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The Restaurant Industry Crisis in Kuwait

A lot of you might have noticed some issues in the food industry over the past year or so. Maybe your food is taking longer to arrive, maybe you’ve noticed more errors with your orders, or maybe you no longer see your favorite staff at a restaurant anymore. What a lot of people might not know is that the local restaurant industry is currently going through a crisis and here is why:

When the pandemic hit last year, restaurants were forced to shut down so a lot of staff left the country and a lot got fired and left as well.

When Covid restrictions were eased and restaurants started to reopen, many had fired their employees and needed to rehire. But, no new employees could be brought into Kuwait, and old employees with valid visas couldn’t come back to Kuwait either.

This caused a major scarcity of employees and meant that whatever employees were left in Kuwait were now much more valuable.

One large company for example started offering double the salaries to poach employees from other smaller companies. A lot of employees also started jumping ship to any restaurant that offered them more money causing high turnovers in the industry.

Many businesses couldn’t afford to pay the new higher salaries or even if they could, couldn’t find the right staff or the number of staff they needed. So a lot are currently understaffed and some companies are being forced to temporarily (or permanently) close some of their weaker performing locations or concepts so that they can move their staff to their more successful ones.

A lot of restaurants went out of business over the past year because of the pandemic and it’s sad. The above are just some of the issues from the restaurants’ side but delivery platforms also have their own set of issues as well.

Platforms have fewer drivers due to many leaving but also have more orders than before due to people being home more. The result is slower delivery times and slower customer service.

I know nobody wants to get their food cold or find pickles in their burger when they specifically asked for no pickles. But hopefully, this post explains why things aren’t perfect right now, and people can be a bit more patient with restaurants and delivery drivers.

60 replies on “The Restaurant Industry Crisis in Kuwait”

Moral of the story is restaurants or any company for that matter should value their staff.

The moment the pandemic hit, the first thing business owners resorted for was to cut salaries. So for the survival of the proprietors business the employees had to suffer and sacrifice.

The same is not the case when the company makes crazy amount of profits. That time the staff don’t get a bonus or maybe just a penny on the dollar.

So I am really glad that employees with self esteem got up and left for better prospects.

Moral of the story. It’s your business, so have the capacity to bare the profits and losses. Can’t bare the losses, shut down and let your staff free.

I have my own business back home in my country. Non of my staff saw a pay cut nor deduction. Where as here at my job, I did have pay cuts and I left the company only to find another with good values. Who paid the staff on time and without salary cuts.

I am glad and fortunate to have moved, because now at the new company, I am able to perform better because of better mental health and take better decisions that will benefit the company.

I know it’s irrelevant and restaurant employees moved here willingly and accepted whatever salaries that were agreed upon, but worth adding that in general, they’re extremely underpaid just like most white collar workers in Kuwait, so imagine how much worse the F&B industry would fare if they were paid proper wages!

Sadly, it’s only going to get worse even after the country fully reopens since the expat world is a small place and social media has made it even smaller, and nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to come work in Kuwait anymore, so unless things change drastically on the ground and they wake up and learn how to treat the residents in their country properly, and pay competitive salaries, this problem is going to get much much worse especially in 2022 when more and more people are able to travel and set up elsewhere

i think it’s worth mentioning that the government has implicitly said that this is not an issue that they are concerned about, or even that they think this is an issue in the first place.

the war on food delivery motorbikes is an example of this. without providing any clear reasoning or data, the government wants to limit the number of delivery motorbikes on the road, the number of delivery motorbike licenses, and prevent their access to certain roads.

the government HAS made it clear they would like to reduce the number of expatriates, so perhaps the restaurant industry is just collateral damage.

“without providing any clear reasoning or data”

I have so much to say about this but wouldn’t want to be deported but Kuwaitis have been highlighting this issue for the past few months.

Mark, a sad reality that you cant voice an opinion in a country you like & support so much without the fear of being deported. What does that really say about the mentality of a pirate nation ?
All the writing is on the wall that expats are not welcome unsure why you all flock their like its some dream resort. Boring country, expensive, no real structure, bad weather 9 months of the year etc etc etc

Extremely underpaid compared to where though? If we use the US as a benchmark, they tend to get minimum wage over there.

