PAGE – Staff turnover is an ongoing issue at Slackers, but business is booming for this bricks-and-mortar quality grub joint on Elm Street.

While the employee retention rate may be negative in Page, Slackers owner Chris Shores says his business is between 10 to 15 percent busier than last year.

“And that’s Slackers,” Shores said. “But if ou don’t have enough employees, it turns into long lines.”

Ten years ago, Shores took over Slackers and Big Dipper, both which were owned by Jim J. Hunter and his wife, Belinda Hunter. Shores says it was fun to navigate a business in the beginning and it is still fun today, but business is extra tricky these days.  

“We just completed our 10th year, or at least its my tenth year operating Slackers” Shores said. “It’s every bit as a challenge now as it was back (in 2008).”

One of the biggest challenges, Shores says, is staffing, one of the top challenges business executives face. Finding the right staff, retaining them, and ensuring they buy into the vision of the business.

“This year has been one big challenge after another to keep enough employees,” Shores explained. “It seems like right when we train them, the new ones, some of them just take off.”

Employee turnover costs U.S. companies $160 billion a year, according to Wrike, a provider of project management software.

Replacing an employee can set a company back as much as two times their annual salary.

“It costs twice as much,” Shores said. “You’re paying somebody to train and you’re paying somebody to learn. They’re actually getting paid to learn. But some people don’t see it that way, they think they should just get paid.”

Shores says when he hires a new employee, they go through a training process in which they learn a myriad of skills.

“Not just learning how to work in a restaurant or in an ice cream shop,” he said. “You learn how to work in a team setting. You’re learning how to build the food, you’re learning how to inventory, and learning how to work with people – one of the hardest things in the world. Whether it’s a customer or a coworker.”

The industries with the highest levels of turnover are restaurants (17.2 percent), retail (16.2 percent), and supermarkets (15.4 percent), according to LinkedIn’s latest data on the sectors, industries, and jobs seeing the highest levels of turnover. The roles that people left the most are lower-level, seasonal jobs like retail salesperson (19.3 percent), food service professional (17.6 percent), and hospitality professional (17 percent).

“It seems like I’m always looking for employees,” Shores said. “That’s the big challenge. In addition to sometimes not having enough crew (members), we’re busier. We’re much busier than last year.”

Shores says most of his current employees also have a second job if they’re not getting plenty of hours at either Slackers or Big Dipper.

“From when I took over about 10 years ago, our business has almost doubled,” Shores added. “From last year, it’s gone up about 10 to 15 percent. My payroll has gone up about 25 percent since last year, (which) is not a very equal increase.”

Shores says most of that might be due to training so many new employees that it takes an extra person to train them.

“And some of the new employees don’t stay anyway,” he said. “They take off after a couple of weeks. It seems like we’re constantly training new employees.”

Shores is seeing up to 400 customers per day in Slackers and up to 500 on busier days. On the Big Dipper side, he sees an additional 100 customers.

“Superman” ice cream, which comes as a swirl of three colors: blue, red, and yellow – the colors of Superman’s costume, is Big Dipper’s best-selling flavor. Coming in at No. 2 is chocolate, then strawberry, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, and coming in at No. 6 is cookies and crème. On the burger side, Shores says, the cheese burger is the best seller, then steak and cheese, and finally pepper steak, an original from the early eighties.

“We implemented some new salads earlier this year,” Shores added, “a southwest chicken salad and a chicken mango salad. Those are selling really good as well. We’ve got a couple of other things we’re going to try as well.”