Far west hospitality venues say they are running on bare minimum staffing numbers as COVID impacts their operations.
Broken Hill's Musician's Club, Social Democratic Club, Alfresco's, and the Silverton Hotel are some of the venues that have considered or reduced opening hours.
Demo Club general manager Karren Howe said they had been fairly lucky with COVID over the past two years with about three cases recorded across their team.
But she said this week had hit them hard with 16 staff members off with COVID and several on leave.
"We really are running on bare minimum," she said.
She said all of her staff were testing every day to make sure they were COVID negative before arriving at work.
'Two staff off can halve your team'
Michael Boland is the president of the Broken Hill Liquor Accord and said he had never seen the staffing situation this bad.
He is also the general manager of the Musician's Club and said around 20 staff were currently absent between his venue and the Demo.
"When you're looking at some of the smaller hospitality venues they're only operating on a staff of four to eight people, where the larger clubs operate between 40 and 50 staff," he said.
Mr Boland said due to the impacts of the staff shortage their usual Mother's Day lunch and dinner sittings were at capacity, with numbers down by about 100 and bookings closed.
He added that budgets had been thrown out the window during the pandemic.
"That's a massive amount of money off the bottom line that wasn't budgeted for."
'Very important' to operate for Mother's Day
Ms Howe said her club was closing Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesday because they would not have everyone back and working until Wednesday morning.
She said they were doing the best to remain open until after lunchtime on Mother's Day.
"All team members that are still feeling well are on deck."
