El El Frijoles was busier than ever this year — but closed for the season earlier than ever.
When Michael Rossney and Michele Levesque opened the taqueria in Sargentville almost 20 years ago, “it was a whole different peninsula,” Levesque said of the Blue Hill area.
As their business grew, staffed mostly by students with a few local adults, they operated some years into October and even through the winter. But this season, they closed their doors before Labor Day for the first time when no additional employees were available for the shoulder season, focusing instead on selling premade food at their neighboring year-round shop.
The couple said that, anecdotally, they’ve observed serious cultural shifts on the peninsula since the pandemic that seem to have reduced the local adult workforce and raise questions for them about the area’s future.
“It is a real problem. And I think what we’ve started talking to other businesses about is, it’s like, what happens to our society when there’s nobody to work at any of these, this whole type of job?” Rossney said, also referring to trades workers. “And it’s not like menial work. I mean, the people that work for us are highly skilled professionals.”
El El Frijoles is just one of the restaurants on the Blue Hill peninsula and in Deer Isle-Stonington that shorten their weekly hours and the length of their seasons because of a lack of employees. That’s been a long-running challenge in an area with limited affordable housing, but it seems to some to have intensified amid the complex changes brought on by the pandemic, and has some local business owners seeing more need to bring in outside seasonal workers.
Nearby Mount Desert Island and its major tourist draw of Acadia National Park has an established system of housing for seasonal employees, often arriving from other countries on work visas. But employers on the comparatively much quieter Blue Hill peninsula generally don’t have such resources.
In 2019, when five new restaurants had recently opened in Blue Hill, the owners of four of them told the Bangor Daily News that operations were limited by a “desperate” shortage of workers and largely attributed that to a lack of affordable housing. All four establishments have since closed.
Since the pandemic, a number of people who work from home for employers based elsewhere seem to have stayed, Rossney said, and he sees the peninsula trending toward being home to mostly retirees and remote workers.
It’s not just restaurant workers in demand: it’s difficult to get on the schedules of tradespeople in the area now, and the couple wonder whether that’s related to newcomers or seasonal residents building with pockets deep enough to pay any cost. It’s a contrast to the peninsula of a decade ago, when they remember many more vacant buildings and small apartments before the rise of short term rentals.
Rossney, who grew up spending summers in the area, said the peninsula has always been made up of distinct groups. But he thinks the separation is becoming more stark, and sees some early signs here of the social media-fueled, short term tourism that has crowded Bar Harbor — though he emphasized appreciation for El El Frijoles’ employees and customers.
Pandemic fallout hasn’t seemed as stark to Ron Watson, who has done business in Stonington for decades, but he, too, sees a problem. He opened Stonington Ice Cream Company on Main Street in 2008, adding the Stonington Food Company restaurant three years ago in the neighboring building he owns, and is closed more often than he’d like because of a lack of staff.
“Everyone is in this boat, where they could do more business if there were workers, and there just aren’t,” he said.
Watson wants to be open from early May through late October, but closed before the end of September this year because he had only one employee when the rest of his workforce went back to school.
He thinks seasonal housing for workers is needed on the island, but suspects it may be a harder sell for donors than existing local efforts to build housing for the year-round workforce.
“I get frustrated that there’s no emphasis on seasonal [worker] housing, and this community is rapidly becoming a tourist community, except for the lobster industry, and it’s not going to change,” Watson said, citing factors like the island’s limited industrial infrastructure and fresh water supply that he thinks limits its options for growth.
He doesn’t know how much the unfilled positions have to do with housing availability for locals, he said, noting that seasonal work isn’t appealing for everybody. Watson’s interest in more seasonal housing stems from local lobster dealers’ successes bringing in workers from Puerto Rico, who are U.S. citizens and thus simpler to hire than those requiring visas.
He would have been there himself this spring recruiting, Watson said, if he had housing here to offer. But restaurant owners don’t generally have the margins to take on such a project alone, according to Watson.
“[Stonington] is going to be a tourist community, and like any tourist community where real estate values are increasing, it’s hard to find accommodations for workers, for seasonal workers,” he said.
He, Rossney and Levesque said numerous other local restaurants face similar staffing challenges that limit their hours.
Earlier this year, area establishments such as pizza restaurant and cafe Tinder Hearth in Brooksville and The Ark inn and restaurant in Deer Isle advertised for employee housing.
“It’s a rough go out there,” Tinder Hearth posted on social media in May, asking for leads for seasonal staff whose accommodations fell through.
It’s also hard for seasonal restaurants to find local adult workers because people who want to work in restaurants prefer to be employed year-round and get health benefits, according to Watson.
Bringing in workers through visas also requires housing, which most area restaurants don’t have, Rossney and Levesque said.
They see the economy here as booming but not necessarily healthy, and wonder if at some point a bubble will burst amid national trends of wealth consolidation.
Overall, the labor shortage appears to be one symptom of a web of complex challenges facing communities across coastal Maine, and quick fixes aren’t easy to find.
“I don’t have any real solutions. I think it’s a difficult issue, even more difficult than long term housing,” said Watson. “But … it contributes to the life of the community, and I think there are people who come seasonally who stay and contribute to the life of the community.”