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/kitchen-staff-hourly-wages
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/kitchen-staff-salary-SRCH_KO0,13.htm

So around 600KD is the average kitchen staff salary over there. It’s lower over here, probably closer to 300 or 400kd as an average, but they also get accommodation, transportation, airline ticket, and no taxes. “Extremely” underpaid? I don’t think so.

An average kitchen staff salary here is KD 250.

4 out of 10 companies give accommodation, transportation

2 out of 10 companies give airline ticket

No taxes here, but cost of living, basic needs covers the supposed no tax in things.

Extremely underpaid……… i somewhat agree
Average staff salary is KD 250

A small partition room is KD 60
Bus Transportation in a month is KD 13
Average month’s meal is KD 25
Other expenses (internet, mobile, etc) KD 15

The average kitchen staff salary used to be 250 not anymore. Those same staff that were getting 200 are now getting 300-350.
You also stated some random numbers as facts, 4 out of 10 companies give accommodation? 2 out of 10 give tickets? Where did you get that info from.

100% of the F&B companies I worked for as an example gave accommodation, transportation and airline tickets.

That’s an unfair thing to say. Yes in our standards, 350 is not livable but for a lot of low income workers, that’s double or triple what they’re making now.

Thats good, and I hope it increases even more to become at least on par with the minimum wage of high income countries (around 500KD)

Mark on paper this might be whats happening – but I was friends with a lot of servers and restaurant staff – and there are plenty of people having their salaries withheld, their tips confiscated and so on… there are more corrupt companies out there than you can imagine – and whats on paper doesnt mean a thing at the end of the day.

I’d urge you to ask around, talk to people who are in these industries when they arent being supervised… they will tell you whats what believe me.

There are so many workers with salary of KD.350 (all inclusive), out of which 10% is still being deducted on account of Covid-19 related business drops. I am talking about accountants, sales staffs, data entry operators, operation coordinators etc…

Wait so baristas at Caribou making coffee and cutting up my sandwich are making KD 300 but nurses in certain medical institutions here who are literally helping people stay alive are making KD 350?!

I’m happy for the baristas at Caribou and by the way, they are definitely making more money than baristas at Caribou in America (especially ones in Red States). I know that from
first hand experience! Please shut up.
But going back to the nurses, I feel terrible for them.

Hey Mark, you just mentioned elsewhere this is an inflated salary and probably will return to normal when borders open. So, are you trying to say the industry is offering livable wages now but God knows till when this phase lasts?

So it will return back to 200-250 KWD which is extremely low right? It is skilled work atleast for the kitchen staff and not exactly manual labour, so isn’t it low?

I don’t think so, minimum wage is 60kd (which I think is low) so 200-250 to wash dishes or chop veggies (minimum wage stuff) could be considered great especially if accommodation and transportation included.

Mark, if you really think that a 200-250 salary is considered great, then I can’t have sympathy for the local restaurant businesses if they fail. Of course, I can’t go around asking restaurants how much their staff get paid, So I am just going to assume all of them pay 250. I think I will just be eating home cooked meals more often.

If you’re getting a salary of 2,000KD i can see why you don’t think 250
Is great. Not everyone sadly gets paid that much and for A LOT of people who are earning minimum wage, 250 is more than triple what they make, and most of the time, involves less work in a better environment. You’re also assuming everyone in the kitchen earns 200-250 but these are entry level jobs (dish washer for example), obviously the waiter could get more, chefs could get more, managers could get more etc.

Well yes and no, if you mean for the staff right now, yes but, this also causes a chain reaction.

1) it’s not sustainable for the restaurant which means either they are going to close down or have to let go of the staff and hire less qualified ones

2) staff are getting paid more now but their prices are inflated due to the situation. this means once the borders open up and staff can come back in, many will end up being fired and replaced with cheaper labor

3) higher cost on the restaurant means higher cost on the customer. i wouldn’t be surprised if in the coming month’s restaurants increase their prices to cover the costs

Wow…What a great thing to say. I am sure you must have never owned a business when you put out opinions like this without even considering the emotions involved in operating one.

