It’s hard to find work or workers during this pandemic. People tend to safeguard their well-being instead of their livelihood, but most start working because they need to survive the pandemic. Employers are also giving more benefits now coupled with higher wages. However, it turns out that isn’t working when it comes to this Miami Restaurant. This might be due to Florida giving out 300$ a week to the unemployed.
A restaurant owner from Miami told Fox & Friends last Friday that he has tried everything to get new workers but there were just no applicants looking for a job. The coronavirus has hit the economy pretty hard and restaurant owners have taken part of the brunt. But it seems that Sergio’s Restaurants CEO, Carlos Gazitua, might have found a unique solution to his manpower problem.
Carlos said that “We were offering an increase of wages, health care plans, 401(k)s, but people just weren’t applying and like many in the industry, we didn’t know what to do”. After struggling with staffing issues for weeks, Carlos finally found the solution he needed. Investing in robot workers to help take the customers’ orders and even deliver food to their tables.
He had to act fast because many other restaurants in South Florida had to close down for a few days a week because their workers just couldn’t handle the increased workloads due to less number of helping hands. Carlos noticed the same situation happening in his restaurants as well.
He said that “They just were walking way too much, the servers couldn’t take all of our tables. 30% of our restaurants were closed and that’s where robotics came in. We thought of the idea of would if the servers could be more with the guests and we could take that hard part of doing the server’s job and just use robotics”.
The robot they use is called Astro and it can be directed by staffers using a walkie-talkie to different tables and thus they make more money because they can handle multiple tables at a time. Florida is also expected to stop their supplemental $300 a week unemployment benefit.