Why the maker of a Denver-based job app says there isn’t a restaurant labor shortage

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2022-09-23 13:30:21

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The way Diego Montemayor talks about Chamba, his Denver startup, makes one wonder why it didn’t exist before. Chamba is another job app, but, as with most startups, there’s a twist.

Chamba launched a bilingual app in April 2020 that connects Spanish-speaking workers with the employers who need them. In late July, Chamba narrowed its focus to the restaurant industry. That seems like good timing if you’ve been paying attention to the restaurant staffing woes and how hard it’s been to find people, especially for jobs busing tables, in the kitchen and other nontipped “back-of-the-house” work.

“There’s not a labor shortage. There’s a connectivity problem,” said Montemayor, Chamba’s co-founder and CEO. “And that’s what we’re solving here. We’re connecting restaurants to the talent that wants these kinds of jobs.”