Well that’s thoroughly depressed Me again.

Don’t they realise these are living breathing people?? They’re not just labour??

People desperately struggling to survive financially and mentally and yet here we are complaining about finding pickles in our burger. We need to put things into perspective.

Yikes.

I think Mark was simply trying to show causation for an observable phenomenon. Some see longer wait time for services (one observable phenomenon), others see fewer delivery bikes on the road (another observable phenomenon), and others see…pickles on their pickle-free burger (one more observable phenomenon). The cause of which are the same.

But, don’t strain your arm virtue signaling!

So basically what you’re saying is..
They were neglecting all the workers for so long, and now suddenly they can’t survive without them. Maybe it’s finally going to open up their eyes that expats are the one who keep the country running. If they don’t soon enough, they’ll see this problem everywhere, and by then it’s really gonna come and bite them in the ass.

Residents are important, but there are too many of them, and that’s why they get paid such low salaries, they can be easily replaced and business take advantage of this. It is a harsh reality, but a large proportion of residents need to go, so that the remaining ones can get better living standards and less abuse.

I don’t think that’s the case. Their salaries are going up because of a temporary shortage. A shortage, by definition, means there is not enough to meet demand. That is not a desired thing to have in a market.

Labor is cheap because we recruit workers from poor countries. You can hire an accountant from Egypt for like KD 300. It’s not because there are too many accountants in Kuwait. Rather, accountants in Egypt are making less in their home country. The same goes for waiters, cleaners, drivers, etc.

You are describing an unlimited pool of poor labour. One way to solve this is to permanently restrict the numbers entering the country. Wages will go up as a result.

That’s not what he’s describing. What he’s saying is that the reason labor is cheap is because we hire people from poorer countries.

What you’re trying to do is forcefully inflate the salaries by creating an artificial shortage. But if you just want businesses to pay higher salaries, why don’t you just ban hiring people from poor nations and just hire staff from rich ones?

People should be paid a decent livable wage for the country in which they work, regardless of where they come from.

Paying an expat from a poor country less than an expat from rich country for doing the same job is not right.

What you’re talking about is discrimination, that’s not the subject matter here. Nobody in this whole thread said if you’re from a certain country then you can’t earn more.

Nobody is talking about paying an expat from a poor country less than an expat from a rich country for doing the exact same job. You’re talking as if a company is hiring two accountants, one from China and one from the UK for the exact same position and both with the same qualifications, but then paying the Chinese guy half the salary.

That’s not the situation here.

The situation we are discussing is that a company has to get an accountant, an accountant from the UK costs 1,000KD while an accountant from China costs 500KD. They’re both qualified exactly the same so the company is choosing to go with the Chinese accountant because their salary is half the amount. That’s not discrimination. If it was the British person asking for 500KD and the Chinese 1,000KD they’d pick the British person. It’s about the salary the person is asking for and not the country they’re from.

So what you’re doing here is twisting words and making shit up just to suit your narrative. Companies pre-set salaries for different positions based on the market price. They then look for people to fill in the positions. I need a dishwasher, the salary bracket is between 200-250KD and people apply for the job.

Simple as that so don’t twist things around just to suit your agenda. I’ve already deleted your comment and will delete more similar comments. You want to have a discussion, I’m up for it but don’t put words in my mouth.

This makes so much sense. I recently graduated from a private university here in Kuwait and Im getting a ton of emails from popular restaurants in Kuwait in need of part time/full time students regardless of their majors. I went to one of the job interviews and I was told because of the closed airports, they are planning on hiring Kuwaiti and non Kuwaiti graduates to fulfill jobs such as cashier, customer representative and etc. I was also told, they are in desperate need for anyone to fulfill the job whether its part time or full time. Bare in mind, these are very popular restaurants in Kuwait.

Aha, no wonder there’s an influx of emails, ads on many social platforms that are opting for walk-in interviews as there’s severe shortage of staff.

Sadly, as much as anyone would want to believe, things are not going to get better simply by opening the airports. A lot of teachers, families and then some are leaving Kuwait for good in June-July period.

Respect Mark for this post

The pandemic is throwing (or going to throw) lot of social challenges.

