Popular North Cape restaurant won't open this year thanks to staffing shortage
CBC
A popular destination in North Cape, P.E.I., isn't opening this summer due to staffing shortages — and they may not be alone.
Anne Arsenault is the general manager and CEO at Tignish Initiatives, the non-profit development corporation that owns the Wind and Reef restaurant. The restaurant is leased to a tenant seasonally to run daily operations.
"If you don't have a cook, you can't operate a restaurant, obviously," said Arsenault.
"We have beautiful facilities here, but we just don't have the human resources at this point to operate them."
Arsenault said the group thought it had secured tenants to run the restaurant for the 2022 summer season, but they recently backed out.
"At the end of the day, it was actually labour shortages," said Arsenault.
"I believe that that really made the difference because they decided to go a different route, which required less employees. I think they were a little scared away by the fact that they may have some difficulty filling positions."
It's something those who ran the restaurant last year struggled with as well.
Sandra Arsenault, one of the people who took on the role, said it was impossible to find anyone to work in the kitchen.
"We advertised for cooks. We offered up to $20 an hour and never even got as much as anyone contacting us or calling us about a position," said Arsenault.
She said that left her and her partner filling that role themselves, coming in at 7 or 8 a.m. every day to prep, then opening the restaurant from noon until 9 p.m.
"We certainly didn't see any of the summer," said Arsenault.
"It was extremely hard. We missed out on lots of fun family things. We went in knowing that we were going to be putting hours in and stuff like that, but we didn't get days off or evenings off or anything. We were always there. We were exhausted all the time."
To keep the doors open last summer, the pair worked non-stop and recruited family and friends to help out — who would come in and work at the restaurant when they finished at their own full-time jobs.
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