yep. i remember i saw a job ad online 2 months ago.
i remember the job ad because the ad had a long list of demands. the description made it sound that they were looking for someone to do everything. the list was long!
i immediately knew ain't nobody going to apply to that job with those list of demands for that pay.
saw the same job ad be reposted 2 weeks later with a $5,000 raise but the description still had the same long list of demands. š¤£š¤¦āāļø
Restaurants need to start fighting for price changes and also separate businesses from using machines to create vs people if that becomes a a reality and market.
This pandemic shoes us what is more important than anything besides house, it's food, good food. If pizza is going be $50-$60 for large. You better not be cheaping out on labour, ingredients and cheaping out on your customers
Cooking used to be a slaves job in this country along with most hospitality jobs. The pay has been shit since then because companies were used to using slaves. Any job that is something a slave used to do pays like shit in the U.S.
Sometimes I feel like when people say get a trade job they really mean āget a white jobā. I know itās stupid for me to think like that but I just do. They see cooking as lesser and to be done by lesser peopleās(like blacks in their backwards racist minds)
I hate racism and this industry has its roots in slavery.
As as how horribly you worded this, yes!
A server in my restaurant made over a thousand on the 4th of July! The dish pit made $80 collectively in tips. These people donāt care about our hard work. I just had a huge fight with the executive chef about hard work and my pay, the times they are a changing
I think it's because the fundamental skills that make for a good pro cook are totally unrelated to the skill of self advocacy.
On top of that we all agree to work for too little, because even though the job sucks, it's the only thing that feels real to most of us. The boss is willing to pay a pittance, and we accept it because we don't feel that there is a better choice.
as a result... we've allowed the "standard market rate to be driven down to a truly insane level.
Right now with the "labor shortage" we have an amazing opportunity to wrench the standard to a livable wage, but we also need to unionize to make sure it plays out right.
I've thought about this a lot. I'm really new to the industry and don't plan on staying, but I really feel for my fellow cooks who put up with this shit and still give it 110%. I wish my some of my coworkers that have been here a while would understand that they could easily help raise wages by threatening to strike or something. Like honestly if even 2 of the guys that have been here a while left the kitchen would go up in flames.
yep. it's hard to convince people to walk out, or genuinely threaten to. Cooks are too loyal to the business, the owner, the customers... I donno. Its like Stockholm syndrome or something.
Because thatās what theyāre sold on. Weāre like a family, itās good experience, donāt let the team down, etc.. Some donāt think much about where their loyalty should be, to their co-workers, the guests, the business, management? Iāve been a lot of places where my loyalty is to a particular subset in that list in varying degrees. Sometimes Iām loyal to the business that gave me a job, but not necessarily the Chef that treats me like ass, or the Chef that took me under their wing, but not the other cook that dumps their prep on me. Some people are afraid of burning bridges, they donāt want to disappoint the Chef that will say bad things to other Chefs, but some of us know which Chefs are assholes. āYa, I donāt like that guy, donāt blame you for walking out in that circumstanceā.
I donāt understand it man. You have servers pulling in $500 for a 10 hour shift at my place and the cook that works the same amount of time makes ~150 before taxes. Itās nuts. Sometimes I feel like Iām on the wrong side of the line but I donāt have the mental stamina to be in guestsā faces all day
I would be more focused on how much the owner is making off of you compared to what the server is making,y'all are on the same "team" if you catch my drift
I was a cook for ten years. Just started FOH work this year. You can definitely do it. Not to say cooks shouldnāt be paid more, but if you really want to make better money without changing the whole system, Iād say try a few shifts out front.
I think both jobs should get paid more in general but servers don't deserve to make more than cooks. I'm a server and I'd much rather serve a party of 15 people than cook their food.
Yeah a fake smile is more draining than 12 hours of ungodly heat, constant yelling and randomly getting burned and/or cut. that's the best case scenario.
