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The heat is rising for B.C. restaurant owners, as they brace for the busy tourist season while scrambling to overcome a shortage of cooks and kitchen staff.

The shortage comes from an increase in the number of new restaurants, a lack of new staff to replace retiring baby boomers, and changes to the federal government’s temporary foreign workers program that cut the pool of labour to restaurants, industry observers say.

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“I need three cooks right away,” Kamal Mroke, owner of India Bistro on Vancouver’s Davie Street, said Monday.

Mroke said he is starting work around 9 a.m. and finishing as late as midnight, doing kitchen work he would normally hire someone to do. “I would like to be up front promoting my restaurant, but I cannot find a skilled worker like a chef, anybody, to work in the kitchen.”

Mroke has been in business for the past 12 years, but he said he’s never worked as hard.

“I’ll go back myself, start cooking in the kitchen,” he said. “My feet are hurting.”