Restaurants face worker shortage due to pandemic

DOWNTOWN (KABC) -- Restaurants and bakeries that survived the pandemic are struggling to find workers.

A Chili's in Rancho Cucamonga had to close at 7 p.m. on Friday due to the lack of waitstaff.

While Village Bakery and Cafe in Atwater Village had the bandwidth to keep all of their employees that wanted to stay throughout the pandemic, owner Barbara Monderine said many of them left because they were scared.

"Our front-of-house staff were very young and they were here in the city without their families. So many of them chose to quit and to leave California and go back," said Monderine.

Vito Angiuli, the co-owner of Eastside Italian Deli in Downtown L.A., said they recently lost two of their oldest employees.

"We've had two employees that have retired been with us for over 25 years and that was devastating to us because we had to figure out and restructure things a little bit for ourselves," said Anguili.

Angiuli said they've managed to hire a few new workers but they're still looking for long-term employees.

A quick search on LinkedIn shows thousands of available jobs in the restaurant industry.

Anguli said they've posted jobs online but have been unsuccessful so far.

"We're not asking people to break their back or anything, but we definitely need help," he said.