The owner of four Montreal restaurants is taking a novel approach to the chronic labor shortage affecting his industry — he's sending everyone who works for him to Cuba for a few days.
Nicolas Delrieu operates the Speakeasy, Chef's Table, Freeze Brothers and Tô Comptoir Asiatique — and the 25 people on the staffs of those places will be taken to an all-inclusive resort in Cuba for four days next month.
In a Facebook post earlier this week, Delrieu lamented the chronic labor shortage in Quebec as a whole, and in his industry in particular — and that truly loyal employees are hard to find.
The idea of sending his workers down south, he says, is a way of recognizing loyalty in a climate where competition for jobs is fierce, and where the promise of a small salary increase is all too often enough to compel someone to jump ship.
"The idea of congratulating my staff that way by bringing them four days of sunshine came naturally to us, and just about all of our staffers said yes," wrote Delrieu in his Facebook post. "To my knowledge, no other restaurant in the province beings his staff four days of vacation down south, and for us, we're really proud to show them how much we appreciate their work and their effort."
He says he hopes other restaurants follow his lead. During the rest of the year, his 'employees of the month' also get things like concert tickets, F1 tickets and other things.