Plenty of openings in hospitality as sector copes with Covid

Jobseekers are in strong demand in Ireland's hospitality sector, with hotels and restaurants nationwide rebounding from the pandemic and seeking to fill thousands of vacancies. 

There is a good career path to be followed in the hospitality business, once you commit to training.

In the hotel sector alone at the end of November, there were 317 jobs in Dublin city centre on jobs.ie with 61 in Cork advertised on the website. More than 4,000 further hotel rooms are due to be added to the Dublin hotel market by 2023.

In Cork, the opening of The Dean on Horgan’s Quay and the REZz “micro sleeper” hotel on MacCurtain St account for 187 of the planned 1,000 additional bedrooms for the city.

Hotels and restaurants are facing a certain amount of competition from the number of baristas and chefs that capitalised on the lockdown by opening their own mobile coffee or food units. Restaurants are crying out for staff, says Jacque Barry who, with her sister Eithne Barry, runs Jacque’s restaurant on Cork’s Phoenix St extended onto Oliver Plunkett St.

Many employees in hospitality returned to their native countries at the beginning of the pandemic and haven’t returned. Some hospitality employees moved on to other markets which had less of a “stop-start” strategy in coping with Covid. But as Jacque points out, not enough people are being trained to enter the industry with a view to building a career.

She says the culinary arts degree at MTU (Munster Technological University) is “a good broad course but I don’t think the schools are promoting it”.

Jacque, who celebrated 40 years in the restaurant business in 2020, says education is key to building a solid career in hospitality. Her 27-year-old son, Joe Dowling, studied culinary arts at MTU and with two partners, Colm Liston and Cyprien Jouve, opened Joe’s+Bros on Gilabbey St and in the Winthrop Arcade. The restaurant is known for its brunch menu and coffees and the Gilabbey St premises is popular with students.

After qualifying, Joe worked in high-end restaurants in Canada. When he returned to Ireland, he worked in Chapter One and a number of other restaurants. As a student, Joe worked in his mother’s restaurant but Jacque says she never pushed him in any particular direction. “Joe wanted to find out what he was good at. He is doing what he loves. It’s his passion.”

Jacque’s daughter Ruth, who studied arts at UCC, decided to work in Jacques but from the management end having worked her way up. “She’s very good at running the place.”

As Jacque points out, waitressing isn’t the only option when it comes to restaurant work although it can be invaluable experience at the start of a career in the sector.

The restaurant business in general “was a bit broken even before lockdown,” says Jacque. “The wages were often poor.” She adds that it is up to people like her “to bring people on board and show them that restaurant work and waitressing isn’t just a thing for college kids filling in. If people can prove themselves, there’s a good wage to be had here (at Jacques). It’s the same with chefs. You have to bring them on board with you. We’re seriously looking at not just a good wage but that staff would also be part of the business. If they’re invested in it, it makes a lot more sense for everybody.”

Jacque, whose mother came from a hotel background, studied English and archaeology at UCC. “While in college, I tended to work in restaurants but behind the scenes rather than on the floor. I worked in kitchens. I didn’t see it as a career when I left school.”

After graduating, Jacque spent a few years working in New York among other cities. She blagged her way into a chef job at a Greenwich Village restaurant. Cooking excited her and to this day, she serves dishes such as mushrooms stuffed with nuts and other ingredients, that she first cooked in the Big Apple.

Jacque Barry who co-owns Jacques Restaurant in Cork, says that hotels and restaurants need to seriously look at not just offering a good wage but to look at finding ways to make staff become part of the business. "If they're invested in it, it makes a lot more sense for everybody," she says.

When Jacque came back to Cork, her aunt gave her work in her cafe. “I realised I wanted to continue in this business and when the cafe became free, I started to rent it. We only bought it about 15 years ago.”

Jacque admits that apart from cooking, she “hadn’t a clue” about running a restaurant and was “terrified of being on the floor.” Eithne, who was at college at the time, joined the business as her sister’s partner six months later.

With a vision of freshly cooked simple food where there is “always a soup, a good quiche, pasta with ham and walnuts, casual and based on a wine bar I worked in for a while in New York,” Jacque says that other than the menu plan, she went into the business “blindly. I was lucky that my father gave me a loan and went to the bank with me. I paid my father back six months later and the bank stayed with us. You couldn’t do it today as easily as I did it. I had never even written a cheque in my life.”

Was Jacque scared of what she had taken on? “No, because I believed in it, in the food. There were very few restaurants in Cork at the time. We used to have a queue every lunch hour out the door and down towards the GPO for a while. “

Jacque learned about management “on the job. You couldn’t do it now with as much ignorance as I had. There are so many stipulations and health and safety now. All those things had to be learned as we went along.”

Jacques employs eight full-time staff with four to seven part-timers. Before the pandemic, the restaurant employed 26 people. “We’ve cut some of our hours. We just can’t get the staff.”

But Jacque flies the flag for restaurant work saying it’s satisfying creatively as well as from a business point of view. “I think it’s a great career for the right people. It suits somebody who is a bit outgoing, likes people and likes food. The antisocial hours don’t bother me as I’d hate to work nine to five. And I can’t imagine either of my kids sitting in front of a computer all day long.”