Maureen Wallenfang
Appleton Post-Crescent
Published 7:13 AM EDT Mar 9, 2020
Boun Luangpraseuth sits in his new Thai Ginger Bistro, ready to open, save for an important missing asset: employees.
The restaurant at 1619 W. College Ave. in Appleton needs eight employees to open and so far has none. It has not had a single applicant.
Luangpraseuth has had signs on the door since July and a fluttering “now hiring” sign out front. He put fliers in the library and Fox Valley Technical College, and posted on Facebook and online job sites. He asks everyone he meets, including people at church, if they know anyone looking for work.
“I am going to put on a billboard and walk downtown,” he said, clearly frustrated.
The low-wage, high-turnover restaurant industry has been hit particularly hard by labor shortages over recent years, and this is an example of just how bad it’s gotten.
“We’ve seen wages in the industry increase by 8 percent since 2015. However, the industry’s average weekly wage of $304 is less than a third of the average across all industries,” said Ryan Long, Department of Workforce Development regional economist.
Job openings, spurred by good economic growth, exceed the number of job seekers, he said.
Luangpraseuth signed a lease in January 2018, and hired an architect to transform the plain white box into two dining rooms and a gleaming stainless steel open-view kitchen. He invested “quite a lot” of money in the place. He shipped woodcarvings, statues, rice baskets and furniture from Portland, Oregon, where he had a Thai restaurant for 12 years.
He’s a chef and his wife, Penny, is a bartender. They moved here for the sake of their children.
“Portland is like New York now,” he said. “There are homeless everywhere. I want my kids to grow up without seeing people with needles on the street.”
He said they feel safe in Appleton and the schools are good.
But at the same time, Appleton’s labor shortage scares him, and he continues to push back his opening date.
Now, maybe, it will be mid-March.
“I feel trapped,” he said. “I invested my passion, my money and my energy. But when the day comes, you cannot find the people.”
His restaurant, meanwhile, is silent as cars whiz past on College Avenue.
Contact reporter Maureen Wallenfang at 920-993-7116 or mwallenfang@postcrescent.com. Follow her on Twitter at @wallenfang.
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