The Ukrainian restaurant business faced the problem of staff shortage due to mobilization and emigration. Lack of workers and staff turnover force restaurant owners to look for new approaches.
In 2024, employers began to talk about a serious shortage of personnel. At the end of spring, a post by Anna Zavertaylo, co-founder of the Zavertaylo chain of restaurants, about the lack of people in small and medium-sized businesses became viral (it received over four thousand reposts and over a thousand comments). In her opinion, people from the regular service will soon be worth their weight in gold.
Dmytro Borysov, the owner of the Gastrofamily restaurant chain, in an interview with MC.today, also confirmed that the labor market situation in Ukraine is not easy because of the mobilization.
"A large number of women who previously worked as cooks or waitresses left the country due to the full-scale war. Now the problem has increased due to the mobilization of men. But our team is stable, we will cope with these challenges," the restaurateur said.
At the beginning of June, the Ministry of Economy reported that more than half of Ukrainian companies faced the problem of finding qualified workers.
According to the survey, it is mobilization (67%) and migration processes (54%), according to company representatives, that are the main reasons for the labor shortage.
Restaurateur Volodymyr Yaroslavskyi said that it is difficult to hire staff now, there is a shortage of various workers for various processes, but most of all, it is qualified personnel. According to him, the situation is also worsened by the power outage.
