Tim Horton's is offering to pay employees $16 per hour for an overnight shift. (Twitter/@NiyithowNapew)

By Teena Monteleone

Labour shortage

Fast-food franchises raising wages in tight labor market

Nov 4, 2021 | 5:00 PM

The owner of two Tim Horton’s restaurants in Prince Albert is offering significantly more than minimum wage in an effort to fill vacant positions.

Minimum wage in Saskatchewan currently sits at $11.81, but Cheryl Sander is offering $16 per hour – a premium rate for an overnight shift. Her starting daytime wage is also above minimum at $14.10.

“It’s a tough labour market in Prince Albert. We don’t have the large number of candidates that say Saskatoon has — they have more people to choose from. So, I know after ten years in the business, if we can get good candidates starting a few dollars more an hour, it makes more sense than spending money having to train new people over and over again,” Sander told paNOW.

Bringing in foreign workers has also been a huge benefit for Sander. She said without them, she’d never be able to fill all her positions.

“We are able to sponsor our employee’s family members to come over and work for us and that’s amazing and they appreciate that and stay with our company.”

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But not all restaurants have been able to offer higher wages or find the finances to sponsor foreign workers.

Vice President of Western Canada for Restaurants Canada, Mark Von Schellwitz said by nature, food service is a labour-intensive industry and finding staff, let alone staff with the applicable skills and experience, was already becoming difficult even before the pandemic started.

“Just to put this in perspective, before the pandemic in the industry we already had about 60,000 vacant, unfilled positions and following the pandemic, according to Statistics Canada, we now have 130,000 unfilled positions in the industry.”

Von Schellwitz said the reason for that is primarily demographics. If we had the same teen workforce participation now as we did in 2008, he said there would be more than 100,000 additional workers in Canada’s labour market.

“There are geographic challenges as well. Younger people entering the industry are more concentrated in urban environments which makes it even more difficult in smaller towns and rural areas…there just aren’t a lot of young people to hire,” he said. “And that just got worse with the pandemic because members couldn’t give staff regular hours so people in the industry started working elsewhere or moved to other industries.”

To get people back, food franchises are offering higher wages, referral bonuses, benefits and things like free staff meals. But if they can’t attract the labour, Von Schellwitz said members are having to close certain hours or even days because they don’t have enough staff to be fully operational.

Trent Kachur is the owner of Dairy Queen in Prince Albert. Most of his staff are paid above minimum wage but he too is finding it difficult to attract enough employees. Throughout the pandemic, he’s mostly just run his drive-thru and closed the restaurant for dining in.

“That’s primarily for the safety of our fans and staff, just to keep everyone as safe as possible. But when we closed the inside of the store, there is some economic repercussions as far as your sales go, but that was something we were prepared to do.”

Kachur doesn’t believe the tight labour market will last. With the price of food and fuel on the rise, he said people will need to go back to work eventually.

“With Trudeau’s CERB coming to an end, hopefully everything will straighten around and the labour market will get a little stronger.”

Von Schellwitz agrees CERB was a factor in the labour shortage.

“Why work if the government is paying you not to work,” he said.

But now that its being limited to people in actual shutdowns, Von Schellwitz doesn’t think it will be a factor going forward. Instead, he said there needs to be longer term solutions because there just aren’t enough people entering the workforce.

“According to our latest survey, we still have 80 per cent of our industry that is still losing money or barely breaking even. So, this comes at the worst possible time when they are trying to get back their sales. Of course, a lot of members borrowed money to keep operating and these increased labour costs aren’t helping the situation.”

Von Schellwitz said what is really needed is a federal food service or tourism and hospitality stream for immigration for temporary foreign workers that specifically addresses the realities of the food service business.

In the meantime, restaurant owners like Sander and Kachur are hoping their increased wages will help fill vacant positions and that customers return like they used to.

“It’s been a difficult year for every small business whether you’re a restaurant or sporting goods store,” said Kachur. “Stay offline shopping this year and support local as much as you can.”

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Teena.Monteleone@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @MonteleoneTeena