KRQE NEWS 13 – Breaking News, Albuquerque News, New Mexico News, Weather, and Videos

Albuquerque restaurants search for solutions amid staffing shortages

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It’s another impact from the pandemic that doesn’t seem to be letting up. Restaurants are keeping up with customer demand while trying to find ways to deal with staffing shortages. Various Albuquerque metro restaurants are still having a hard time filling vacancies.

“I’m kind of surprised at the staffing shortage. You see all the signs; help wanted signs, everybody’s hiring but nobody can hire anybody, and to find good people is a really big challenge,” said Vinaigrette General Manager Evette Abeyta.


Story continues below


Restaurants like Vinaigrette and Duran’s Central Pharmacy say since the first shutdown of the pandemic, they’ve had to learn how to adapt to change and deal with loss in revenue as they combat the workforce crisis. As they reel from a loss of employees, businesses say they worry about customer service slacking and have required the limited workers they do have on hand to fill in on other positions.

Mitigating the measures even further, restaurants are continuing to limit capacity, closing off sections, and even reducing business hours whenever necessary. “What it’s caused us to do is on a continuous basis is rethink how we can do business. Today, we are a little short-staffed, people called out so we don’t have all our tables that we normally have,” said Duran’s Operations Manager Jay Guthrie.

On top of being short-staffed, businesses say the surge in COVID-19 cases makes matters even worse whenever a team member tests positive. Businesses even say with the challenges, the most important thing is that they are still able to stay open. Restaurants say they are also still facing supply chain issues and dealing with limited products.