As March drew to a close, Klavon's Ice Cream Parlor in the Strip District found itself without enough workers for the upcoming spring and summer rush, and it certainly did not have enough workers to open the shop to its desired seven days a week schedule.
Then, on March 30, the parlor announced it would more than double the starting wage for the roles, going from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour, a scoop that seemed to captivate workers throughout the region and one that earned a significant amount of local media coverage.
"It was instant, overnight. We got thousands of applications that poured in," Maya Johnson, general manager of Klavon's, said. "It was very overwhelming, very. People were coming in by the next day that it broke on the news, they were coming in, filling out paper applications. I was doing on-the-spot interviews."
Before the announcement, Johnson said the ice cream parlor would see a few applicants per position, but many wouldn't show for the interview. Klavon's, which has existed at its original location at 2801 Penn Ave. since 1923, now has the staffing it needs to open every day this summer, filling all of the 16 positions it needed to do so over a period of a few days.
Johnson attributes that feat, in part, to the well-advertised "living wage" that's now offered to all who work at the parlor.
"You're going to get quality work from people when people know that they are going to make a good paycheck," Johnson said. "They're going to put their best foot forward in order to keep their position and they're going to appreciate you."
That's the case for Marlea Pavlick, a 20-year-old part-time server and bartender at the recently opened The G.O.A.T. Sports Bar in Cranberry, which is guaranteeing all front-of-house workers, such as servers and bartenders, a $20 an hour minimum wage. If a front-of-house worker doesn't average $20 an hour at the end of the week when factoring in their tips earned over the same period, The G.O.A.T. Sports Bar will pay the workers the difference. These workers will be paid the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.83 an hour by the sports bar if they make at least $20 an hour with their tips throughout the week, however.
According to Pavlick, that makes all the difference and especially during periods where restaurant activity can be slow.
"I feel way more motivated; I don't dread going into work the way I did at other places," Pavlick said. "The people are way more willing to do the work when they're getting paid for it. They're way more willing to help you out and run food for you and do all these extra things because they're getting paid very well and they know they are, they know they're going to walk away with at least $20 an hour."
Pavlick, who is also a part-time student at Community College of Allegheny County, said she spent more than two months trying to find a job, submitting about five applications a day but with many going unanswered. She had prior experience working at an Outback Steakhouse and other similar roles to the one she has now. A post on Indeed advertising the $20 minimum hourly rate eventually led her to apply for an opening at The G.O.A.T. Sports Bar where she's been for the past month.
"Really, we had to offer more than the rest," Josh Wyka, owner of The G.O.A.T. Sports Bar, said. "The people who are looking to work, they were all looking for full-time hours and not everyone is able to offer that right now, so I've been able to be fortunate enough to snag some of those and be able to offer full-time hours upfront to begin with."
Wyka also offered $18 an hour and a $500 bonus after 30 days of employment to back-of-house workers, but the offer didn't start out that high. He began by advertising, mostly on Indeed and Facebook as well as the restaurant's website, back-of-house roles at $15 an hour, but after two weeks of limited interest, he raised the wages to their current rates so he would have enough workers for the restaurant and sports bar's April 21 grand opening. He managed to fill 25 roles before that grand opening and still has a few more left to go before he's ready to open the restaurant every day of the week.
"Right now, everyone's gearing up, we're all expecting a boom restaurant-wise once the weather breaks, as vaccinations kind of start rolling out, everyone's itching to get out of their house, they're going a little stir crazy, cabin fever, all that stuff so we all know it's coming," Wyka said while noting the importance of filling the roles before that rush comes.
Other restaurants around the region have also looked at offering sign-on bonuses for new hires. A Burger King in Washington, Pa. is touting a $1,500 bonus to new workers and all regional locations of Primanti Bros. Restaurants & Bars are offering 30- and 60-day bonuses to the more than 300 workers it's looking to recruit who can complete the hiring process and remain with the company for the defined period.
