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Dearest friends of Pancakia,

My goodness, this bob and weave through the pandemic and its aftershocks is an ongoing journey. We have ‘normalized’ into the abnormal, mask-wearing world through last summer, winter and spring. With social distancing required in our kitchens, we were forced to reduce our menu substantially as the kitchen couldn’t safely fit as many cooks as before. Given the acutely modest sales, this worked out anyway, as we couldn’t justify the staffing levels we’d had before.

As we have emerged from restrictions, we expected a pop in sales and diligently ramped up on hiring. But, like…uh…WOW…y’all are PSYCHED for crepes. It’s not just us, though – folks all over these Green Mountains are cuckoo for cocoa puffs at just about any restaurant worth it’s salt. Like so many of our friends in food, we are experiencing record-breaking sales this summer. And generally, this is a very good thing. On the other hand…

As you may have heard or read, hiring–especially in our industry–has been very challenging. Nonetheless, we managed to succeed in getting just enough staff to run our operations seven days a week. We are accustomed to the process of hiring and training a large number of new staff in anticipation of each summer, but the dilution of new staff to a tenured team is unprecedented. Our “core team” at the Burlington Waterfront location has hired 3 new staff for everyone experienced employee. 

“Constant steady pressure” is very necessary in the restaurant biz…we are diligently working with this relatively fresh team to ramp them up. I‘m pleased to report that this newest round of Crepe Artists may be a bit new to the game, but they are consistently good people with good morale and they appear to be picking it up even as we absorb some growing pains. In many cases, some of the kindest, hardest working, most loyal members of Pancakia are those that come to us new to the world of food service. But like anything else, training does take some time.

Thank you all for coming out in force this summer. It is awesome to see and feel the return of community and culture. We built our restaurants to be busy. When you’re enjoying that atmosphere, please take a moment to appreciate the managers hustling on the floor. In so many cases, these are the champions who shouldered the burden of running operations through the heart of the pandemic and as we emerge from it. These are the folks that have hired and trained all these new employees and then continued on to hustle to support them as this demand spiked, then coached, coached, and then coached some more. Most importantly, please remember and respect that these are human beings. Like for so many of us, this last year was not just another walk in the crepe park and they’ve done their best day in and day out to fill the bellies of all the ‘cake hungry out there.

So this note goes out to all the managers on duty, kitchen supervisors, kitchen managers, general managers, and leaders on the floor by whatever title you bear out there: THANK YOU. We hope you all appreciate their good work as much as we do.

-Benjy Pancake

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This Week in Pancakia

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Fresh bundle of Jacob’s Cattle beans from Vermont Bean Crafters!