Perry Stone of Perry Stone Ministries, noted that the shortages are affecting restaurants in his hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee, a small city that gets a lot of visitors – including those coming in to visit his church services. (Related: More people in need of charity as food insecurity worsens.)
"So, we need as many restaurants open for the church folks coming in as possible," said Stone. He spoke with restaurant owners in the city, who noted that they are having difficulty receiving basic products that come from factories like chicken wings and pepperoni.
Stone warned that if the food shortages continue, people could start panicking, which will lead to people emptying the shelves of grocery stores even more. He noted that this happened in Cleveland during the outset of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown in early 2020.
"The shelves were empty," said Stone. "They bring a truck in, the shelves would be empty within an hour. They bring two trucks and the shelves would be empty, and so this is turning into a serious situation because the store shortages are making the prices go up much higher."
Restaurants are short-staffed, affecting customers and workers alike
Stone also noted how his restaurant owner friends are experiencing labor shortages. "They're having difficulty getting people to show up to work, some of them are cutting back on their hours," he said.
This situation is true for restaurants all over the country. Since the lockdowns that made the restaurant industry constrict, employment in the industry has recovered only somewhat. As of May, the industry is still short around 750,000 jobs – roughly 6.1 percent of its entire workforce – according to the National Restaurant Association.
"A restaurant we went to had open seats outside, but when we went to the host, they mentioned that the kitchen was short-staffed," noted Jeff Rothenberg, a fintech executive from California. "So although he had seating, he was going to put us on a 30-minute waitlist to be seated… I felt bad for the servers, because they were trying, but they could only do so much, not having enough cooks."
Other customers like Rothenberg have also noticed the decline in the number of available workers. In the first quarter of 2022, customers mentioned short staffing complaints three times more often in their reviews on the website Yelp compared to the first quarter of 2021. Mentions of long wait times also rose by 23 percent.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index also found that consumers were less happy with fast food chains this year compared with 2021. Customers were less satisfied with the speed and accuracy of their orders and the cleanliness and layout of restaurants.
Customer satisfaction for independent and small chain restaurants dropped. Satisfaction with national full-service chains dropped even higher, including Applebees, Olive Garden and Buffalo Wild Wings.
"It wasn't always like this," said Nev Wright, a healthcare worker from New Jersey. "Now it takes time, with expenses and shortages of staff and everything."
"We're not sure where all the workforce went, but a lot of them have disappeared, from managers to chefs to hourlies," said Dave Nicholas, a founding member of Alexandria Restaurant Partners, a group that owns and manages eight restaurants in Florida and Virginia. "Before, you could hire them as fast as you needed them. These days, that's not the case."
Learn more about the collapse of the American food supply chain at FoodCollapse.com.
Watch this video as Perry Stone discusses the shortages affecting America's restaurant industry, which is causing a domino effect that affects many other industries in the country.
This video is from the Winston Churchill Vitamin D channel on Brighteon.com.
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