Most of us have heard plenty of news about staffing shortages and how they are affecting all kinds of industries, including theme parks. At the beginning of November, Disney World had more than 350 job openings posted, and Universal Orlando had about 270 job openings, according to the Orlando Business Journal.
Columbia Harbour House in Disney World
The staffing shortage is a main topic of conversation among food and beverage industry leaders attending the IAAPA convention in Orlando this week.
Bernie Campbell, chairman of the IAAPA Food & Beverage Committee, noted that many theme parks and other attractions had to keep some of their restaurants and snack stands closed this year, simply because they didn’t have enough staff to run them all.
“These staffing issues are the same around the globe,” Campbell said in an educational session on food trends. Whether you realize it or not, you are seeing the results of this labor shortage when you visit theme parks — as they change their menus and more to use less labor. Here’s a look at what’s happening:
Prix Fixe Menus
We have seen the introduction of many prix fixe menus at Disney World, in its “fanciest” restaurants such as Be Our Guest, California Grill, and Space 220. Prix fixe menus allow guests to pay a fixed price for their meal — they then have a handful of choices for each course.
While Prix Fixe menus can offer value to guests and can sometimes be a way for restaurants to manage crowds and turn tables at a faster — or at least more predictable — rate, there is something else behind the prevalence of prix fixe: the labor shortage.
The Prix Fixe Menu at Monsieur Paul
Food Trends Expert Suzy Badaracco said in an interview with DFB that fine dining restaurants that serve more complex dishes are suffering from a “brain drain,” as experienced cooks left the restaurant industry during the pandemic.
Prix Fixe menus turn the kitchen into an assembly line. “They are a way to deal with labor that doesn’t have the talent or experience they need,” said Badaracco, the president of food industry consulting firm Culinary Tides, Inc.
Self-Serve Drinks
More and more theme parks are also asking guests to make their own drinks. While this trend has been prevalent in fast food restaurants and other locations for some time, some theme parks have been reluctant to switch to self-serve — largely because in their crowded food and drink locations, they have been worried about losing some of their product to theft.
Get your drinks at Satuli Canteen!
While preparing a drink may seem like a small thing, theme parks need to do it thousands of times each day, and that time adds up to a lot of needed labor. It takes 19 to 22 seconds to fill a drink, according to Campbell. Pouring 5,000 drinks in a day would require more than 26 hours of labor at a minimum.
That adds up to thousands of hours of needed labor that could be eliminated in a labor shortage — even in a smaller theme park only open half the year.
Festival Changes
Another place where culinary talent is needed is inside festival food booths. Nancy Hamlin, a senior vice president with Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, said that while her company’s parks — which include Knott’s Berry Farm, Kings Island, and Cedar Point — rely on festivals to drive visitors, they do create a “staffing situation.”
The Merry Mashups booth at the Disney California Adventure Festival of the Holidays
The festival food items are “special” and require experienced culinary staff, Hamlin said. With the labor shortage, Cedar Fair and other theme park companies have to decide between pulling culinary talent from its restaurants and putting them in festival booths to prepare food, or going without booths and serving their festival food from regular dining locations.
In releasing its predictions for the food service industry in 2023, the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association said it expects labor shortages to continue in the new year. Industry leaders say the theme park industry needs to rise to the challenge, because good theme park food drives visitors to the parks.
“If you can up your culinary game, you’re driving a whole different guest into the park, said Campbell.
Here at DFB, we’re prepping to cover all the new food offerings coming to the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays, which starts November 25th. Stay tuned for the latest theme park food news!
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Staffing shortages. But they are talking about laying people off.
I personally believe there is a so-called staffing shortage because of the park reservation system. They d=say it is for crowd control, but it is more to do with staffing. With reservations, they can shedule the minimal amount of personnel to work each day. This is a typical for-profit pravate combany business model of “more work, less people”. They just use the “nobody wants to work” excuse to justify their bad and slow service.
Also, it is hard to believe they really want to hire people when theyare talking about laying off workers. Maybe with Iger back, they actually hire the personnel that is needed to work each day, rather than scheduling skeleton crews.
Everyone going to Disney has been inconvenienced with numerous breakdowns of rides, sometimes for hours. It makes you wonder if Chapek CUT PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE on the rides by cutting skilled workers who did the job. These cuts would be another way for Chapek to save money at the expense and safety of guests.
I hardly believe this is to redirect staff to other areas. You will not see a chef, or even a line cook, applying for a job in guest related cast positions. And, clearly, the list of unfilled jobs is the opposite of a lay off. Disney has done plenty wrong this past year, but staffing is an issue in EVERY aspect of our daily lives.
Personally, I still don’t know where the working class has gone in this post pandemic era. I know several people in the health industry, and healthy, working class adults are not the demographic most heavily hit by deaths. Nor do I believe they have all shifted to work-from-home positions. It is just a mystery to me.
Those who are saying “staffing shortage but cutting jobs” have misunderstood where jobs are to be cut. It’s not the people operating attractions or serving your chicken strips and ice cream in the theme parks who are going to be targeted, it is marketing, content, and other company level staff in departments that seem a bit bloated. Some of the people who declined to come back to park and resort jobs may have found a job that pays more, has better hours, or is closer to home or transportation options. Others, particularly single parents, may find themselves unable to get childcare as thousands of these workers quit during the pandemic and are not planning to return. You only have to go to Disney’s jobs page to see they are still looking to hire hundreds of people who work in resort, food service, and theme park operations positions.
I’m at a loss as to why WDW has implemented a hiring freeze!!!
Currently, it seems that virtually EVERY aspect of WDW is understaffed… even “Mousekeeping” is limited to every two days AT BEST, & WDW no long pays $10/day for declining “Mousekeeping”! Speaking of which, I’m sick of being awakened every day so someone can “inspect my room for “whatever”” — everybody KNOWS that this is Disney’s idiotic knee-jerk reaction to the Las Vegas shooting, but these inspections are total BS as far as a “security” standpoint goes!!!