Cedar Attanasio/AP Photo
Baker Michael ‘Miguel’ Deluca decorates tarts at the Minerva medical dispensary, June 29, 2021, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
When Garrett Levis used to show up to his former job at a restaurant in Upper Michigan during the pandemic, he would have to mentally prepare himself for difficult and hostile encounters with customers. “I constantly had to fight with guests about wearing their masks and following guidelines,” he said. The verbal abuse he experienced took a serious toll on his mental health.
Levis, like many other restaurant workers, was given what a 2021 UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center report defines as the “impossible task” of “policing the customers who directly subsidize their wages.”
Meanwhile, the “essential” labor of restaurant workers did not translate into higher pay or better working conditions; in fact, given customer anger, conditions had grown worse. Now, as restaurants fill with customers again, many service workers have decided to move on. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, with quits in accommodations and food services increasing. In August, 892,000 of these workers voluntarily walked off the job, nearly 7 percent of the total workforce in just one month. It’s the largest figure of any industry.
Where are they headed next? Many have settled on a different industry entirely: cannabis.
Levis, who had never worked anywhere but restaurants until this year, found a new job in a cannabis shop, after he learned that one of his former co-workers had successfully done the same. He now works as a “budtender” and photographer at a dispensary in Crystal Falls called Higher Love.
He welcomes the pace of working in the cannabis industry, in contrast to the backbreaking speed of food retail. “We actually get breaks instead of going 100 miles per hour for 8 to 12 hours straight,” Levis told the Prospect.
“The dispensary I currently work for is also perfect because it is a startup, so the employee’s suggestions are really taken to heart,” Levis said.
Another employee, who wished to remain nameless to avoid strife with his former employer, worked at a seafood restaurant in Massachusetts for ten years, working a range of positions, from dishwasher to sous chef. While work was generally manageable during the pandemic, the state’s lifting of its mask mandate led to a surge in business, without any additional staff hired to help meet this new demand.
Once a new dispensary opened a few miles from his home, he decided it was time for a change. He took up a job as a trimming technician, which involves harvesting marijuana plants for retail sale. “I just dove in headfirst,” he told the Prospect. “It was scary because I’ve only ever worked in restaurants and a few construct[ion] odd jobs, but I fit right in.”
As a restaurant worker, he “just had no time for anything else.” But with a four-day workweek, and without the persistent risk of being called in at the last minute for a shift, he is now able to spend time with his family “instead of standing in a kitchen all day.”
Chantel Long managed Zoe’s Kitchen, a restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas, until it was forced to close early on during the pandemic. She subsequently found employment as a technician overseeing the production of cannabis-infused edible gummies at Clovr, a dispensary in Missouri.
“While I will always love the food retail industry, I really enjoy my current position,” Long said.
“This position allows me to be home in the evenings and weekends with my family, which I highly value.”
Cannabis recruiting agencies have seen an uptick in candidates from the restaurant industry. “Many former restaurant workers have attended our [training] webinars since the pandemic started, and many have contacted us confirming they landed a cannabis job and switched careers,” James Yagielo, chief executive officer at HempStaff, a hemp and cannabis recruiting agency, said.
And while some former restaurant workers have entered the cannabis industry through entry-level positions, Morgan Fox, media relations director at the National Cannabis Industry Association, said that he has seen chefs transfer their skills from restaurants to their own cannabis-related businesses, such as an edibles company or “infused cooking classes.”
The “essential” labor of restaurant workers did not translate into higher pay or better working conditions.
Recent headlines have announced a labor shortage, but the absence of increasing wages is a sign that the problem lies elsewhere, in more systemic labor practices that characterize low-wage industries in particular.
“The food retail industry has limitations in terms of benefits, work-life balance, stability, and is built on cheap labor with long hours,” Long told the Prospect.
Restaurant workers “do get unemployment [benefits], but it is really not enough,” Anthony Advincula, director of communications at Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said. “The calculation is based on their previous salary, and the salary to begin with is very low,” he said.
UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center’s research found that 53 percent of restaurant workers have considered leaving their job since COVID-19 hit. Among these workers, the top two reasons for considering a change in their employment were low wages and tips, and concerns about safety.
Meanwhile, 77,000 jobs in the cannabis industry were added in 2020, a January 2021 report by Leafly found.
This job growth was in large part due to the designation of medical marijuana as “essential” during the pandemic. Fox said that the instability experienced by the service and hospitality sector led some to wonder whether they want to work in an industry that can be so easily shut down for months at a time.
Dispensary jobs are relatively easy to secure and have relatively attractive pay: $15 an hour on average, Yagielo said.
There are now over 330,000 jobs in the cannabis industry in total. To put that in perspective, there are now more people working in cannabis jobs than there are dentists.
But is a job in the cannabis industry the gold standard? To start, cannabis cultivation, the majority of which is done indoors, is a highly energy-intensive process, accounting for over 1 percent of energy consumption in the U.S.
And it remains to be seen whether all restaurant workers are able to access employment in the cannabis industry.
“If you look at the demographics of restaurant workers, the majority of them are women, single mothers, people of color, and immigrant workers,” Advincula said.
Yet the cannabis industry has faced challenges in terms of race and gender inclusivity. For instance, at the level of ownership, potential business owners are unable to apply for grants or loans because the cannabis industry is not federally legal. This leaves people without access to capital on the outside.
Advincula is confident that former restaurant workers will return. “We see this as a temporary phenomenon,” Advincula said.
Others are not so sure. Levis said of his transition away from food retail to the cannabis industry, “I am extremely happy with the switch and I honestly think it was one of the best decisions of my life.”