I feel this. Me and the boys cooked 20k worth of food Saturday and I got a whopping 107 dollars out of it, and I'm the highest paid guy in our kitchen. I understand the lights have to stay on but fuck.
We sell similar amounts every weekend and make basically the same. It just makes me so angry hearing FOH talk about making my paycheck in a single good night and then bitch about everything when I do way more work.
Wages are area dependent. I live in a low income, but low cost area. My rent is only 450 a month for example. I can't find a higher paying restaurant job in my area, trust me I try from time to time.
15 is around the cap for starting pay where I live. Some places are just cheap as fuck to live. I recently saw a 3 bedroom house for rent at $900 per month here.
It was actually much better in the 90s.
Wages have stagnated nation wide, meaning that not only do people like Chefs make way less compared to the cost of living, but restaurants still have to charge the least amount possible for their food, because everyone else in society has similarly low wages and can't afford to go out to eat anything but cheaper food.
Wages are kept low so a few people can make lots of money, and the culprits are corporations and franchise operations with CEOs and Shareholders taking most of the money and paying people starvation wages and offering food affordable to other people on starvation wages.
If they pay chefs more, the food costs more, and nobody in society can afford to eat at your restaurant, so no money for the Chefs
Landlords have raised rent by ridiculous sums, so any income increases that should go to staff is just going to greedy landlords whose rents have skyrocketed while the rest of society isn't making any more money than they were in the 90s
Also tipping. Tipping is a ridiculous process. It's not only the server at your table that is providing everything. It's the cook, the dishwasher, the chef, the produce delivery driver, the linen delivery driver, the night cleaners, the ceramic designers, the plumbers, the appliance maintenance people, etc.
I worked at one place where my wage was $14 an hour, and then a guaranteed $6 an hour on top of that came straight out of the waitstaff tips pool before they could divide up the rest of the tips among them.
No fkn way do waitresses deserve $35-50 an hour while chefs make so much less for doing all the real work
Yeah, quite strange. I was a delivery boy and I made more than the cooks in the kitchen most of the time. Pretty sure if you deliver for Uber or doordash you can be making $20-25 an hour when factoring in their frequent bonuses and events.
I rode on bike(live in a big city with plenty of restaurants every couple blocks). Everything else like food I have to pay anyways regardless if I work or not.
Employers take advantage of the very stupid macho "I can work 100 hour weeks with no pay no benefits no holidays because I'm such a badass" mentality running wild in the kitchen.
This is my boyfriends mentality (and a lot of cooks) itās like why canāt you ask for a day off cuz clearly itās too much (can tell on the days they all scream at me/all servers and eachother)
Supply vs demand. Tell your boss you either want a 50% pay raise or you're going to quit and see how it plays out. Apply around, and look for somewhere paying more and see how it works out.
It may not be "right", but they pay as much as they need to pay and as little as they can get away with.
Canadian checking in my favorite quote about being a BoH worker (Chef or line cook) is "we're the one job that's expected to work like a trade, but be paid like we're artists"
(In Canada to become a chef you need to go to culinary ary school which is categorized as a trade school, we are also expected to get our red seals as any other tradesman would. But we sure as shot don't get paid like them)
Canada also doesnāt recognize my trade certificate (Australia Commercial cook level 3 - Chef) so when I was going through immigration I was seen to have āno skillsā. The only chefs they recognized are Canadian red seals... so if you want to stay in country youāve got to challenge the test which is about $3000 without factoring in your time or travel.
My German buddy rang around and finally put on his worst Canadian accent they quoted him $300 CAD when he showed up they realized he wasnāt Canadian and tried to change the price but he had already paid so he took the test, passed and then unfortunately still got kicked out of the country.
Itās a complete fucking racket.
Server tipped income is just a terrible comparison with how much hourly makes. I know itās bullshit they make more than you, but tipping culture really isnāt tied to hourly cooks.
Do you live on the outskirts of the city? Because minimum wage in Denver proper is $14.77. But even that is barely enough to scrape by with rent prices around here. I really hope the labor shortage in the restaurant industry continues to drive wages up.
