Restaurant employment levels reached pre-COVID levels in September for the first time in more than three years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As pandemic restrictions have mostly been removed, and more diners feel safe going out to eat, the number of U.S. food service workers has gone up, by 61,000 in September from the previous month, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.

But state officials and restaurant owners in Colorado Springs say those numbers are misleading, particularly in full-service restaurants, where diners are seated by a host or hostess and served by wait staff.

In limited-service restaurants, where staff contact with customers is essentially limited to handing food across a countertop, employment was at 112,400 as of September, according to data from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, 10.3% above the 101,900 employees in September 2019.

In full-service restaurants, however, September employment was at 112,000, 3.9% below the 116,600 Coloradans who were working in those establishments in September 2019.

“Across the state, in pretty much every industry, there are two open positions for every human being

looking for work, and the restaurant business is no different,” said Colorado Restaurant Association spokeswoman Denise Mickelsen.

“I’m not hearing from any of our member restaurants that they are fully staffed or not worrying about hiring. After inflation and sales volume, hiring and retention are still the top two challenges facing restaurant operators in Colorado right now.”

For restaurant owners in Colorado Springs, the primary challenge has been hiring and retaining qualified kitchen staff, said Dana Wessells, owner of Benny’s Restaurant & Lounge on the west side.

“(On Tuesday night) I had to close the kitchen at 5 p.m. and work off a limited menu, because I didn’t have anybody to work the kitchen,” said Wessells, a hospitality business lifer who communicates regularly with others in the industry.

“I can cite 10 places that all have the same challenges and the same problems.”

Meredith Klube, managing partner at Jack Quinn’s Irish Pub and Restaurant in downtown Colorado Springs, said kitchen staffing is slowly working its way back to preCOVID levels, but that those levels weren’t great to begin with.

“I think across the board, finding talented kitchen staff that really want to work hard and stay at a job for a long time is a big struggle,” said Klube, who has worked in nearly every aspect of the restaurant business, from server to management. “It was a struggle before COVID, but it’s a bit worse now.”

Eric Brenner, owner of Red Gravy, said his challenges are similar.

“(Hiring and retention) is not great now, but it was never really good,” said Brenner, who opened his downtown restaurant in 2016.

“Our business doesn’t have a normal hiring process, where you go through a bunch of applications, set up a series of interviews, decide which candidate is the best fit, and make an offer. You almost have to hire whoever walks in the door and wants to work.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers across the U.S. in nearly every industry left their jobs en masse as part of an economic trend known as the Great Resignation or the Big Quit. This phenomenon hit full-service restaurants especially hard, according to local operators.

“I think a lot of people who worked in kitchens (preCOVID) did move on and are doing something else,” Klube said. “Because it’s a really hard job — being a cook in a restaurant can be a tough job. I don’t blame people for moving on and finding something different.”

“With an increase in minimum wage, people have elected to do something else — just said, ‘to hell with this industry,’ and just got out altogether,” Wessells said.

Brenner, who has been in the restaurant business most of his life, said the pandemic and the resulting exodus has exacerbated a talent drought that has dogged the food industry for years.

“In the ’ 90s and early 2000s, when the Food Network was getting really popular, it seemed like everybody wanted to be a chef,” Brenner said.

“Culinary schools were popping up all over the country. That was probably the best time for the restaurant business. People were really interested in the industry. It’s not that way anymore.”

At Jack Quinn’s, much of the core staff — managers, servers and bartenders — weathered the lean times brought on by COVID and have stayed on, Klube said. But about one-quarter of the staff, mainly kitchen workers, undergoes routine turnover.

“We have a lot of staff that have been with us for awhile,” Klube said. “During COVID, we got the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan, so we were able to retain and pay a lot of our longtime staff, and a lot of those people have stayed with us. It’s the kitchen staff that we struggle to hang onto.”

Despite offering as much as $6 an hour over the state’s minimum wage of $13.65, Wessells said his kitchen is routinely short-staffed, and that he has to hire a new employee every other month or so.

“If you walk into an In-NOut, you‘ll see 10 or 15 people working,” he said. “I can’t find four. I don’t understand it.”

Part of the problem, according to Mickelsen, is a lack of general knowledge about the restaurant industry.

“Our reputation is not what it should be,” she said. “You can make a ton of money in the restaurant business if you’re willing to work hard and you acquire a bunch of skills that are transferable to so many other industries. Not enough people seem to realize that.”

At Red Gravy, Brenner has begun offering access to health care and benefits in an effort to retain his best workers, and that has helped, but not much, he said.

“The culinary landscape is in need of elevation,” he said.

“I don’t know what the solution is,” Wessells said. “I thought it was money. So I’m offering $5, $6 above minimum wage, and I still can’t find people who want to work. So I don’t know what the answer is.”