(Submitted photo/Brandon Gieni, Little Gieni's)

By Ben Tompkins

Inflation Repercussions

Nipawin restaurant closes due to staffing shortages

Jul 22, 2022 | 5:40 PM

A restaurant in Nipawin has been forced to close its doors due to its struggle with staffing shortages.

Little Gieni’s will be shutting down on Saturday, July 23 for the final time, as the current staff begins to focus their efforts on its parent company in Carrot River.

According to Manager Brandon Gieni, his father’s restaurant, Gieni, has also been dealing with similar challenges and only one of them could’ve survived.

Seeing how the Carrot River location has been deemed ‘”the more popular location”, Brandon felt it was the right decision to sacrifice his business for the hopeful and potential prosperity of his father Glenn’s business.

“With the lack of staff, we both are not able to run how we would like, through this,” Brandon told northeastNOW. “We’re just going to try to run the restaurant to the best of our ability because we became known for a higher standard of service and just with the lack of staff, that is one thing that’s hard to keep up.”

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“We did this, basically, so we can stay afloat 100 per cent, instead of having two kinds of ships that are struggling, we decided to fully staff.”

Gieni originally had an establishment in Nipawin, however, he closed it in May of 2020, due to the pandemic and since re-opened in Carrot River. Brandon opened his establishment back in September of 2020.

Since posting the news of the closure on Little Gieni’s Facebook page, they have received multiple responses from the community.

“People are sad to have the Gieni’ restaurant kind of out of Nipawin. There are some people that’ll come to Carrot River, but at the end of the day, with the rising gas prices to drive out half an hour there half an hour back, it kind of makes it a lot harder for a lot of the people that want to enjoy our food to actually make that happen,” he said. “Instead of having a $40 meal, now it’s closer to $60 with the gas that you spent going out.”

When asked why he believed it was so hard to get new staff members, Brandon pointed towards inflation.

“It is hard to kind of entice people because of the rising cost of everything. It’s one of those things where we’re kind of getting hit from both sides. Every business that I go into, there is a help wanted sign.”

Something Brandon added hasn’t been an issue until now.

“When you lose staff members, there’s no one to replace them. When people move on to different career options, because serving is not always a kind of lifetime career, it’s more of kind of either on the side or while you get your feet off the ground.”

“Some people do it for a long time, but a lot of times people do end up leaving. In previous years, we’ve been able to replace them, however, currently, we’re not able to.”

Another thing which hasn’t been helpful is the age limit required when being a server.

“Staffing in the summer has always been a little more difficult, but it hasn’t been this bad. There have still always been people wanting to work, like summer students. The problem with serving is you have to be of age. We’ve got a few underage people applying, but it’s kind of hard to run them as a server due to liquor laws.”

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Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter @BenTompkins_8