NORFOLK, Va. — Restaurant owners hope Governor Ralph Northam opens up the industry a bit more on Friday.
Some Hampton Roads restaurants are not hiring. 13News Now randomly called several restaurants and asked if they were hiring? Their responses are below:
“Not at the moment man we are. Through all the pandemic, we furloughed half of our employees right now.”
“We are not hiring at the moment.”
“Any positions open? Not at the moment. We’re kind of on a shortened crew anyway because of the coronavirus.”
Other restaurant owners in Virginia Beach and in Norfolk are hiring.
Olivia Gray is the director of operations for RZ Restaurants in Norfolk. Right now, they manage five restaurants and are getting ready to open another on Granby Street.
“And how many people are you looking to hire? Right now, we’re probably looking for about 30 across the board with a good mix of hosts, cooks as well as servers. Unfortunately when all this happened we laid off over 100 employees. So I’m really hoping many of our loyal staff do plan on returning to work," said Gray.
Virginia Beach restaurants took to social media looking for workers too.
Esoteric Co-owner Kristina Chastain explained they learned a lot from this pandemic.
“[We've] continued to work on what we can do better to have more curbside to go year-round," said Chastain.
She’s asking the governor for some change.
“We really asked him if we can be open with limited capacity by tomorrow, we have not heard back but we did sent a letter asking that," said Chastain.
One concern restaurant owners have is that some former employees may be getting paid more with unemployment.