By Tini Nguyen
Sasha Cederberg remembers the long lines at Milk In It when Cal Poly students were finally able to move back to San Luis Obispo, and the long wait they had to endure for their orders.
The ice cream shop and teahouse had suffered from being short-handed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s probably three people who work here that aren’t currently in school, and the rest are probably at Cal Poly or Cuesta, but during COVID, a lot of them left,” Cederberg said.
Despite that, Milk In It was able to thrive by cutting down on staff “because [they] just didn’t need everyone all the time,” Cederberg said.
Like many cities across the nation, San Luis Obispo experienced a labor shortage in the midst of a pandemic. However, many have been able to navigate their way through by cutting staff hours, having family members cover shifts, using third-party delivery services, and switching from part-time to full-time employees.
With San Luis Obispo being a college town, local businesses, especially those in the downtown area, are strongly dependent on the presence of Cal Poly students and their parents, according to Jim Dantona, president of the SLO Chamber of Commerce. When Cal Poly moved to a virtual format, businesses began to struggle as they were unable to draw in customers and find employees.
“We have a small community,” Dantona said, “and when we add the tremendous buying power of the students of Cal Poly, there’s a lot of good business to be done.”
Local restaurants certainly felt the absence of students during that time. However, some quickly learned to adapt. Now local businesses are showing signs of recovery and reporting a more consistent workforce.
“Most of our workers here are all Cal Poly students,” said Khoa Nguyen, front-of-house manager of @Bites, a Vietnamese restaurant located in University Square Shopping Center that opened in June 2020. “As long as there were students—if [they] were allowed to go to school, we had workers.”
@Bites is a family-owned business whose chefs are Nguyen’s uncles.
“We were fortunate enough that we had most of our family members here,” Nguyen said. “If we didn’t have the help of the students, we had our family. And we—the family—just had to take on extra shifts and work extra long hours.”
Now that Cal Poly students have returned to campus, @Bites is no longer in dire need of employees, Nguyen said. But they are always still hiring.
Insomnia Cookies had a different approach when it came to addressing its pandemic staffing problem. Since the bakery offers delivery and closes at 3 a.m, its main issue was a lack of drivers.
Their solution was to supplement their in-house delivery staff with a third-party delivery service, said Maggie Ronquillo, a part-time employee at Insomnia Cookies and nutrition junior at Cal Poly.
Panda Express on Foothill Boulevard also struggled with staffing early in the pandemic.
Katie Terou | Mustang News
At first, the manager did not want to cut staff hours, according to general manager Alexa Torres. The restaurant instead cut non-essential costs—like turning off music in the bathrooms and shutting off lights whenever they weren’t in use.
Torres said she and other Panda Express employees were well taken care of during the pandemic by their boss, Gwen Werede, who also came into the restaurants and helped. As their boss, Werede observes her employees and tells them how to improve rather than being on the floor herself.
“But since some places were so short-staffed, she would be the one cooking, she would be the one helping out the guest—rather than being the person behind-the-scenes,” Torres said. “She really stepped up and showed us what it means to be strong.”
To reduce staffing issues, Torres began to hire full-time employees instead of students, who she said tend to prioritize academics over their jobs and are less reliable.
“I would love for people, or for other places, to choose quality over quantity, because I believe that’s the reason that they’re struggling,” Torres said. “They put a person who doesn’t need the work, just kind of wants it. And then, they see that it’s too much for them. And then, they just end up quitting.”
