He’s operated a fine dining restaurant seven days a week for 25 years, but next week, Erling Jensen will close on Monday and Tuesday.

“I hope it’s for a very short time, just maybe a few weeks, but I don’t know how long it will be,” Jensen said.

The familiar reason: A staffing crunch.

Erling Jensen: The Restaurant opened in 1996, but Jensen has been in the restaurant business all his life, training and working from age 15 in his native Denmark.

Erling’s kitchen: He turns out fine food and chef/owners, too

He said he’s never seen anything like the blow COVID has dealt to the industry, and points out that it’s complicated, not the oversimplified notion that people weren’t working because they were drawing unemployment.

As of July 3, Tennesseans drawing unemployment are no longer eligible for a $300 weekly federal supplement. Gov. Bill Lee opted out of the program.

“That ran out a couple of weeks ago and nothing has changed,” Jensen said. “Our kitchen staff, it’s down to nothing. People are going to 9 to 5 jobs, better pay. There’s so many things affecting our industry.”

The issue for Jensen is a lack of line cooks, who work specific stations doing jobs such as grilling, sautéing, frying and so on. They’re essential to the operation of a kitchen but are often paid low wages. According to a widely publicized but not peer-reviewed study released by the University of California San Francisco in January, they also had a higher mortality risk in that state during the first seven months of the pandemic than any other professions, including health care workers.

Fine and fun dining is back: Erling’s reopens with a bigger, better bar

Whatever the cause, workers are hard to find.

“It’s something I used to pay between $12 to $14 an hour for and now I’m offering $17 or $18 and people are still turning me down,” Jensen said.

“We’re not closing because of a lack of business. We’re busy every night because people are back in the restaurants. We just can’t open seven days with just four or five people in the kitchen,” he said. “I would work eight days a week if we could, but they have to have time off.”

Jensen said he plans to call on former employees and to offer more money, to do whatever he has to do. But he knows it’s going to be hard.

“They can go to Amazon or somewhere and get paid for moving boxes around,” he said. “In the kitchen, it’s rough. It’s hot, it’s busy, it’s long hours, you’re getting yelled at.

“Not by me, but I’ve heard stories.”