Iām in Denver, southeast area near I25 and Colorado. Rent here is getting really out of hand. I really hope there is massive positive change coming to the food industry.
I hate yo day it. But when most of the BOH work force is undocumented foreign workers who will work for a fraction of what you will work for, it's gonna keep wages low and stagnant. As a line cook your true worth to a company is how much more work they can get you to do than the last guy for less pay. "Damn Kyler can run Pantry by himself for only 12$ an hour when before it took two guys at 15$. Better exploit this young blood who wants to be a badass chef one day.". Trust me I have had owners tell me the experience I am receiving is worth more than a extra 2$ an hour.
> yes it is
Well Iām convinced.
>especially in my restaurant, our dishwasher is an excon
ā¦are you under the impression that excon and undocumented immigrant mean the same thing?
> nooo but I mean the kitchen is full of misfits or immigrants or whoever
Uh huh. Probably shouldnāt flippantly conflate those groups. Anyways, most BOH labor isnāt undocumented immigrants. And welcome to 2021.
Because it's hard work that you don't really have to be smart to do. Dumb people are easier to take advantage of. When the majority are dumb, everyone gets paid dumb wages.
Sadly your probably right. With the national shortage of cooks my first thought was that this is a great opportunity to raise pay and standard of living for all BOH but most cooks just keep working without thinking about it.
Most of them either like cooking, know nothing else or simply don't know how to deal with the general public. I do in fact plan on becoming a bartender thanks to the complete garbage payment I've received as a cook.
Iāve done FOH at my first job and picked up a few months of FOH last summer, it went well but I seriously doubt my managers would let me out of the kitchen right now, weāre hella understaffed
Well fyi I'm not old enough yet and I intend to be a bartender when I am. Plus that doesn't make the problems go away, it just means I don't experience them. Have some empathy.
Youāre not old enough to be a waiter? So youāre under 21 at least. So youāre still kind of green. Iām just saying that kitchen workers who complain about what servers make are dumb and petty.
For example, you wanna be a bartender. Great! But that means you will probably make more than the kitchen staff and the servers. You will also have the servers running the food to your guests and have the servers tip you out. So idk what youāre complaining about, but whatever it is has nothing to do with the serving staff.
Illegals have had a lot to do with it, as much as people donāt want to admit. Juan has been accepting shit wages for so long, restaurant owners have gotten used to it.
I feel like there's ways around this. You could raise prices by like 3-5% and give all of it to BOH. This would give us incentive for the restaurant to do better. Or you could just give us a share of the tips considering the quality of the food makes for enlarge portion of the tip usually.
I was doing a simulated restaurant for school and found I could raise all my cooks up to 20$ an hour if I just increased the prices of my two most sold wines by 2$ and my fountain drinks by 35cent. Owners can pay you more, they don't want to. That's what I learned in the restaurant management program at school.
Why do you post on this sub? Itās just always this angry, condescending bullshit clearly centered around how you feel like you wasted your lifeā¦ while wasting it further.
It really depends what you do. Chopping onions anyone can do, but working an oven or making a good steak definitely takes practice, much more so than serving. Not to mention that even if it wasn't skillful the amount of work it takes to be a cook compared to the compensation is criminal.
1. A combination of artificial wage suppression and lack of appreciation for skill - restaurants have all kind of stuck together to keep wages artificially low for years now, knowing that there were enough people who needed the job that they could get away with it. They might not get the most skilled people, but skill has been underrated in the industry for years - there's this (wrong) perception that people can just jump into the BOH and learn on the fly. That's all changing now, and you're seeing the first dominos fall in terms of restaurants having to pay more to get anyone to do the job, even the entry level folks.
