HONOLULU — Unable to find workers for its Kona store on the island of Hawaii, Pizza Hut has been paying to fly employees from Oahu to the Big Island for shifts, increasing their pay and putting them up in company housing.
The worker shortage along the western Kona Coast has led the company to borrow workers from one island to pull shifts at another in yet another sign of the effects of Hawaii’s tight labor market on Island businesses.
Henry Katsuda, president and chief executive officer of TD Food Group Inc. — the franchise owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurant in Hawaii — declined to provide details on the number of imported employees and the amount of extra pay, housing and other expenses associated with flying them 163 miles from Oahu to Kona.
With no signs that the labor market will loosen, Katsuda said through a spokeswoman that “we’ll continue doing it until it does.”
The shortage has been driven, in part, by a booming local economy and housing prices that remain out of reach for many working-class people. Without enough workers, some businesses in Kona are shuttering, and others are opening later or closing earlier just to stay in operation.
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