#NYC eatery offers a week in Costa Rica to new hires

The fight for food industry workers is getting so heated that one desperate New York City eatery has gone so far as to dangle a free week in Costa Rica to potential job applicants.

Restaurateur Lamia Funti, behind Lamia’s Fish Market in the East Village, opened Skorpios with chef loannis “Yiannis” Chatiris in midtown Manhattan on May 19. And like most Big Apple restaurants, the Greek eatery has had trouble staffing up.  

Funti currently employs 15 people at Skorpios and is looking to hire an additional 20 people.

“It’s very difficult to operate now. We are open fewer hours because we don’t have enough staff, and even managers have to be more hands on — jumping on the floor when need be,” she said.

That’s when Funti began touting a free week at a beachfront ecolodge she co-owns near the Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. The weeklong stay at Igloo Beach Lodge (which will include food and drinks but not airfare) goes to any new Skorpios hire who stays with her restaurant for at least a year.

Since posting word of the tropical vacation on Instagram last week, Funti has received more than 100 work applications, which she is now sifting through, she said.

“We have to do what we have to do. It is really tough in New York now,” she said.  

The unusual food industry signing bonus comes as restaurateurs across the country struggle to staff up despite an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent.

Eatery owners point to enhanced pandemic unemployment benefits, including $300 weekly checks from Uncle Sam,  that stand to pay people as much as they would otherwise earn in a low-wage job.

“Unemployment insurance was necessary during the pandemic, but now it’s keeping people home,” said restaurateur Matthew Glazier. “I hear it time and time again.”

His Glazier Works, which operates Tiny’s and Morgan’s Brooklyn Barbecue — both in Brooklyn — just opened a Morgan’s outpost in Pennsylvania’s King of Prussia shopping mall.

The new restaurant seats 70 people inside and 80 people outside. But it hasn’t yet opened outside because there isn’t enough staff to cover the added seating, Glazier said.

He’s increased salaries by “30 to 40 percent,” but still needs to hire around 25 more people, and he just can’t seem to get there, he said.  

For now, Glazier is bringing in some of his most faithful New York staffers and housing them near the new location. It’s not a perk, it’s a necessity, he says.

“It really doesn’t matter what you do. We’ve offered everything from a $1,000 signing bonus if you complete 30 shifts to $200 for every time you bring in a new hire, but nothing works,” Glazier said.

“The King of Prussia mall even held a job fair, and no one showed up.”

Restaurateurs are also scrambling for workers in the Hamptons, where affordable housing for staff has all but disappeared, says Joe Realmoto, executive chef of the Honest Man Restaurant Group, which includes celeb magnet Nick & Toni’s and four other East End staples, from Rowdy Hall to La Fondita.

About a month and a half ago, Realmoto said he, too, held a job fair to find workers for the 30 spots he had to fill.

“A couple of people showed up. That was it,” said Realmoto, who has also advertised on Craigslist and worked with culinary agents — to no avail.

“Restaurants assumed that people who had lost their jobs during the pandemic would be floating around to fill jobs. But no one showed up,” Realmoto added.

Adding to the area’s woes are COVID-19-related travel bans and delays in processing J-1 visas for overseas workers, who normally swarm to popular beach areas like the Hamptons for work each summer.

To cope, some of the group’s restaurants are open five days a week instead of seven, and no longer serve lunch, Realmoto told Side Dish.

Japanese eatery Kissaki has also turned to hiring in other cities,  like Chicago to Miami and Washington, DC, for everything from hourly workers to managers, says owner Garry Kanfer.

But the restaurant group, which has been launching new restaurants left and right since last year, is still only half way to its total staffing goal with three weeks to go before the next restaurant opens.

Kanfer says he’s now offering fuel reimbursements for employees that carpool, free meals during the work day, complimentary snacks and higher hourly wages in hopes of staffing up.  He is also touting $500 to current employees who bring in new hires.

“We’ve never had such a period of unprecedented growth at a time of such immense shortages in the labor market,” Kanfer said. “It is challenging to say the least.”