Merivale trading collapses 20% as pub staff shortages hit right where it hurts

Merivale Group’s pubs, restaurants and hotels have been hit hard by staff shortage, costing the company 20 per cent in trading revenue.

Justin Hemmes’ hospitality empire is short 1000 staff members in his pubs, and he is not alone in feeling the pinch.

Fellow billionaire publican, Arthur Laundy, has never seen staff shortages this bad. Despite the lack of staff, neither Hemmes nor Laundy will go down the US hospitality route in offering $US1000 sign-on bonuses.

Hemmes has had to work his up-market restaurants, pubs and bars as well as two stadiums on reduced hours, with some venues dropping to five days a week from seven.

“We are completely undercooked across the entire industry,” said Frank Robert’s Merivale’s group operations manager, who estimates staff across the group is down at least 25 per cent on the usual 4500 Merivale employed.

This has led to a 20 per cent decline in trade.

“It’s affecting us enormously in catering for the Sydney Cricket Ground for instance,” Roberts said. “We have a chronic shortage of chefs, line level cooks, chef de parties, and a severe lack of hospitality staff, as well as sommeliers and professional waiters. We also have a lack of bartenders and a shortage of people entering the industry. We are stretched everywhere. As a consequence, our trading is 20 per cent off … and at such a fantastic time. We have never had such a fantastic time of people wanting to come to our venues.”

Roberts is hoping the new Federal Labor government can assist.

 “If you want to succeed you need customers and people to serve them,” he said. “We need varying degrees of skilled migrants to help us get there or we will linger in a post pandemic state for years.”

Laundy says the situation is the worst he has seen in 60 years.

“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” he said.

“Recruiting agencies are ringing hotels offering staff 10 per cent pay increases, they are poaching staff, it’s a fiasco, I have never seen anything like this.”

Laundy recently paid a recruiting agency $43,000 to bring in nine chefs from Nepal and the Pacific Islands to fill staff gaps.

At The Log Cabin Hotel in Penrith in Sydney’s outer west, Laundy said he had to teach 50-60 new staff how to pull a beer.

“You can’t do that in an hour,” he said. “We have 200 staff out there, and we could do with another 100 staff,” he told The Australian.

It was only recently that Laundy was able to open the hotel’s fine dining second floor restaurant having acquired enough staff. He will open the newly revamped Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel this week.

Laundy is currently looking for managers for at least five of his prime Sydney city hotels.

Hemmes and Laundy are lucky they have had the financial clout to survive, less endowed publicans have either closed or could face closure if the staff shortage problem isn’t addressed.

Irit Jackson, 2^nd June 2022