A Remote Resort Town Struggles To Find Restaurant Workers For The Summer Season

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/07/ [login to see] /remote-resort-town-struggles-to-find-restaurant-workers-for-summer-season
When dinner service gets into full swing at Jack Sprat, the kitchen and waitstaff hit their groove, making and serving dishes such as roasted beet galette and maple bacon crème brûlée.

But for much of the past year, that wasn't the case inside the small restaurant that sits at the bottom of a ski hill in Girdwood, Alaska.

"When quarantine first happened, there were new rules and new restrictions," says head chef Lindsay Kucera, "but people were expecting the same level of service from us. And we really needed a little grace."

The pandemic shuttered an estimated 110,000 restaurants, either permanently or temporarily, across the United States, according to the National Restaurant Association. Jack Sprat was one of them. Now it has reopened and is having trouble finding enough staff to return to pre-pandemic hours of operation.

The restaurant serves what it describes as "fat and lean world cuisine." You can order Korean bibimbap, a deep sea curry with halibut or a cheeseburger with a zesty poblano aioli. Pandemic lockdowns meant Kucera had to shift from in-restaurant dining to filling takeout orders.