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Richmond Restaurants Surge in Numbers, Struggle to Hire Employees

VCU CNS | January 20, 2020

Topics: Baja Bean, Bar Solita, Carlee Morse, Demi's Mediterranean Kitchen, Doordash, Dot's Back Inn, Jeff Allums, Jimmy Tsamouras, Max's on Broad, National Restaurant Assocation, RVA Hospitality, Tarrants Cafe, Uber Eats, Virginia Bureau of Labor Statistics, Virginia Department of Health

Twice the usual number of restaurants opened in Richmond last year, and owners are now finding that the city might not have enough cooks, servers, and bartenders to go around.

Significantly more food establishments opened in the greater Richmond area this year than any other year this decade, according to the Virginia Department of Health, which grants health permits for businesses to operate. As the restaurant market grows, so does competition among food establishments — not only for customers, but for quality employees. 

Since 2010, 62 food businesses have opened each year on average; this includes fast food, caterers, food trucks, full service restaurants, and other small food service establishments such as coffee shops or daycare facility kitchens. But as of Dec. 4, the VDH had issued 133 health permits — more than double the average — for food-related businesses to begin operating this year. Many restaurant owners are aware of the increase, and not only has it challenged them to maintain high standards over the food they serve, it also raises the competition for hiring personnel.

Employment of food preparation and serving personnel in Richmond increased 15 percent from 2010 to 2018, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year, restaurants and food establishments in Richmond employed nearly 54,000 people to work in the kitchen, wait tables, bartend or host — and they’re still hiring.

Via Pexels.com

“There just aren’t enough people to work in the service industry,” said Jeff Allums, owner of Baja Bean Co., which closed a location in Richmond in October and operates another in Staunton. “There’s still a lot of great professionals around, and quality of food is not necessarily the issue as much as when you talk service and things like that.”

Allums attributes this issue to a series of cultural and technological developments that have impacted the restaurant industry. He also recognizes that market growth offers more opportunities for employment, therefore restaurants are competing for the same personnel, and in some cases, several establishments have to share employees.

“There are a lot of places where they’ll have a bartender come in for one shift a week and then he’ll go to another bar for another day of the week,” he said. Allums said some restaurants have to use platforms like Snagajob, which allow owners to hire staff for a certain amount of time on a specific date, without knowing the person and having to pay a higher rate. “Even though services are changing the way people work, there’s no loyalty as a 40-hour work week.”

Tarrant’s Cafe, via RVA Hospitality

At the same time, Allums said food delivery apps like Uber Eats and Doordash attract some members of the population restaurants seek to hire, like high school and college students. The flexibility of working on their own time and for as long as they want are opportunities that the restaurant industry cannot always grant. So now, the competition for personnel is not only among local restaurants, but also among popular online services. Although food delivery may seem promising for a business, it can also negatively affect their operation and reputation, and benefit fast-food establishments.

The typical restaurant does not do take-out well because the food doesn’t taste as good when it’s eaten 20 or more minutes after it’s ready, Allums said. “You order an enchilada platter for me or something, it’s not as good unless it’s less than two minutes away from the kitchen,” he said. “In 2018, I was doing about $600 – $700 a week in Uber sales, and that is when all of the sudden McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, started to do those Doordash things and it plummeted.”

Popular restaurant groups like RVA Hospitality, which owns four restaurants — Bar Solita, Max’s on Broad, Tarrant’s Cafe, and Tarrant’s West — are not exempt from the insufficient labor force. Co-owner Liz Kincaid categorized finding high-quality staff as one of the most important issues that restaurants currently face, mainly because people are joining the workforce at an older age compared to years ago, reducing the total pool of potential employees.

“The fact is, you know, you let someone go, they’re going to walk across the street and get a job tomorrow,” Kincaid said. “The cards are in the employees’ hands, and I think in previous generations it may have been the other way, that big businesses or the business owner would have had an upper hand.”

