WHAT CHILDCARE? No wonder it’d be easier to find Amelia Earhart than a restaurant employee who’s confident they’ll be able to secure accredited, total- ly legal childcare. Even though a third of the industry’s workforce are parents, and a fifth are single moth- ers, according to the union-backed group Restaurant Opportunities Center United, shoppers for a full- fledged service are rarer than lot- tery winners. Users, even more so. Indeed, we focused on Joe’s ex- periences because finding a crew- member who’s close to lining up outside childcare proved so daunt- ing. Several of the industry’s larg- est employers acknowledged that formal childcare was regarded as a dream quest that was and would remain beyond the reach of restau- rant-level employees, if not much of the salaried headquarters staff. By all accounts, the business aligns with projections that one-third of all childcare is currently provided by a relative. (Will is tended by one of his grandmas one day a week.) Statistics on how many restau- rant workers use any form of child- care are equally difficult to find.
been building an alliance of Texas industries that would all significant- ly benefit from employees having easier access to childcare. The orig- inal plan was to have the partici- pants in the TRA’s Employers for Childcare Initiative spend most of this year studying the problem and gathering information. The timeline called for “putting meat on the bones,” as Streufert puts it, this fall and winter, in an- ticipation of Texas’ legislature re- convening in 2025 (Lone Star law- makers meet every two years.) But the schedule has been accelerated, Streufert says, in part because “the problem is so huge” and partly be- cause of the time and effort that’s being invested by the coalition members. They’re plowing a lot into the process and are eager to sa- vor results. Phase II, she says, will be more action focused. The fact finding has convinced the TRA and its partners that there’ll be no magic bullet, no single action that will change every- thing. “This isn’t the sort of thing we’re going to solve with one or two bills during one legislative session,” says Streufert.
Anecdotal evidence indicates the benefit is even rarely extended to restaurant executives and other headquarters personnel. Those that do offer the perk, like Starbucks and McDonald’s, picked up only a por- tion of the freight. Yet there’s a consensus that bringing childcare within reach would profoundly ease the indus- try’s labor shortage. The conten- tion is backed up by broader gaug- es: 60% of nonworking parents say their inability to secure childcare is the reason they’re on the sidelines, according to the pre-school educa- tion advocate Early Matters. That’s why the Texas Restau- rant Association (TRA) took on the moonshot last year of trying to en- gineer ways of bringing childcare within reach of even a single inde- pendent restaurant’s employees. As their home state’s largest employer, Lone Star restaurants will need an additional 288,000 hires by 2030 to sustain the trade. Merely the foundational work will take a good year, says Kelsey Streufert, the TRA’s chief public affairs officer. Since roughly the be- ginning of 2024, the association has
ILLUSTRATION BY MIDJOURNEY/NICO HEINS
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OCTOBER 2024 RESTAURANT BUSINESS
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