TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Across the Tampa Bay region, the dearth of hospitality workers continues to dominate local news headlines, and employees, owners and managers alike have taken to social media to bemoan a shortage of job applicants.

Locals posit numerous reasons for the insufficiency, from the sheer number of new establishments to lingering COVID fears. Many in executive positions, however, still assume that potential workers are staying home and living off of unemployment compensation and stimulus payments—though some believe in a multitude of circumstances.

“I think it’s related to the unemployment opportunities people are getting more than anything,” says Matt Loder, Sr., CEO of The Original Crabby Bill’s Seafood Restaurant and Family Brands, whose flagship concept on Indian Rocks Beach is celebrating 38 family-owned years in business on April 28. “We’re experiencing the same problem that many businesses are. We’re having a difficult time finding enough staff, but so are our suppliers—truck drivers, wholesalers, senior staff. It seems like every business is encountering the same problems.”

Loder says some of his restaurants are operating at reduced hours, and that one has closed entirely.

“We would normally have breakfast seven days a week [at Crabby Bill’s], and currently we’re only doing Saturdays and Sundays,” he says. “We’re not doing late nights, we’re closing at midnight right now. We just don’t have the manpower.”

He is quick to point out that unemployment and stimulus payouts aren’t the only problem, however.

“This past year was a reset for a lot of people,” he says. “They’re changing up jobs, they’re changing relationships. If you were doing this job until you got into your primary career, you might have gone ahead into your primary career now.”

"I think there’s a variety of reasons that we’re seeing [a shortage], certainly," says Dannette Lynch, regional director for the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. "We have people that have during this period done career changes. We have people that are receiving unemployment and other things and are going to ride out on that until they are able to go back to work. I think that within the industry we’re now seeing all kinds of creative shift opportunities, and we’re seeing different rates of pay and different bonus increases and things to attract as many as people, and some of it’s a shift in how people have chosen to go back to work, so it’s a variety.”

Longtime St. Petersburg resident Bruce Jones, 46, is one of those people. He’s a familiar face to St. Petersburg nightlifers from his work behind the bar at such locations as Sly Bar (now Taphouse 61), The Amsterdam, Room 901, Iberian Rooster and new, uber-hip speakeasy The Saint. 

When the pandemic first shut things down, Jones supplemented his income through various means, including setting up an underground booze delivery service after basically buying out a liquor store that was going out of business. The permanent closing of Room 901 and a long-distance relationship with his wife convinced him to join her in Denver and take a job in the medical field.

Jones, a certified nursing assistant who just needs to sit for his boards to earn his licensed practicing nurse status, supposes some might indeed be staying home and trying to live off of unemployment.

“I think there’s some truth to that, it’s unfortunate but I think that is a factor on some levels,” he says. “But there are also people who don’t want to just sit at home and collect unemployment. And of course that’s gonna dry up.”

Marianne Dawson, 43, who worked as a bartender and server in Tampa for years before the pandemic, believes that fear of exposure is still a huge factor in the reticence to return to an industry which sees them in such close proximity to so many.

“There’s a huge element of fear, there’s a huge part of the population that’s not ready to be around people,” she says.

Former Tampa hospitality worker Marianne Dawson. (Courtesy Marianne Dawson)

Dawson returned to her job at Tampa’s New World Brewery as soon as the establishment reopened at a limited capacity, sometimes making as little as $13 a day in tips. She also returned to her gig at bar and restaurant Zydeco Brew Werks in busy, party-prone Ybor City, but the overall environment just didn’t feel safe to her.

“It was literally the first week, they told me they were going to have live music out on 7th Avenue [where Zydeco is located],” she says. “I didn’t feel even remotely comfortable. It was like ‘Hello, isn’t it a little soon?’ Honestly, I just didn’t go back, because I didn’t think it was right.”

Unable to support her family working shifts at one restaurant, Dawson found a telecommuting job selling health insurance to senior citizens last June; she’d been on unemployment, but says with a laugh that she didn’t receive any money from the state until she was about to get the job. She had “ethical misgivings” about the work she was doing at the insurance firm, and continued to send out resumes until being hired by online car-sales company Carvana early this year.

“There’s no way someone who was a server or bartender would choose to collect that sad unemployment instead of working,” she says. “That weekly check, I could probably make in one day pre-COVID.”