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On a busy lunch hour at Blink, 60 guests might visit the downtown Calgary restaurant for a meal.

A hostess, three servers and a manager would usually be on hand to serve that many people, but on Monday, the restaurant was down to two servers and a manager.

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With about 26 full-time staff — four staffers less than a year ago — owner Leslie Echino said Blink is one of the many Calgary restaurants feeling the pinch due to rising costs. Hosts and servers are the only staff earning minimum wage, but Echino said the same raise percentages have been applied to all staff as minimum wage has increased in recent years.

“We’re running definitely leaner in the restaurant,” she said. “Everything is just going up. We are so conscious of our prices and trying not to put our prices up. In a restaurant, we can’t just keep raising our prices to pass it onto the customer because the customer notices.”

The service sector has lost 25,700 employees in the Calgary Economic Region (which includes municipalities surrounding the city) since a year ago, according to the city’s labour market review for July. Despite gains of about 16,500 jobs in the goods-producing sector, which included about 8,000 new jobs in the oil and gas industry, the accommodation and food services industry lost nearly 9,000 jobs since July 2017, according to the report.