Local restaurant owner Jasper Mirabile appeared on Fox News Channel to discuss the “unbelievable” staffing situation he finds himself in.
Jasper Mirable owns Jasper’s Italian Restaurant and Marco Polo’s Italian Market in south Kansas City.
In the past, Jasper Mirabile has been outspoken about issues such as the conditions at the park near his restaurant, where a group of unhoused people had been sleeping.
Mirabile is also a well-known Kansas City media personality—he also hosts a radio show on 710 AM.
Mirabile was interviewed by Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends, the network’s morning show, which Doocy co-hosts.
“If someone was making twenty dollars an hour, now these cooks are demanding thirty or thirty-five dollars an hour and there’s no way in the world that our industry can pay those wages without raising our prices,” Mirabile said.
Mirabile told Doocy that his restaurant is having a tough time recruiting new employees.
“We used to have sometimes twenty-five or thirty people apply for a job a month,” Jasper Mirabile said. “And now we get zero—maybe two or three the past few months. That is it.”
With demand for kitchen talent outstripping supply, some restaurants have taken to paying bonuses to new hires.
“Some restaurants are so desperate, essentially they will try to raid someone else’s kitchen,” Ducey said. “Sometimes they’re offering a signing bonus—for a cook!”
“And that’s unbelievable,” said Mirabile. “Believe me, I think everyone should make a great living… But to come in and take one of our employees, that’s just not right. To give them a $2,500 signing bonus, some restaurants are offering. It’s unbelievable!”
Mirabile said his restaurant’s business is up twenty-two percent over 2019 “so we need the employees right now.” But that while PPP money can help the restaurant pay higher wages to recruit staff, it may not be sustainable for Jasper’s.
“What are we going to do this time next year?” he said. “I don’t know, I’m worried.”
Watch the segment below.
