DE PERE (NBC 26) — Since it’s inception in 2013, Green Bay Restaurant Week has aimed to bring new business to local restaurants. But due to current staffing shortages, promotional events like Restaurant Week have become more than some local restaurants can take on.
"Staffing situations are still not to the extent that restaurants would need them to be for such an influx of patrons coming during one week like Restaurant Week," said Cameron Teske, the vice president of visitor experiences at Discover Green Bay.
Discover Green Bay, which organizes the event every year, canceled Restaurant Week 2022 after listening to concerns from participating restaurants. Teske says the workers shortage, combined with spiking food inflation, made it difficult for many restaurants to accommodate the extra traffic and offer discount menu items.
“Going into a super special promoted week, really encouraging everyone to go out to eat that week and adding that much more volume to those restaurants, it's just a little bit more than they can handle,” Teske said.
Nicky's Lionhead Tavern in De Pere usually participates in Restaurant Week every year. But with a lack of staff, manager Cynthia Rockey says it would've been impossible to serve the extra crowds. The restaurant is currently hiring servers, bartenders, and kitchen staff.
“Sometimes we’ve had to turn some people away because we had a packed house and just couldn’t get them in the door,” Rockey said.
Door County restaurants are feeling staffing shortages as well. Door County North, a Door County business association, recently postponed it’s annual Uncork Summer Food-Wine-Music Festival until 2023 due the strain it would have put on caterers. Door County North will instead host the Door County North Country Fair in its place in June of this year.
“It does create a lot more pressure," said Door County North community coordinator Mickie Rasch. "Uncork Summer for many of them was pretty much an entire day of an off-site catering gig, so that takes staff away from what they’re trying to do at their regular business.”
Teske says Discover Green Bay plans to bring back Restaurant Week in 2023 and re-work the event to meet restaurant's needs.
"We can have an opportunity now to really take a look, adjust, evolve, and bring back Restaurant Week 2023 as it’ll work for everyone involved,” Teske said.
