High running costs and staffing difficulties have led to the closure of a city centre restaurant.

Chit Chat closed its Queen Street doors yesterday and the 15 staff either moved to Four Star Pizza locations, which are owned by the same company, or accepted compensation packages.

President Marico Thomas said the business had been "fraught with difficulties''.

He cited employment problems and being an expensive location to operate in as the reasons behind the closure.

The building and its interior fittings are now up for sale.

Yesterday, Mr. Thomas said the restaurant, that had taken different guises since it opened in 1996, had done a little better each time but that still was not enough to keep it open.

He said it was extremely hard to attract Bermudian staff when there was practically no unemployment on the Island.

He added that it was harder still to get homegrown talent to join the hospitality industry when there were many other options available to people.

The situation leads to employers trying to attract other bosses' staff, having to make the position more desirable in the process and eventually pushing the cost to the customer up, he said.

"It is frustrating.

"The number of local people that want to join hospitality in any capacity, whether it be waiter, server or otherwise, is zero to none.

"The pool is extremely small, everyone is trying to recruit employees of other people that are already in work. That is a major challenge.'' Mr. Thomas said one solution was to hire overseas, which then brought its own problems with it.

"I don't envy Immigration, they are the whipping boys of the Island. They have stated they have a three-week process. I am not blaming them, with the change in Government they have a new objective, but...the process takes four to five weeks.'' He said he found it amazing that some people believed he preferred to hire from overseas, when there was a major cost and time factor involved in doing so.

"People are not running to hospitality.

"There are a lot of jobs available.

"There is low unemployment. It is a great time to be saying `what is the value of my skills'?''