Bar Solita, via RVA Hospitality

Both Allums and Kincaid mentioned that teenagers and young adults are not seeking jobs in the restaurant industry as often as in the past. This situation is a reality around the country and is expected to become a larger trend, according to the National Restaurant Association’s Research and Knowledge Group. In a report released in November, the data shows that from 2008 to 2018 there was a decrease of 1 million employees ages 16 to 19. Last year, 5.9 million people in that range worked for food establishments, and the association expects that number to drop to 5.1 million by 2028. The working population of 20-to-24-year-olds is expected to drop participation in the industry by half a million during the same period.

Volume of employees is important, but the issue becomes more prominent when addressing a lack of quality workers. Relationship marketing expert Michael Short, founder of the PRO Business Group Support in Richmond, also believes that finding quality staff is one of the top three challenges restaurants face in Richmond — along with marketing strategy and high competition.

Nobody wants to work as a server anymore, Short said. He said employees tend to feel discouraged by the uncertainty in scheduling — especially when they’re scheduled to work on traditionally slow nights — and not knowing how much money they could make each day.

“If you’re the server or the bartender scheduled for Monday or Tuesday night, you’re going to work making almost no money, and it’s hard to keep employees excited and enthused about their job,” Short said. “As a server … you’re generally not paid a significant hourly wage and you really rely on the tips. And a lot of times, folks forget that and it’s hard to find people that want to work.”

Chef Jimmy Tsamouras, via Demi’s Restaurant

Another factor that affects the employees’ enthusiasm, especially early after entering the business, is the unrealistic expectations of the job. 

Most new employees don’t realize how much hard work it is to serve in a restaurant, according to Jimmy Tsamouras, owner and chef of Dot’s Back Inn and Demi’s Mediterranean Kitchen. “They think it might be easy, and then they get into it and realize how grueling and how hard it is, and they get turned off by it,” he said.

Restaurant server and bartender Carlee Morse also said the job is harder than people expect, but time and experience have helped her become more efficient and perform better. She is one of the employees restaurants have to share. Morse, a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University, managed to have a full-time job combining her shifts at Metro Bar & Grill and Tang & Biscuit in order to pay for rent, utilities, and groceries.

Although she enjoys her job, she admits that it can be overwhelming due to understaffing and high clientele. Morse said sometimes she waits tables for over 60 people at the same time by herself. She said in some cases new employees start working and a few weeks later they leave the restaurant.

Morse considered other options for work, like Uber Eats, but her interests are clear. “I personally like serving because you can make connections with people you meet on the job, which helps a lot later down the road,” she said.

Max’s On Broad, via Facebook

When it comes to getting a job as a server, Morse believes it is not an easy road but said restaurants might be having issues because of their hiring strategies.

“I don’t think restaurants do a good job about letting people know they are hiring,” Morse said. “Both of my jobs, I got just from calling around, not from seeing an ad or anything like that. A lot of times you have to seek it out yourself, instead of normal big companies where they will put ads out and say they are hiring.”

Richmond restaurants employed 16 percent of the total food preparing and serving personnel in 2018 in Virginia, according to the BLS. This labor group is the third biggest in Richmond, just behind office and administrative support, and sales-related occupations. The years 2012 and 2016 saw the biggest percentage increase in food preparation and serving employment, with 8 percent and 5 percent growth, respectively.

In a more general scope, over 15,500 food and beverage businesses operated in Virginia in 2018, according to a review of the National Restaurant Association. The total sales in the commonwealth exceeded $18 billion last year. The study estimates that the industry currently offers over 378,000 jobs, including all food preparing and serving positions, managerial and administrative roles. This number is expected to increase another 10 percent in the state over the next decade.

Written by Mario Sequeira Quesada, Capital News Service. Top Photo via Pexels.com

RVA #30: Capitol Waffle Pops Up Downtown, Nate’s Bagel’s To Open Fan Spot, & A Chat with Kabana’s Chef Mike Ledesma

Amy David | November 14, 2017

Topics: Belle & James, Capitol Waffle Shop, Chef Mike Ledesma, GOOD EATS RVA, Kabana Rooftop, Max's on Broad, Nate's Bagels, Passport Pop Ups, Patina, Perch, richmond restaurant group, RVA dine, rva food, Scott's Addition

Luncheonette Owner Brings Waffle-Themed Joint To Downtown

If you work near the Capitol and smell the alluring aroma of batter, sugar, and toasty goodness, you can thank Brad Barzoloski for that.