Your posts bring awareness

Thanks

if an owner first idea is to fire / cut wages , it just make everyone ready to jump off the ship at the first chance , Cafe / Restaurants that didn’t fire / cut wages didn’t suffer from high turnover , on the contrary i hear from friends they are operating at same staff level , because the staff felt safe/ secure they don’t feel like risking it , but you don’t give that feeling then they leave

“But, no new employees could be brought into Kuwait, and old employees with valid visas couldn’t come back to Kuwait either. This caused a major scarcity of employees and meant that whatever employees were left in Kuwait were now much more valuable.”

Because employees are consumed like cheeseburgers and we need thousands entering the country every month.

Your analysis is lacking to say the least.

At most there are tens of thousands stuck abroad. At least there are three million workers stuck here in Kuwait struggling. No labor shortage.

hahahah you’re delusional if you think there isn’t a labor shortage at the moment or maybe you’re living outside Kuwait. Just have a chat with some business owners, maybe check out some news account on Instagram or check out whats going on twitter. Labor shortage is real.

First, your blog post is contradicting itself. You mentioned people losing jobs due to covid closures then you mention that there is labour shortage! What happened to those who lost their jobs?!

According to PACI, the population declined only by 2.2%. That still leaves nearly 68% of the entire population migrant workers. If many are struggling with covid closures then many are job seekers. Once again, what labour shortage are you talking about?

The labour shortage you hear about in the US news is more related to the covid relief governments offer their citizens and the minimum wages businesses offering their workers. Workers who lost their jobs at beginning of covid are not seeking minimum wage jobs anymore because of the relief cheques they’re receiving and thus resulting in labour shortage. This is irrelevant to Kuwait.

The blog isn’t contradicting itself you’re just having a hard time getting a grasp of things. Yes people lost jobs, and yes there is a labor shortage in the restaurant industry. If you’re an engineer and you lost your job you’re saying the engineer should go work as a commi in the kitchen?

You’re either misreading the PACI data, making it up or it’s outdated. Hard to tell when you don’t even provide a source.

But in any case, the reality is because you don’t live in Kuwait you’re detached from the reality of what’s going on here hence your comments.

Restaurants are going to suffer even more. The government has just said from Jun 27, no more access to unvaccinated ppl. A lot of ppl like me who’ve registered months back are yet to get called. Yes talabat and deliveroo will get me what I need but restaurants lose money to these portals and anyway more money is made from some in customers (drinks, sides, etc) Don’t know what these policy makers are doing. They are hurting ppl with these ever changing arbitrary decisions.

I don’t even know how they’re planning to enforce it anyway. They can’t even enforce something simple like have to wear a mask at Avenues, so there’s no way they can enforce this. Immune App doesn’t have a photo of the person on it either so you could just download the sample off the internet and just photoshop your name on it and no mall security guard or waiter is gonna know any better.

Current Theory Applied : when price of Oil goes low, Kick expats out , make restrictions and limitations, Ization and Check their certificates and qualifications.

Proposed theory: Open the country for people who would love to work and help the developing the state. Give them Permanent residence and not nationalities. The citizens focus on curbing down corruptions and unemployment by boosting up the all kinds of business and shifting the dependency from oil to all kinds of Business.
Open up Toursim, Open up Pubs , Entertaintment cities in Remote areas. Allow the country to reach the heights it deserve to reach and not chain it and take its development backwards.

As a small business in the food industry I really got hit bad. The worst thing is the government weren’t that supportive to SMEs like other GCC countries.

On the bright side I can see us students (kuwaitis and non) being on demand for a part time job as a nice summer job. I know it’s already a thing but it feels rare, especially for Kuwaitis.

A colleague in my office just passed a comment when I showed him this post .. He said yup Mark is right restaurants are suffering, delivery guys are late ( Had to wait over an hour after the delivery time to get my mean from Talabat yesterday), and that the new rule allowing only vaccinated people into malls is nuts. On the bright side though almost 90+% of the local population is vaccinated, have deeper pockets, and spend more than your average expat. So they will make up for the shortfall caused by the lack of expat shoppers and diners.

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