Customer service suffers at short-staffed restaurants as Covid takes

Jeff Rothenberg has grown accustomed to long wait times at restaurants, even when tables are visibly open.

“Another restaurant we went to had open seats outside, but when we went to the host, they mentioned that the kitchen was short-staffed,” Rothenberg, an operations director at a California-based fintech firm, told CNBC. “So although he had seating, he was going to put us on a 30-minute waitlist to be seated.”

Rothenberg was on the 30-minute waitlist for nearly an hour, he said. Then, after he was seated, he waited another 45 minutes for his food to arrive.

“It was the type of experience that makes me not want to eat out as much,” he said. “I felt bad for the servers, because they were trying, but they could only do so much, not having enough cooks.”

It’s a scenario that has been repeated across the food service industry since the Covid pandemic began in 2020, and it’s taking a toll on restaurants and their staff, as well.

Lockdowns in spring of that year led to layoffs and furloughs for many cooks and waitstaff, prompting the federal government to back billions of dollars in forgivable loans for small businesses. The disease ravaged the U.S. workforce, killing more than a million people over the course of two-plus years while sickening many millions more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As states relaxed their restrictions, restaurant employment recovered, although the industry is still down 750,000 jobs — roughly 6.1% of its workforce — from pre-pandemic levels as of May, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Customers are noticing the difference. In the first quarter of 2022, customers mentioned short staffing three times more often in their Yelp reviews than in the year-ago period, according to the restaurant review site. Mentions of long waits rose 23%.

“I think the experience has been different since Covid. I see that the restaurant industry has changed a lot,” Nev Wright, a health-care worker, told CNBC outside Firebirds Wood Fired Grill in Eatontown, New Jersey. “It wasn’t always like this — now it takes time, with expenses and shortages of staff and everything.”

The American Customer Satisfaction Index found that consumers were less happy with fast-food chains this year compared with 2021 — the sector’s score slipped to 76 out of 100, from 78. Customers were less satisfied about the speed and accuracy of their orders and about the cleanliness and layout of the restaurant.

The customer satisfaction scores for independent and small chain restaurants also dropped this year, to 80 out of 100, from 81, according to ACSI’s annual report. Some national full-service chains saw their scores fall even more year over year: Dine Brands’ Applebees dropped 5%, Darden Restaurants‘ Olive Garden 4%, and Inspire Brands’ Buffalo Wild Wings 3%.