The restaurateur, who owns both Luncheonette spots, opened a new venture downtown on East Main Street at the beginning of September and it only serves one dish: waffles. You can walk into Capitol Waffle Shop any time of day through the week and build your own waffle with a variety of toppings and flavors for only $4.

Image may contain: food

“I wanted to open up a specialty food shop and I’d been kinda looking around for a building and the Financial District doesn’t seem to have much specialty food or anything that’s really different so that’s what I decided on,” Barzoloski explained.

The space has been home to Sugar Shack, a coffee shop, and a few others, but remained vacant for the last year. Every time Barzoloski would pass it, it would get his gears turning. “I know other businesses haven’t been successful in that building, but I kind of like trying something different,” he reasoned.

Besides offering something different to the movers and shakers downtown, Barzoloski said he wanted to offer something to patrons that his other restaurants didn’t. “The only thing breakfast wise that we don’t serve there are waffles, and people always ask about waffles. That location is actually very small, it’s already hard to keep the product we do have in available at all times so rather than putting something else in there, I literally just decided to open up a whole separate shop.”

And for those who’ve yet to venture into Capitol Waffle Shop, it’s not just your run of the mill place selling waffles slathered with butter and syrup. Of course, you can get those toppings, but Barzoloski wanted to shake it up a little, so the shop sells sweet and savory waffles as well as a combination of the two.

Image may contain: food

“There’s plenty of things you can do with waffles, not only can you do different toppings, but you can do different batters, rosemary waffles, a pretzel waffle, a red velvet waffle, pineapple upside down…,” he listed.

The shop sells savory toppings as ham, turkey, chorizo, chili, and gravy, to fruit, and on the sweeter side, Capitol Waffle offers everything from Oreos, to M&Ms, Sour Patch Kids, and Caramel. And the options don’t stop there.  “We have Ruben waffles, club waffles, a Coney dog waffle, waffles topped with sausage gravy and Doritos,” he listed. “We let people get creative and we also get creative ourselves.”

Image may contain: food

His shop boasts a regular menu of 20 waffles and the plan is to expand to 40 soon. In addition to waffles, Capitol Waffle Shop offers homemade dessert and local coffee blends from Black Hand, Ironclad, and Rostov’s.

The Luncheonette owner, which has locations in Shockoe Bottom and Northside, has never dabbled in waffles before, but so far the concept seems to have taken off. “This is a concept I really enjoy and the staff really enjoys and I plan to move forward with it, more of these specialty shops in other areas,” he said.

Image may contain: food

And if the above isn’t enough for you foodies out there, Barzoloski is already churning out another idea which he plans to unveil soon. Ice cream made by an employee from his Northside Luncheonette spot who is opening their own ice cream shop, will soon show up on the menu.  “Waffles topped with ice cream and then whatever toppings people want. We’re looking to roll out a whole dessert thing too for night-time,” he said.

The shop is open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 pm, but the owner said he plans to expand to weened hours soon.

Bagel Shop To Rise In The Fan This Winter

You’ve seen them at farmers markets. You’ve seen them at Union Market and Roaring Pines. You’ve probably even ordered some online. If you’re super into them, you’ve probably become a member of the club.

Well, for those of you who haven’t tasted Nate’s Bagels, you’re in for a treat. The first bagel subscription service and pop up shop to launch in Richmond will have a home of its own by next year.

Image may contain: food

Nate Mathews, who launched his bagel startup in May 2016, has been looking for a place to settle into from the very beginning.

“Early on, we decided we wanted to have a place,” Matthews explained. “That was always the goal. We really did want it to be in the Fan. It can be hard to find good real estate in the city.”

