During a worker shortage, it's especially difficult for small businesses to compete with national chains
Workforce issues here in the North Country have mirrored the nationwide worker shortage. There are just not as many people looking for jobs as there are jobs available. Corey Fram is with the Thousand Islands International Tourism Council.
“And service industry jobs tend to ramp up around this time of year in Northern New York State. And we know that our businesses are not going to be able to fill them as they had in the past.”
As we enter the summer tourism season, we have the story of one small business in Lewis County that couldn’t survive the worker shortage.
A Croghan institution
Josh’s Riverside Restaurant was one of the few places to eat in Croghan, a small village of about 600 located just north of Lowville. It was a family style place that seated about 90. From the back deck you could see the Beaver River while you ate your prime rib or licked an ice cream cone, says Joshua Halko.
He owned the restaurant with his husband, Justin Hall, who says the restaurant was a gathering place. “One of the things people always said is this place is welcoming. It’s warm, and it’s inviting.”
Halko and Hall are both 40 and live in Carthage. Josh Halko ran the restaurant full-time, and Justin Hall helped cover shifts after school and on weekends. He teaches a veterinary practice program in Watertown.
The couple bought the restaurant in 2016 from the former owners. It was called Schulze’s before, and Josh had worked there for years. They were taking over a town institution. They remodeled the place and re-did the menu, and opened back up as Josh’s Riverside Restaurant.
Steady business but not enough staff
Owning his own restaurant was Josh Halko’s dream, and he says business was always good.“We went good and strong right through COVID. If we were to open back up tomorrow, we would do wonderful again, we had a good solid customer base.”
As one of the only sit down places for miles around, they had devoted regulars, they also caught tourists. But they closed in August of last year, during the height of the summer season.
Halko says it came down, quite simply, to staffing. “That's what shut us down really.” Hall says the staff they did have “was fantastic. It was just we needed a few more and just couldn't get them.”
Pre-pandemic, the restaurant employed about 15 staff in the summertime. All last summer, they got by with just ten, including both Halko and Hall, though the restaurant itself was as busy as ever.
Overall, 2021 was a really active year for Jefferson County, according to the county’s tourism council, with overall occupancy rates and sales tax up from the last pre-pandemic year, 2019.
Halko and Hall say they always had help wanted signs up in the windows, and they also advertised online and used social media to try to find new workers. But they had very little luck, says Hall.
“I want to say maybe in the year we got probably what, five resumes? And some of them were kids, like 14 or 15. And we're like, ‘well, we do need you, but you can't do certain things, you're not allowed to.’ We would try to get them in to be the dishwashers and rotate people around.”
Unable to compete with corporations and chains
Josh’s Riverside Restaurant was competing for the same, limited pandemic workforce that everyone else was, and Croghan is pretty far from bigger population centers. As the crunch got worse and wages started to rise, and quickly, they couldn’t keep up with national chains.
“We had a hard time competing. I think we lost two employees to McDonald's. They could just offer them more,” remembers Hall.
Halko says they looked at raising their hourly wage, but they were already paying well above the minimum wage - $9 dollars an hour for waitstaff, plus tips, and $13.50 an hour for cooks.
Chains around them, like Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s, were offering around $16 an hour “for people just walking in off the street,” says Halko. “And they were still struggling to find employees. So what chance did we have?”
Hall says being such a small family establishment, they couldn’t offer a wage hike like that “without raising the price of every single thing on our menu at least $1, $2 or more.” That wouldn’t fly in a small town like Croghan, says Halko. “People will just say forget it, I'm not eating there anymore. I'm not going to buy a $12 burger.”
Deciding to close
In August of 2021, after a few of their college-aged staff returned to school, the restaurant was down to just a handful of employees. That’s when they decided to close. It had been a hard year and a half, and they were tired.
Halko got a job managing the cafeteria at Watertown High, and the couple has mostly moved on. The restaurant is up for sale. Its absence has left a hole in Croghan, says Justin Hall.
“I feel it hurt the community a little bit. We get asked almost on a weekly basis. Are you guys going to open up when you can open it back up? Have you heard anything about someone buying?”
The couple says they’d also love to see the doors open again. They’ve thought about reopening the restaurant themselves, but decided against it. They hope someone else can figure out the small business and worker shortage puzzle that they couldn’t.
