Labor problems getting you down, bunky? Don’t expect a reassuring “There, there” from Darryl Gaddis, the 47-year industry veteran who owns the Jaws Jumbo Burgers restaurant in Ocala, Fla., a stopover where parents en route to or from Walt Disney World can ponder what a childless life might have been like.
Gaddis opened the 2,700-square-foot place in July, studding it with enough fake sharks and other not-so-subtle homages to the hit movie of 1975 to keep Universal Studios’ trademark lawyers on alert. He moved the concept there from Tennessee, figuring a themed place in the land of themed attractions would bring great-white-scale success.
Yet after slinging one-third-pound burgers for less than six weeks, Gaddis has decided he’s ready to sell. “Like most restaurants, we don’t have a business problem,” Gaddis said in a press release announcing the restaurant is available. “We have a labor problem.”
The issue isn’t the availability of potential hires, Gaddis bluntly states in his announcement. It’s their attitude.
“This is the worst labor generation I have ever seen in my 47 years of business,” he declares. “These employees ages 16-45 are not going to work and they mean it. You cannot pay them enough money, give them enough days or hours to work. If they were working 2 days a week they would find a way to get those 2 days off.”
That aversion to sweating even extends to potential partners, Gaddis rails. “I have people who want to buy a Jaws Jumbo Burgers franchise and they do not want to work in the restaurant at all!” he says. “That is a big problem for me.”
The solution he airs is finding a collaborator with pockets deep enough to indulge a spoiled workforce’s whims.
“I think labor can be solved by merging with a bigger company because they have a bigger labor budget,” he says. But as for himself, “I am done hiring help. I am tired of throwing money away,” he says.
It’s a tirade for the ages. But a cynic might say it’s also an extremely clever way of getting a national medium serving an audience of roughly 1 million businesses to spread the word your business is for sale.