Mathews, Photo Credit: Jake Lyell

He landed a former longtime appliance repair shop, at 19 S. Allen Avenue, just recently after relentlessly scouting out locations in the area. “It was a lot of me spending two hours in my car driving around the city meeting with realtors. I wanted it to be in the city, but not downtown; I wanted to serve our city folks. It’s not out in the suburbs. I really think this location can feel like it’s been there for a long time.”

And while the subscription service is no longer available, people can still pre-order bagels through the website and most of the business now comes through regular pop-ups around town serving breakfast sandwiches and bagels in large quantities. “We have three throughout the week where you can buy bagels in bulk,” he detailed.

Mathews has pop-ups at Byrd House Farmers Market and Randolph Community Center on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at Roaring Pines in Church Hill, and The Veil Brewing Co. the second and fourth Fridays of every month, as well as Union Market and Outpost. “When we serve sandwiches, we serve about 40 to 50 customers and [at] the Farmers Market, we usually sell about 100 bagels,“ he said.

Image may contain: 1 person, sitting and indoor

Nate’s Bagel shop will be open seven days a week with seating for about 12, but mostly serve as a takeout place. All the bagels are hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and then baked on stone, and the menu will consist of 10 staple bagel flavors, though they will also be mixing it up with unique recipes. “We’ll always have really awesome creative bagels you’ve probably never had before rotating out,” he remarked. “We’re going to have a really good the birdseed bagel. It’s got chia, sunflower, poppy, and a little bit of toasted coconut. Seasonally, we’ll have a pumpkin spice bagel with pumpkin seeds on it. We’ve got a gingerbread bagel we do at Christmas.”

Image may contain: food

In addition to bagels, the shop will have eight cream cheeses including scallion, olive, plain, and veggie, along with breakfast sandwiches and lunch options that include lox, whitefish salad, and pastrami. Also available is coffee from Blanchard’s as well as out of town rotating blends, Nitro cold brew, Kombucha, and a line of house-made sodas. Mathews even said he has plans to work with a local brewery to sell a beer-boiled bagel.

All of the bagels will be vegan except for the jalapeno cheddar, and its extended vegan menu includes vegan cream cheese made with fermented cashews as well as vegan meats, vegan chicken soup, and vegan lox according to Mathews. “We’re going to have a good vegan sausage and good vegan bacon. We’re really looking to serve the vegan crowd for sure… and we want to give people the option of treating their body well if that’s how they feel.”

And while he took inspiration from New York bagel shops and made connections with entrepreneurs in the big city, make no mistake, Mathews stressed these aren’t the same as you would find in The Big Apple. “We’re not a replicating what is done in New York,” he stated. “This is a Richmond bagel.”

Mathews said he plans to offer discounts to VCU students, those who bike to the shop, and local musicians. If you are all three, do you get a triple discount? That remains to be seen.

Once the shop gets up and running, the plan is to expand with a catering service offering sandwich platters for parties and events. Online ordering for pickup and delivery will still be an option, but expect to see less of the pop-ups once Mathews opens his shop.

Look for Nate’s Bagels soft opening sometime in the winter and an official opening sometime in the spring.

Mike Ledesma:  A Chat With The Mystery Chef Behind Some Of RVA’s Most Successful Restaurants 

He may have managed to fly under the radar in Richmond’s culinary scene, but Chef Mike Ledesma’s resume is quite impressive. With 16 years in the industry, the chef has worked his way up through tough apprenticeships and fine dining, to developing menus for six restaurants in the Richmond Restaurant Group. Now, he’s multi-tasking at the helm of Kabana Rooftop, hosting pop-up dinners at Belle & James, and will soon open his own venture. RVA Magazine recently caught up with the busy, but laid back and sweet chef to get his backstory and find out why he decided to make Richmond home.

“I thought I could have a career as a cook in Richmond. I didn’t know the direction it was going to be,” he began.

The chef has lived and worked all over. Born in Brooklyn, Ledesma grew up in Annapolis and worked in finance in Baltimore for six years. Around 2000, he moved to Hawaii to contemplate his next move. He worked for the Bank Of Hawaii and Morgan Stanley before growing tired of the corporate grind and daily 9 to 5. Like so many other late starts, he decided it was time for a change, and entered an entirely different field.

