Wodonga Seafood and Game closes before Easter due to lack of staff

Wodonga Seafood and Game opened on High Street last May, but former owner Morgan Barton said she and her husband were forced to sell three weeks before Easter because they couldn't find enough workers, despite the otherwise success of the enterprise.

"Christmas was a huge success and it was fantastic for our sales and all the seafood lovers came to support us, which was fantastic," she said.

"But we really struggled to get help in over Christmas, so we had lots of family members and friends rescue us last minute and I think we had four family members pack until 5am the night before Christmas Eve with us ... because we just couldn't find the workers.

"I was pregnant at Christmas and I think at one stage I worked for 36 hours on my feet at a time and my body really took a toll, and we've got four young children at home too and it was really just a wake up call that we couldn't do that.

"It was such a huge effort, we didn't think we'd survive and luckily we did and everyone was really happy with the service, but there was so much behind the scenes stuff that had to go into providing that, but after Christmas we thought we really had to reassess things."

Ms Barton said the family business went through recruitment agencies trying desperately to find a suitable employee, but without success.

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"My husband was happy to train people, we interviewed people we gave people trials," she said.

"They either got better job offers because factories can hire so many people and pay them really great hourly wages, where as a small business we could only afford just above the ward wage."

Ms Barton said some of the people they had trialled were unreliable.

"They would call in sick after one day," she said.

"They weren't willing to learn, so you'd teach them one way and they'd just go back to the other way.

"We kept putting in lots of time and effort to try and train them and even they would walk away with a better offer from a factory job or something like that."

Ms Barton said they put their all into the business, but eventually it became untenable.

"We put so much into it, we sold our family home to invest in this business and all our family and friends were really backing us and we had heaps of support," she said.

"It was really our dream and so we thought the only way we would walk away was if we were unsuccessful.

"We call it an expensive life lesson."

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