How do restaurant owners get staffers to work on holidays? Samantha S., St. Louis
In my restaurant ownership days (Harvest in Richmond Heights), we stayed open on Christmas Eve and on Thanksgiving night, an anomaly for independent restaurants at the time. Upon hiring, employees were notified of the possibility of having to work those shifts. We took volunteers and, especially since serving a prix fixe menu doubled the check average on those days, never had much pushback. In addition, my chef/partner Steve Gontram (owner of Five Star Burgers in St. Louis) would serve a lavish Thanksgiving family meal after closing. We also opened the bar and usually the wine cabinet. “Servers made bank on those nights,” Gontram says, and with a grin on his face, added that “they may or may not have lost a little bit of it to the kitchen in an after-hours dice game…I can’t recall.”
Andy Kohn, owner of the three metro-area EdgeWild restaurants, says that when employees are hired, the ground rules on working holidays are laid out. “We try to be flexible and satisfy special situations, and it always seems to work out," he says. Plus, those shifts are often short, which literally saves the day.”
Eric Vogel, owner of the three metro-area Walnut Grill restaurants, says that this is the first year he’s considered opening on Thanksgiving, serving a buffet from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the O’Fallon store, but only “just to see how it goes.” To incentivize the staff, he’s offering working managers an extra day’s pay and paying double time to non-tipped employees. Vogel routinely uses sign-up sheets for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and says he generally has no trouble getting volunteers. “They’re lucrative shifts,” he says. “Customers tend to quite generous on those days.”
Mark Hinkle—owner of Olive + Oak, The Clover and the Bee, and former general manager of McCormick & Schmick’s in Des Peres—says that when he worked 365-day-a-year restaurants, "it was a challenge to staff certain holidays. I’d look for volunteers first. From there, I’d just talk through it with people. Maybe they could work before or after holiday plans. Maybe they could work one holiday and not the next. Maybe it was a deal-breaker, and you’d just never hear from them again if you scheduled them. But at least I made the effort to make it work for them. Generally I survived without any casualties, especially since a lot of the time they knew I’d be working right there with them.”
Charlie Downs, co-owner of Cyrano’s, Sugarfire Smoke House, and Hi-Pointe Drive-In, was brief and to the point: “I hate to say this, but it’s true… Over the years, I’ve found that more than a few employees don’t want to spend that much time with their families on holidays and therefore don’t mind working.”
If you have a question for George, email him at gmahe@stlmag.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @stlmag_dining. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