“I chose being a chef because growing up in Annapolis, I used to work as a deckhand and that was a lot of learning how to sail, how to cook and entertain, bartend,” he remembered. “So I kind of drew upon that as a reference point.”

In 2001, he enrolled in culinary school at the University Of Hawaii Kapi’olani Community College. After working with restaurant veterans Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong in Hawaii, the two encouraged Ledesma to explore other locations if he wanted to branch out on his own. “That was their push for chefs to get more experience,” he explained. “There was actually a lot of chefs pushing me to learn more by going to these crazy apprenticeship programs.”

And so that’s what he did. He went to work at luxury resort The Greenbrier in West Virginia, cooking 20 hours a day alongside 150 chefs to hone his craft. “You would work service, and then you would have to go into cooking competitions,” he recounted.

Similar to Food Network’s “Chopped”, the apprenticeship program would give chefs mystery baskets and ask them to make meals from the ingredients. “Our judging would start at 5 in the morning so we’d work all through the night,” he detailed. “It’s like the military. They would put sweetbreads and all kinds of internal organs in it, and it would show you how much you don’t know about the ingredients, so that just made you study more and open[ed] your eyes to different cooking techniques.”

The grueling program paid off because it prepared him for the grind and the effort it would take for his career. “I got lucky by choosing the right restaurants and the right chefs to work under,” he said of the experience. “[It] just kind of propelled me to, ‘What am I going to do? What kind of chef am I going to be?’ They kind of prepare you for that. You have to have that fire and that drive though.”

After the Greenbrier, he worked stints at the Baltimore Country Club, The Belmont, and the Woodberry Kitchen, sometimes as a sous chef, before finally deciding it was time to make his next move.  “I just got tired,” he reasoned. “I wanted a change of pace. After being in Maryland, I didn’t want to cook there anymore, I was kind of feeling unmotivated,” he said. He drove around Maryland, Northern Virginia and other places in the states close by in search of his next gig.

Finally, Richmond Restaurant Group found Ledesma on Craigslist, which would build and grow his reputation in the foodie-obsessed city more than he predicted. Coming on as Corporate Executive Chef, Ledesma opened the second Hard Shell location in the Bellgrade Shopping Center in Midlothian, and from there, he went to work as a chef at Max’s On Broad, focusing on French and Belgian fare, followed by the relaunch of Patina Restaurant and Bar in 2014.

“Max’s was fun to open, super busy, and then I chose to go to the West End and be obscure for a bit and just cook,” he said of the move to Patina. “I just wanted to cook again. There’s no guidelines just cook food and have fun.”

Yearning to come back to the city, the chef joined RRG again in 2015. “I wanted to try to make a difference and figured I could do it with multiple restaurants,” he thought.  And the group, which owns East Coast Provisions, The Daily Kitchen & Bar, Pearl Raw Bar, and The Hill Café, gave Ledesma free reign, for the most part, to develop menus for each place for two years.

With a strong background in Asian foods, Ledesma said he tends to gravitate towards that, but also his time spent in West Virginia creeps into his style when creating dishes. When it comes to a menu already in place, however, the chef has his methods.

Kabana Rooftop

“I find that developing menus for an old restaurant, you have to kind of cherry pick, change out the dated ones,” he said of his process. “Also, realizing who you have on staff, you don’t want to lose your cooks if you’re trying to execute something too difficult. So, write a menu they can replicate and also do it consistently and take pride in it. I work with the cooks and figure out their style and go from there.”

Kabana Rooftop

After making his mark with RRG, Ledesma was itching to get his hands on his next project. An opportunity came up with owner Kunal Shah at Kabana Rooftop and he jumped at the chance. “We started doing pop-ups downstairs at Belle & James,” he said. Shah and Ledesma created “Passport Pop-Ups” where the food focuses on different ingredients, recipes, and traditional cuisines from around the world. To date, they’ve sold out the a la carte pop-ups for the Philippines, Spain, and Cuba.

