The Botanist watched service peak over the summer. Owner Robbie Wilson tells KATU News the landscape is now changing.
"In the summer, you could not hire enough people to deal with how busy it was. I’ve never seen restaurants that busy. We would have 300 people on a wait list just to get in and now it’s the exact opposite," Wilson said.
The Portland restaurant owner said he's now worried about keeping his existing team, and paying them enough to cover cost of living.
"It’s getting to a place where you’re cutting people early and you’re looking at their hours going, 'Man, I really hope they stick around or else they’re going to be looking for another job,'" Wilson said.
Economists with the Oregon Employment Department said the recent spike in COVID cases was a major factor in September's slow job growth. Nationally, the monthly job gains were just under 200,000. That compares to 300,000 in August and a million new jobs in July.
Gail Krumenauer, of the OED, said that could impact customers too.
"With an increase in COVID, when we’re seeing those rising cases or recent spikes in cases, I do think that influences consumer behavior in public, interactive spaces," Krumenauer said.
Now Botanist is looking to make changes. They're considering a shift to customers placing orders on their phones, creating less of a need for servers.
"Trying to figure out how technology can help, I guess order and pay out on our own. We all know how to order things off Amazon and put things into a cart. There’s technology out there that kind of does the exact same thing only but with your food," Wilson said.
Despite the slowdown in job growth, Oregon economists say they're not worried about an economic downturn at this time.
"While we could be seeing shifts in consumer behavior, it’s not at the level where we would be alarmed about another recession occurring. Typically, when we’re in a recession period, we’ve seen several months of decline," Krumenauer said.
Moving forward Krumenauer said the declining surge of COVID cases could likely impact job numbers in the months ahead.