Labor shortage drives fierce competition in Chicago hospitality industry, with cash promises and on-the-spot job offers
When a manager from a short-staffed Chicago-area restaurant skulked into Lucca Osteria in Oak Brook, Illinois. on a recent Friday with a fistful of cash, the brazen poaching of workers seemed straight from the pages of Nelson Algren.
“It was late May, the third week we were open, and I get a call from my partner, who was fuming, and he says, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but two of our bus boys just came up to me and said this guy told them they were guaranteed $1,000 a week to go bus tables at his restaurant, and they’re going to go.’ So they walked out, and left us high and dry,” said Steven Hartenstein, proprietor at Lucca Osteria and chief operating officer/chief business development officer of Phil Stefani Signature Restaurants.
“We’re all in the same boat, so it’s hard to believe that some people are poaching workers from their friends,” Hartenstein said. “People can steal your employees,