A Burger King location in Washington, Pa. advertising a $1,500 sign-on bonus.
But as the labor shortage amid the Covid recovery remains intense, many businesses, not just restaurants, are looking to raise their wages as a means to attract talent, and those that make a clear note of doing so seem to be having more success at filling roles.
Take Kennywood Park and its sister parks of Sandcastle Waterpark and Idlewild & SoakZone — all owned by Pittsburgh-based Palace Entertainment — which announced a renewed hiring push at the end of April to recruit up to 900 workers. As part of that announcement, Palace Entertainment noted that the roles would start with boosted rates up to $13 and $16 an hour depending on the park, an increase of about $4 to $5 an hour compared to what the roles were previously advertised at. New and returning workers would also now get four season passes if they complete the hiring process by May 10, one for themselves and three others for family members.
"It's still early, but the initial results were really encouraging. We've received hundreds of applications across the three parks and we're really encouraged by that and we'll continue to drive that messaging home about the increased pay rate," Nick Paradise, director of corporate communications for Palace Entertainment, said. "We recognize that this is a game-changer to change the pay rate so significantly because again, this is a really competitive market."
The hiring efforts have been encouraging enough, Paradise said, that Kennywood has already decided it will be able to add a sixth day of operation near the end of June due to the increase in staffing levels following the announcement. Last year, Kennywood ended its season right after Labor Day and only operated a few days a week due to a lack of demand amid the pandemic. With staffing levels now more secure, the park is preparing to go from a conservative, lower number of workers to one that can better handle a park that is already preparing to be open more days of the week than last year.
And while Paradise couldn't offer a specific figure of how many are now hired given that the process can take several days to a few weeks, he said hundreds of new workers are actively going through the process.
"We see it as a proactive effort, and, along with the season pass offer for employees, to get more and better applicants and team members on board so that we can add more days on and deliver more product and better product," Paradise said.
84 Lumber went about its hiring efforts a different way. The building materials supplier needed to fill up to 30 roles across the Pittsburgh region for retail and manufacturing-related work, and it did so through a dedicated hiring event on April 27 at the Hampton Inn in Bridgeville. It managed to attract the attention of dozens of workers, and a little over 20 are going through the hiring process and will all likely make it onto the company's payroll.
"What we're learning in the hiring process is it's not a one-prong attack anymore, it's a multiple-prong attack," 84 Lumber COO Frank Cicero said. "We have HR, we have recruiters, we have field people that are involved and we also have marketing, which is helping us drive them in. We don't take the standard one-leg approach of HR."
Cicero said 84 Lumber has held several of these hiring events throughout the country, first starting in Orlando last year, and all have resulted in a hiring success for the company.
Above all else, though, Cicero, who started at 84 Lumber 38 years ago as a manager trainee, touted the opportunities available within the company as a means for captivating workers to want to start their career with 84 Lumber.
"In our company, wage is important, but for us, it's more the opportunity," Cicero said. "It's kind of interesting because it's kind of like the sky is the limit with whatever you would like to do."
To translate the opportunity to the worker, 84 Lumber made sure its hiring day website showcased the kinds of opportunities Cicero boasted of; promoting from within, job security, its familial culture and the ability to "help you build your American dream" by starting a career, not just a job, with the company.
But 84 Lumber also didn't neglect starting wages for any of the positions it wanted to be filled, stating that manager trainees have a starting compensation of more than $40,000 per year; drivers, lumber yard, warehouse, and production associates have starting pay between $12 and $17 an hour depending on experience; and field operations managers have a starting pay between $45,000 and $50,000 per year depending on experience, among other positions.
"People are like a good investment portfolio," Cicero said. "You need to invest in them."
Overall, jobs in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area continue to remain below respective March 2020 figures for all 11 supersectors measured by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I), with there being 76,400 fewer jobs in March 2021 compared to the same time last year. The region's unemployment rate remained at 7.5% in March, unchanged from February's figure and the most recently available metric from L&I.
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