Belle & James, Cuba Passport Pop-Up

Seeing his potential, his creative culinary skills, and the clientele he was attracting, Shah brought Ledesma on in July as head chef at Kabana Rooftop to revamp the menu. “It was all small plates and I feel like, for this view, you spend your time dining and enjoying it,” he pondered. “I think multiple courses you can take the menu and choose your adventure sort of. Kabana is very contemporary. I just try to match the cuisine with where we are.”

Belle & James, Cuba Passport Pop-Up

In addition to running Kabana’s kitchen and creating menus for these pop-ups, this madman is also getting ready to open his own restaurant in Scott’s Addition in the former Joy Gardens restaurant space. “[I’m] just trying to break out and take all these influences that I have and the fun places that I’ve cooked and put it in one place,” he described. “This is like a 16-year process of opening restaurants for other people and now I’m taking all this information and executing it.”

He couldn’t give any specifics on the name, but said it would be a reflection of the cuisine, which he could only tell us would be “eclectic, but approachable” with an homage to Joy Gardens because of its 60-year history. The rustic/industrial restaurant is slated to open sometime in January or February.

For aspiring chefs, Ledesma has some pretty straightforward advice.

“Have a lot of passion, it’s not about the money, just do your own thing and stick to what you believe in,” he instructed. “There are no shortcuts to success. It’s all hard work and blood, sweat, and tears. Always challenge yourself. To be a successful chef, you have to have a great team so my goal is to train all these cooks to be sous chefs and then be chefs to own their own restaurants, if they want, and then eat at their restaurants and really feel proud.”

Ledesma’s pop-ups run Friday and Saturday nights.

Editor’s Note: Since the magazine went to press, Ledesma has released more details about his restaurant. It will be called Perch and focus on Pacific-inspired flavors and Virginia comfort cuisine. It’s slated to open in February. 

Originally printed in RVA #30 FALL 2017, you can check out the issue HERE, or pick up your copy around town today. 

 

 

 

City to unveil Maggie Walker monument this Saturday

Jo Rozycki | July 12, 2017

Topics: Antonio Tobias "Toby" Mendez, Bistro 27, Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Jackson Ward, Levar Stoney, Maggie L. Walker, Max's on Broad, National Park Service, Public Arts Comission, RVA ARt, RVA Trolley, Studio Two Three, The Valentine, Untold RVA, Venture Richmond, Virginia Repertory Theatre

Maggie L. Walker, the first female bank president of any race to charter a bank in the United States, is getting her long-deserved recognition with her very own statue in Richmond. An unveiling ceremony and celebration for the highly debated monument will occur on Walker’s 153rd birthday, Saturday, July 15, at 10 am, at the intersection of West Broad and Adams streets, the entrance of historic Jackson Ward.

Artist Antonio Tobias “Toby” Mendez, Mayor Levar Stoney, city officials, members of the Walker family, and more attend the ceremony. Walking tours of Jackson Ward by the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, led by Leadership Academy students, will begin at 11am from the statue, followed by a reception at the house.

Photo credit: National Park Service

After the unveiling, attendees are encouraged to make a day around the neighborhood. Free trolley rides will be provided by Venture Richmond from RVA Trolley from Leigh to Belvidere to Marshall to 10th for the event. Many local business are participating in the event, offering giveaways, discounts, and more.

Studio Two Three will have the S23 truck on site with giveaways. The Valentine will offer free admission to those who show an event program. The Black History Museum & Cultural Center will offer cookies and special Maggie L. Walker displays. Max’s on Broad will open early at 8am for the event. Bistro 27 will offer 10 percent off that day to those attending the event, and will be open for brunch starting at 10:30am and dinner at 5pm.

Attendees are also encouraged to stop by Virginia Repertory Theatre to learn about the Walker Theatre, the first purpose built cinema in the area and the first public tribute to Maggie L. Walker in 1936.

To learn more about Walker’s accomplishments, call the number listed on any of Untold RVA installations located between Adams and 2nd which will be up for the unveiling.

The unveiling ceremony and following activities will occur rain or shine. 

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