Cafe to shut its doors because of 'shallow talent pool' of workers

Friday, 22 April 2022

ZUMO owner Allen Chambers outside his Rutherford St café which is due to close.

A popular Nelson café is to shut its doors after struggling with a shortage of skilled staff, its owner has confirmed.

ZUMO director Allen Chambers said the coffee house was to “suspend operations” on or before next Friday (April 29).

Chambers said the business had already struggled with the “very shallow talent pool” of workers before Covid-19 struck.

“Post Covid, we are simply unable to maintain our well established standards,” he wrote in a Facebook post announcing the closure.

* Business to move if council sale for housing proposal goes ahead

* Nelson cafe owner takes Covid precautions up a notch

Zumo is closing its cafe. Owner Allen Chambers says a lack of skilled baristas in Nelson is a factor behind the closure.

“With travel restrictions abating, the large, net outflow of talent is discouraging.”

In an email sent to Stuff, Chambers said finding a top barista meeting the “ZUMO standard” was “rare”.

“Many folks claiming barista skills have little idea,” he said.

“Achieving top barista status requires years of experience at a fast café … cafés in the major metropolitan areas have access to a larger pool of talent. A genuine, top barista, with relevant metropolitan experience, at a fast café, can come in and command top compensation.”

Allen Chambers, owner of Zumo, has been outspoken in the past. In 2021 he posted notices barring entry to his cafe for anyone who has recently left managed isolation.

Chambers said that they already paid at the high end of the scale and that they invested in “quite a bit of time and energy in our new hires”.

The company's wholesale coffee operation and online orders will continue.

Chambers is currently overseas establishing ZUMO Houston, but said he maintained “extensive connectivity” with Zumo Nelson. Before the pandemic he was travelling monthly to the US to establish the business there, now that the border had reopened Chambers had resumed those efforts.

The ZUMO logo was trademarked in the US in 2018.

Allen Chambers of Nelson cafe Zumo has been outspoken over this years. In this 2020 video he talks about motorists ignoring temporary traffic signs outside his business.

While he did not rule out reopening ZUMO Nelson in the future, it was “too difficult to determine” at this stage as the Government’s projection of net departures in the next year was “disappointing”.

Chambers said there were no special provisions for severance pay for affected workers. But he expected they would find jobs quickly.

“Anyone with at least a year’s experience at ZUMO is likely to receive multiple job offers within days, often without a trial.”

Customers on social media commented that they were sad to see the café closing and would miss the staff.

“They are the people that have held things together there (with) smiles, good coffee-making skills, and also how they made everyone … feel like a part of the ZUMO family.”

Another said she would miss the “lovely attentive staff who know us and our orders”, as well as the “jokes and conversations with your staff and other customers”.

Stuff received an email from Chambers advising media were banned from interviewing customers on ZUMO property.

River Kitchen owner Clare Fleming said she was sad to hear the café was closing.

It had been one of Nelson’s mainstays over the years, she said. The coffee house has been in operation since 2009.

Fleming said everyone that she networked in the hospitality sector with has had an “extremely difficult couple of years” trying to get through the pandemic, and they had struggled to recruit skilled staff.

“Once the backpackers left they took with them quite a large pool of skilled workers. But we've retained all of our normal staff right through the pandemic … the barista side of it affected us less.”

However, “every single café in town is looking for staff on every single level”, she said.

Because the business wasn’t as busy as usual, the café required fewer workers and just “knuckled down and got on” with their core employees.

Hospitality New Zealand Nelson region president Ian Williams said the sector normally relied on overseas workers, and confirmed it was difficult to find staff.

Operators in hospitality have had two really difficult years, he said, and accumulated a huge amount of debt.

“It’s going to take a long time to recover from that. I’m amazed in a way that we haven't seen more closures in Nelson.”

Chambers has been an outspoken business owner in previous years, most recently speaking out against a Kainga Ora social housing proposal for the Zumo site.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Zumo was to suspend operations on or before Tuesday, April 29. It should have been Friday, April 29.