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Jayson Cullen has never seen so many desperate restaurant managers in his life. “Pretty much every job I get these days I got because some kitchen man or restaurant owner was just desperate,” says Cullen, who lives in Mesa and gave up his career in behavioral health two years ago to work in hotel and kitchen management to work. “They hire me for jobs I am not qualified for and then train me on site.” Recently, a sushi shop offered Cullen a job even though he had never made a tuna bun before. “Another time I told a chef I didn’t know how to use a wood-burning pizza oven and he offered to teach me,” says Cullen. “He spent fifteen minutes with me and I was a wood-fire pizza oven cook for the next three weekends.” Those jobs came through Qwick, a Phoenix-based temp agency that has been expanding in all directions recently, thanks in part to the colossal labor shortage plaguing the service industry. When the COVID-19 pandemic closed thousands of restaurants last spring, many workers collected unemployment checks that were juiced up by federal incentives that made them more worth than work. These incentives were so cute that only about half of the country’s food service staff returned to work once it was safe, according to the National Restaurant Association. Why work, said waiters and dishwashers and continuous cookers, when the jobs are lousy and don’t get better paid? Restaurants will continue to reopen after the pandemic, but staffing remains an issue. Enter Qwick, co-founded by Jamie Baxter and Blaine Light in 2017 and inspired by their business partner Chris Loeffler, who has always struggled to occupy the hotel chain he owns. Temporary employment agencies are asking too much, says Baxter, and they attract lousy workers. Co-Founder Jamie Baxter Qwick “This is where the unemployed went to work. So we built a company with talented restaurant workers. Maybe they prefer to exercise a little or they work in a nice place that only gives them 30 hours a week. We can give them that extra layer. ”Gig-Work-Agencies, the app-driven version of the 21st century temp agency, existed before the pandemic hampered the service industry. But Baxter and his cronies saw the need in a thriving industry and stepped into the breach. Spurred on by the national server shortage, the company recently launched in Chicago and will expand into six additional markets by the end of the year. “We have a 98 percent shift occupancy rate and more than 85,000 hotel professionals on our platform,” says Baxter. “We check them all in person and do all the background checks. So if you are scarce, our app allows you to hire a server, bartender or kitchen assistant in just a few minutes. ”But replacing waiters and bartenders with potentially untrained temporary workers is really the answer for restaurant owners? Looking for? At least one local operator says no. “Bring someone over here to fill a void for a week or a night?” Asks Brandon Juniper, founder of Scottsdale’s Cook and Craft. “That doesn’t fit our concept. I firmly believe that our servers will meet regular customers. Our guests are not to blame just because restaurants have problems. You shouldn’t be punished for being in the middle of a crisis. ”Juniper continues,“ A temp bartender won’t see you walk in and mix your favorite drink. You might want to hire a prep cook where you need someone to chop an onion or wash dishes, okay. But for the work in front of the house, I would rather do an extra shift myself than bring a stranger in here. ”But hiring a temporary employment agency seems increasingly to be a dirty little secret in Juniper’s craft. Of four local restaurants who routinely use the platform, none interviewed for this story wanted to be cited. “Let’s just say I don’t want my guests to know that their food was prepared by a man I met when he showed up at work today. “Says a kitchen manager. “You do what you have to and I have to occupy my kitchen until I can get someone in here permanently.” Qwick still seems to be working on various kinks – some of which sound more like the same stuff that made restaurants hot on water first place. “There’s this new trend in double booking,” says Cullen of the gig work. “The restaurant hires two workers for the same shift in case one of them doesn’t show up. If the two of us show up, the second guy will be paid for half his shift and sent home. So you can make $ 80 and you don’t have to work at all. That’s expensive, but I guess managers these days will do whatever they can to stay open. ”Even, says Cullen, breaking Qwick’s rules. “About five months ago I got a job at a Scottsdale golf club, one of those one percent places Maseratis parked in front of it.” The banquet manager liked Cullen and offered him a job. “He said, ‘I don’t want to use Qwick, just come in and I’ll pay you by check.’ He ended up offering me a job that lasted four months. ”Cullen appears unimpressed that Qwick may have been harmed by this transaction. “I had an hour orientation at Qwick when they hired me,” he explains. “Nobody mentioned the company’s poaching policy.” But Juniper wants to avoid such harassment. “The pandemic paralyzed us three weeks after our grand opening,” he says of Cook and Craft. “It was either really hard work personalizing our take-away service, or it’s closed forever.” When Cook and Craft finally reopened last month, all the people Juniper romanticized through its take-away window came over , back to dine personally “I’m not going to repay these people by bringing in an untrained stranger to wait for them or cook for them just because I’m short on staff,” says Juniper. “My clients make more than a temp.” Keep Phoenix New Times Free … Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we want it to stay that way. We offer our readers free access to concise coverage of local news, food and culture. We produce stories about everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with bold reporting, stylish writing, and staff who have won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Feature Writing Award to the Casey- Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with the existence of local journalism under siege and the setbacks in advertising revenues having a bigger impact, it is now more important than ever for us to raise funds to fund our local journalism. You can help by joining our “I Support” membership program which allows us to continue to cover Phoenix without paywalls. Robrt L. Pela has been writing weekly for the Phoenix New Times since 1991, primarily as a cultural critic. His radio essays are broadcast on the Morning Edition of the KJZZ subsidiary of National Public Radio.
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