“Do you know what happened last weekend? Four defections among the guys in the brigade, to be handled at the last minute, and no one willing to fill in. So cooking left me and my right-hand man: 45 years old me, 47 him.”
It is a river in flood Alessandro Borghese, chef and TV personality who, months later, returns to denounce the lack of staff in restaurants. “But do you read the ads? I find a quantity of them every day: ‘We are looking for local professionals–chefs and sous chefs, wait staff, sommeliers, but there is also a need for bartenders, pizza makers, pastry chefs–to be hired on regular contracts.'”
In fact there is a growing tam tam of ads on recruiting platforms that have sprung up precisely for the purpose of scouting. All the more so now that we are learning to live with the pandemic. And so employment offers with real opportunities to enter the world of work are flourishing. The answers, however, are glimpsed with a glimmer. The skepticism of restaurant staff, whether starred or not, is a growing scourge: there is talk of a shortfall of nearly 120,000 permanent workers (Fipe data) who in the past two years have decided to change jobs, accomplices being the wearisome working hours and minimum wages. An entire industry is at risk.