AS BUSINESSES REOPEN A NEW THREAT EMERGES – A CRITICAL SHORTAGE OF WORKERS

A San Bernardino Institution – The Mexico Café feels the pinch

The Gaitan family has been working together at the popular Mexico Café in San Bernardino since 1951.  Four generations have worked at the restaurant and many still do, including the patriarch Arthur, his daughter Sharon and her sons Arthur and David.  Braxton the youngest who is 7 hasn’t quite yet joined the workforce.

“We will get him in there soon,” said Sharon Gaitan the co-owner of the family business.  “He is going to have to grow a bit more and we will probably have him working in the Temecula location.”

Yes it’s the middle of a worldwide pandemic, but the Gaitan family is bullish on the future and is building a new restaurant that will be twice the size of the original San Bernardino location.  “We love San Bernardino and will continue to operate the original restaurant, but my Father was very smart and bought a great piece of high-traffic property twenty years ago and now is the time to get it up and running,” said Gaitan.

The Mexico Café (in Temecula) is under construction and they hope to be open within a matter of months.  But the original restaurant and many other businesses are faced with a bedeviling problem.  Now that the state is reopening and there is the opportunity to get back to business, they can’t staff the restaurant fully.

“I have never seen anything like it and hope to never again,” said Gaitan.  “We are advertising everywhere for employees but we just can’t fill the vacancies.”

Back when the state first shut down and so did the restaurant many of her employees (mostly women and many who are single and raising children) went on unemployment and now they are not coming back.

Gaitan said that it is a double edged sword. People that are getting more money from government benefits due to covid eat out more, but she can’t serve customers as well because she can’t staff the place.  The schools being closed is also a huge part of the problem.

“Many of our employees are single parents, if the kids are not in school they can’t come to work.” Gaitan said.  “I think we need an even larger family if we are going to staff the restaurants adequately.”

The Mexico Café is located at 892 E. Highland Ave. in San Bernardino. For more information about available positions visit https://www.mexicocafe.biz/careers.