fed and cared for
Popular Austin restaurant cooks up industry child care program
L'Oca d'Oro co-owner Adam Orman is working to start a new program for staff with non-traditional hours.
An Austin restaurant is working to fill the need for nontraditional child care for hospitality workers.
Often, these employees work nights and weekends, so finding daycare can be challenging.
L'Oca d'Oro co-owner Adam Orman is working with others to start a pilot program to help servers and other restaurant staff.
Recently, the restaurant partnered with United Way to compare the need versus supply for nontraditional child care.
The study revealed that in Travis County, 32 percent of working parents have nontraditional hours. Most of those families include people who work at restaurants.
That comes out to about 18,000 children in the county whose parents or guardians work outside of 9 to 5. Yet, there are only about 2,000 seats available at child care providers open during those hours.
"It's an economic development issue for Travis County, knowing full well that there's a major need here and parents are being forced or excluded from the workforce. Employees can't hire or retain employers because there's this lack of affordable child care," United Way for Greater Austin consultant Brooke Freeland said.
Orman said getting benefits like child care is important to help keep people in the industry.
"I think a lot of people traditionally think of it as a job that you did in college, and then you grew up and got a real job when you had a family because you needed child care. Restaurants are the largest private employer in the country. We can't continue to just be something for college kids," Orman said.
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Read the full story and watch the video at KVUE.com.
