Limited hours of operations for dining services for the summer season, due to labor shortage

There is a labor shortage in the food and beverage industry which has made it difficult for many restaurants to staff their operations adequately. For the Lodge and other businesses in the Keweenaw, this is labor shortage is magnified because of our remoteness (we are not in downtown Chicago; Copper Harbor is the furthest town from any US Interstate in the lower 48 states). On top of this, there is added pressure to ensure the health and safety of the staff and guests during the pandemic. As such, we have decided to scale back our hours of operation for dining services this summer (starting now, and will go through Labor day, September 6th).

We currently have approximately 30 team members on the resort team, while we should have 50-55 team members by the end of this month. We have had 20+ positions posted for the past 2-3 months. We filled some of them, however, many of the food and beverage positions remained unfilled to date.

We take our time in hiring as we work to find a good fit with applicants based upon the team core values. We are a strong team, and have spent the last 12 months working endlessly to keep operations going at the Lodge with a limited number of staff members. After running through the winter, the current food and beverage staff has been working extra hours to ensure quality food and service in our dining services.  We have received kudos for the quality of our products and services this past summer and winter with our guests.  And, we want to keep improving and providing better food and service in order to WOW our guests. 

To keep the focus on quality of the food and level of service high — and building our food niche: Rustic Worldly Food — while not stressing the team, we have made the decision to scale back.

The culinary experience is one of the three buckets that we focus on at the Lodge (with the other two buckets being the experience with the historical nature of the resort and the outdoor activities in the Keweenaw). We want to make the culinary experience something that is worth remembering — WOWing the guests. If the staff is tired and not enjoying their time when operating the food and beverage operations at full scale seven days a week, the quality of food and level of service will suffer. Thus, it is best to scale back for the entire summer, and provide an enjoyable experience for both the guests and the staff.

Updated of F&B Hours of Operation

Here are the updated hours of operation for the Little Cabin Cafe and the dining room.

Little Cabin Cafe

• Monday – Wednesday, 8am – 5pm (limited cafe menu)
• Thursday – Saturday, 8am – 9pm (full cafe menu)
• Sunday, 8am – 5pm (full cafe menu)

Little Cabin Cafe is counter-service, where you order from the cafe window and then can eat in the cafe area, the bar area, the front porch area, and outside. The Little Cabin Cafe menu is breakfast, appetizers, salads, and sandwiches / wraps.

Dining Room

• Thursday – Saturday, 4:30 – 9pm (dining room menu, reservations required)

The Dining Room is table-service, where you order from your table via servers, and where you will have the full dinner menu.

The main change is to the hours which we offer table-service, as table-service is more labor intensive. Table-service, which is in the dining room, will be Thursday-Saturday, 4:30 – 9pm, and will be reservation only. Since we are a destination resort with lodging, our lodging guests will have priority for with the reservations in the dining room.

You can find the current hours of operations for dining services at any time on our web site [ see the latest F&B hours operations ].

We will revisit this decision later in the summer to determine what changes we will make to our food and beverage hours. However, for planning purposes, guests should expect that this will be our hours through Labor Day (September 6th).