Jonathan Seyoum has worked at the Original Pancake House since 1990, starting with a position at the back of the house at the Addison location on Belt Line Road. When an opportunity arose to franchise the company in North Texas, Seyoum went for it, and it paid off. Today, he’s co-owner, partner, and president of the Original Pancake House DFW.
Seyoum’s climb at the Original Pancake House was a joint effort. In 2002, he and his wife Rahel had just welcomed their first child, Myh. He was about a dozen years into his career, climbing the ranks while simultaneously earning his master’s in business administration from the University of Texas at Dallas. The hours were long, and child care on a service industry salary felt out of reach. So, Rahel “stayed at home for many years, and consequently gave up her education and a career,” Seyoum says.
It’s a conversation that happens every day in households across the U.S. and no less in the restaurant industry. In Texas alone, an estimated 50 percent of the 1.4 million Texans working in the restaurant industry need some form of child care, and a high percentage of those folks are single parents, according to the Texas Restaurant Association (TRA). That 1.4 million figure encompasses a broad demographic range from teens to retirees in positions from back of the house to restaurateur. About 53 percent of the industry in Texas are women, while the average age of a worker is under 35 years.
A lack of child care has a variety of consequences for service industry workers. Many in the industry use personal days to take care of their children when emergencies arise, or bring their kids to work if there isn’t family around to take care of them. Even if workers can send their kids to a child care center, the cost is significant. The National Database of Childcare Prices reported the average cost of child care in Texas in 2023 ranged from $7,000 to $10,000 that year.
It’s a problem Emily Knight, CEO of the TRA, is trying to help solve. She has put together the TRA’s Employers for Childcare Task Force (E4C), a coalition of business leaders in the restaurant industry who are working together to improve access to affordable, high-quality child care in Texas. It was created in collaboration with Early Matters Texas, the Texas Association of Business, and Texas 2036, an advocacy organization dedicated to the state’s public policy.
The problem they’re trying to solve is multifaceted; what mom-and-pop shops deal with will be wholly different from what larger companies have to tackle. “Something people forget is that we’re not 9-to-5, and so if we did have child care, [there is] the need for nontraditional hours — late-night hours, overnight hours. Think about your restaurants that are open 24 hours, restaurants are open on weekends, they’re open on all holidays,” Knight says. “It’s become apparent that we have to solve for child care, but we also have to solve for nontraditional child care.”
In recognition of the complexity of the issue, E4C is partnering with a vast network of business leaders to generate potential solutions. There are about 100 companies signed up to support the mission, including the Biscuit Bar, Dallas Regional Chamber, and Original Pancake House DFW, but the TRA has a goal of 1,000 companies by September 2024.
Rachael Bien, a multi-unit manager at the Original Pancake House in Dallas, started at the company as a single mother when her two kids were in kindergarten and day care. Between day care costs, carpool services, sitters, and nannies, Bien said she spent upwards of $1,000 a week for her kids’ care.
Bien has been in the service industry since she was 15 years old, and she says child care is a common topic among all working parents, but it’s especially hard for those working in hospitality. With odd hours, including the need to fill shifts during bank holidays, child care would sometimes mean bringing kids in to work or making accommodations.
“There were many times Monday through Friday that I took the kids to work with me in the morning and just laid them down with a blanket and a pillow in a booth until it was time to take them to day care,” she says. “I take them to day care and come back, or take them to school and come back.”
Looking back, Bien says she wishes there was more support early on for child care in the industry. Solutions could have looked like on-site child care centers or government-funded subsidies. Bien says that every situation is different, and solutions for child care are going to be complex, but she’s supportive of “anything that helps as many people as possible.”
“So many people are struggling, or check-to-check, or shift-to-shift, in some cases,” she says. “If something comes up outside the norm, they’re one missed shift away from almost being homeless. This could change so many people’s lives.”
Over the next year, E4C will meet monthly to create a strategy policy agenda ahead of the Texas legislative session in 2025. Knight isn’t sure what the policies will look like yet, but there’s an emphasis on high-quality care for kids. Of nearly 6,900 child care centers throughout the state, only about 2,700 meet Texas Rising Star guidelines, the state’s quality rating system for early childhood learning. As of March 2024, about 1,600 providers have a “4-star” certification level, the highest quality awarded by Texas Rising Star. High-quality early learning is tied to better preparedness for school entry, according to the program. It’s just one of the solutions the task force wants to create, Knight says.
Another solution could look like government-funded care, which has worked once before. The need for child care was exacerbated during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when restaurants opened their doors in May 2020 while child care centers remained closed. Some of those centers closed permanently — between March 2020 and January 2023, the number of child-care centers in Texas declined by 27 percent, the equivalent of 5,000 fewer than the levels before the onset of the pandemic. It costs the state an estimated $11.4 billion annually in productivity and revenue losses, per the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, when good quality care disappears, or if it is too expensive or difficult to find for working-class families.
To help alleviate this, in 2021, the Texas Workforce Commission created the Service Industry Recovery (SIR) program, which provided $500 million for 12 months of child care for people working in the service industry. Knight says the program worked well, but one year of child care isn’t enough. If anything, the program proved that the problem was alive and well.
“The Workforce Commission in Texas is a great partner. They take this issue seriously because it impacts them,” Knight says. “It was great news that we could all collaborate across private/public, but then the one-year period expired, and I don’t think we saw anywhere near the impact that we could have had in lengthening that over a one-year period, where a family had a little bit more sustainability of having free care.”
E4C began connecting business leaders and restaurateurs throughout the state last fall, and it will continue throughout the summer. After developing policies, next fall the task force will prepare for and lobby during the 89th legislative session.
For Seyoum and his business partner, joining the task force was an easy decision. He thinks of his employees, like Mindy, a server who is a single parent who often has to bring in her child when care falls through. He thinks of the people who can only work weekends because they can’t afford child care. He thinks of women who can’t further their careers because child care options are holding them back.
Seyoum says it won’t be difficult to convince other leaders to sign up. Even at the Original Pancake House, where employees receive personal days and the hours never extend into the evenings, child care is still a major reason why some people can’t work. If there’s a way to support someone, success is within reach.
“I don’t think you have to pitch it to [leaders],” Seyoum says. “If there’s a way that you can help your associates with child care, [and you ask,] ‘Would you be interested in learning more about it?’ I think you’ll find a ‘yes’ every time.”
Click here to learn more about the Employers for Childcare Task Force.
