditional Oberwirt restaurant in Kirchdorf, the Tenne in Kirchdorf and the Schuhbauer am Dom in Freising therefore reacted to what he calls the “huge problem” even before the pandemic: “We have adjusted our opening hours to a four-day week introduced and tried to generate working time models that make it attractive to work for us." The result: "We were able to keep most of our staff through the lockdowns and the pandemic - we have problems, yes, but no more than before."

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

Schuhbauer emphasizes that the times when a six-day week was commonplace for employees in the catering and hotel industry are over.

"And that's a good thing!" The consequence is that not only the employers in the catering industry have to adapt, but also the guest.

The availability that has been taken for granted in the past decades is finally a thing of the past.

"As a guest, you could choose where you went to eat seven days a week." That, combined with an exaggerated sense of entitlement, such as how quickly the food has to be on the table, has made the industry increasingly unattractive as an employer to let.

Eating out should be something special again

Now the time has come to show more appreciation to the employees of the catering trade as a guest.

On the one hand in the form of a polite conversational tone.

And then, of course, about the tip.

"And we hosts urgently need to invest more money in our employees so that we can keep them," says Schuhbauer.

In order to be able to pay the staff appropriately, it will be essential for eating out to become what it used to be: "luxury".

You can find more current news from the district of Freising at Merkur.de/Freising.