Michael Velicu studied at the French Culinary Institute and became expert in preparing Middle Eastern, Turkish, Greek and Moroccan dishes before opening his Mediterraneo restaurant in Ridgewood two years ago. But his training didn't give him the recipe North Jersey restaurant owners need most these days – for finding and keeping employees.

"It probably is one of the most challenging jobs in the restaurant," said Velicu, who had to replace nine cooks this summer, along with three waiters who headed back to college last month.

Restaurateurs such as Velicu have been hit hard by a long-term labor shortage in the restaurant industry, aggravated by competition from several large chain restaurants that have opened in North Jersey.

The chain eateries, which require 200 or more employees, have also reported hiring headaches. The Grand Lux Cafe, a new concept by the Cheesecake Factory chain, is still advertising for workers at its Paramus location, which opened last month.

Restaurant jobs are growing at nearly three times the country's general employment growth rate, according to the National Restaurant Association, and restaurants, from 300-seat chain theme eateries to 40-seat neighborhood bistros like Velicu's, are having an increasingly hard time filling new jobs.

"The restaurant industry over the past year has really been a jobs juggernaut," said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the national restaurant group. "It has been a substantial component of the overall national employment growth." In August, when national employment fell by 4,000 jobs, the restaurant industry gained 24,000 positions.

In New Jersey, restaurant sales will exceed $11 billion in 2007. The state's eateries employ 309,800 people, or 7 percent of the state labor pool.

The public is spending close to half of its food dollars in restaurants, compared with only 25 percent in 1955, according to the national restaurant group. The restaurant industry will grow by another 2 million jobs over the next 10 years, the association predicts. The industry employs almost 10 percent of the national workforce.

"It is an extremely labor-intensive industry," Riehle said.

Ten years ago, the New Jersey Restaurant Association "declared a labor crisis in the industry and quite frankly I honestly don't recall us ever lifting it," said Deborah Dowdell, president of the association. New Jersey restaurant owners, she said, have accepted a tight labor supply as a fact of life, and now focus on retaining the employees they do hire, and making their staff more efficient. "I also get a lot of inquiries about how do you look for employees," she said.

Job-posting Web sites such as Monster.com and Craigslist.com have reported a surge in restaurant and food-service listings, and the state restaurant association has worked with a hospitality industry Web site, HCareers.com, to publicize job openings.

Velicu said he "constantly" is putting jobs on Craigslist, looking to replace staff. Anthony LoPinto, the executive chef at Crave, a restaurant that will open in Fairfield next month, posted a hiring open house on Craigslist. He invited potential employees to come to the restaurant last week for interviews. The ad drew only six applicants, a smaller turnout than LoPinto expected.

LoPinto and Frank Funicelli, the restaurant's general manager, estimate they will need at least 19 employees to operate the restaurant. They said word of mouth and referrals from friends often yield the best results.

LoPinto, who previously headed the kitchen at Restaurant Earth in Totowa, and who has worked at such Manhattan restaurant institutions as Lespinasse and Daniel, said good employees are so valuable these days that "I always make sure I treat them well."

Contributing to the chef shortage, he said, is that many new chefs change careers after discovering they can't take the heat and want out of the kitchen.

"The culinary schools are pumping out astronomical numbers of chefs who are getting jobs, staying a month and then realizing they don't like being in the kitchen," he said. "Every now and then you find a unicorn – a true culinarian who loves cooking and creating."

Paul Dillon, executive director of the Culinary Arts Institute at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, said the school gets calls daily from restaurants looking for recent graduates. The college has invested $23 million in a new culinary arts instructional building and conference center.

Despite the growing demand, Dillon said, the pay for entry-level cooks hasn't changed much in recent years. "The rate of pay for line cooks is still what it was 15 years ago," Dillon said, with $8 to $10 an hour the norm. Although independent restaurant owners said they usually can offer only $8 to $9 for kitchen help, the Grand Lux Cafe ads promise $15 an hour for non-tipped employees, and as much as $150 per shift for tipped employees.

Restaurants frequently give employees bonuses for recommending new recruits, and owners say staff referrals often are their best source of new workers.

"If a person works for us and is a respected manager, we want his friend, his associates, to work for us," said Ed Doherty, president of Doherty Enterprises. Doherty's organization operates 50 Applebee's franchise restaurants in New Jersey and elsewhere, as well as Panera Bread and Chevy's Fresh Mex restaurants.

Doherty recently opened the Shannon Irish Rose Pub in Clifton. He said he was able to find the 180 employees he needed fairly easily by posting the jobs on college campuses and in newspaper ads.

"I think the problem with the restaurant-food industry in general isn't a labor shortage, it's a turnover problem," Doherty said. "Historically in the restaurant business, crew turnover – hourly employee turnover – can range anywhere from 150 to 200 percent a year. So if you have a restaurant with 80 employees, you're turning over 160 employees a year," he said.

Doherty said turnover at all of his restaurants averages 50 percent to 70 percent. "We work very hard to reduce turnover," he said. "We try and treat them as very important people, which they are."

Restaurants increasingly are automating their ordering systems, and using wireless hand-held devices that relay a customer's drink orders to the bar and menu choices to the kitchen. The Brasilia Grill in Newark is able to staff a 300-seat restaurant with five waiters by using a hand-held wireless device that sends orders to printers in the kitchen, bar, or barbecue station as soon as they are recorded by the waiters. The devices "decrease the possibility of any mistake, and lets the waiter send the order to the kitchen faster," said Orlando Campos, manager of the restaurant.

Scott Spitzberg, president of Union Township-based Restaurant Software Solutions, which has installed the systems that use Motorola wireless devices in 100 restaurants, said "the No. 1 thing restaurant owners tell me they want is efficiency." The devices also let waiters communicate with managers and get alerts, for example, if the kitchen runs out of a menu item.

Riehle of the National Restaurant Association said restaurant owners are turning toward innovations such as wireless devices and improving benefits for employees as ways of making restaurant careers more attractive. "It is obviously a lot easier to retain the workforce that one already has versus going out and fishing in the shallow labor pool," he said.

E-mail: verdon@northjersey.com