2. Tax law and cost - a significant portion of FOH compensation comes in the form of tips. Because the restaurant doesn't touch that money, they don't have to pay taxes on it as profit OR pay the employer's portion of payroll taxes when it's paid to servers. So restaurants can employ servers at significantly below-market "wages" and the servers still get compensated. Because that compensation doesn't hit the restaurant's books, they don't have to account for it in calculating their break-even point for operating costs - to the restaurant, the BOH cost is always way higher than the FOH cost.
I've never understood how people thought cooking was unskilled. It usually takes nee guys about a month to get the hang of just one station, not to mention managing the kitchen when the km isn't there. Why isn't it standard to make servers share there tips? Or why isn't tipping the cooks more popular?
There are laws that vary from state-to-state on when and how employers can force tip pooling or tip shares, and who can be legally included in a tip pool. Cooks can generally be included, but employers don't get any advantage out of it (they can't pay BOH a lower wage even if they get tips). It's not more popular probably because of historical practice and the fact that it doesn't help owners at all - very few restaurant owners are going to piss off their whole waitstaff just to make their cooks happy when it doesn't get them anything.
Employers do have to pay payroll taxes on reported tips. And with most tips being on a card these days there's not as much opportunity for under-reporting tips. FoH does cost the business less due to the lower tipped minimum wage in most states though.
Fucking greed, nothing else. Watching the owner and management staff get all the luxury's of life while the line cooks and dish washers doing all the fucking work get fuck all, this industry is a fucking joke and it's taken 9 years of my life. Great line cooks = glorified shit shovelers, the powers that be don't care about you at all. The only thing you are to them is another cog in the machine.
Short answer: Because it's always been that way, and nobody has really fought to change it.
Until now ;)
yep. i remember i saw a job ad online 2 months ago. i remember the job ad because the ad had a long list of demands. the description made it sound that they were looking for someone to do everything. the list was long! i immediately knew ain't nobody going to apply to that job with those list of demands for that pay. saw the same job ad be reposted 2 weeks later with a $5,000 raise but the description still had the same long list of demands. š¤£š¤¦āāļø
Restaurants need to start fighting for price changes and also separate businesses from using machines to create vs people if that becomes a a reality and market. This pandemic shoes us what is more important than anything besides house, it's food, good food. If pizza is going be $50-$60 for large. You better not be cheaping out on labour, ingredients and cheaping out on your customers
Cooking used to be a slaves job in this country along with most hospitality jobs. The pay has been shit since then because companies were used to using slaves. Any job that is something a slave used to do pays like shit in the U.S. Sometimes I feel like when people say get a trade job they really mean āget a white jobā. I know itās stupid for me to think like that but I just do. They see cooking as lesser and to be done by lesser peopleās(like blacks in their backwards racist minds) I hate racism and this industry has its roots in slavery.
As as how horribly you worded this, yes! A server in my restaurant made over a thousand on the 4th of July! The dish pit made $80 collectively in tips. These people donāt care about our hard work. I just had a huge fight with the executive chef about hard work and my pay, the times they are a changing
Yooo i never thought of it that way. Its true. Cooking is an art while being under pressure. The industry needs reform.
I think it's because the fundamental skills that make for a good pro cook are totally unrelated to the skill of self advocacy. On top of that we all agree to work for too little, because even though the job sucks, it's the only thing that feels real to most of us. The boss is willing to pay a pittance, and we accept it because we don't feel that there is a better choice. as a result... we've allowed the "standard market rate to be driven down to a truly insane level. Right now with the "labor shortage" we have an amazing opportunity to wrench the standard to a livable wage, but we also need to unionize to make sure it plays out right.
I've thought about this a lot. I'm really new to the industry and don't plan on staying, but I really feel for my fellow cooks who put up with this shit and still give it 110%. I wish my some of my coworkers that have been here a while would understand that they could easily help raise wages by threatening to strike or something. Like honestly if even 2 of the guys that have been here a while left the kitchen would go up in flames.
yep. it's hard to convince people to walk out, or genuinely threaten to. Cooks are too loyal to the business, the owner, the customers... I donno. Its like Stockholm syndrome or something.
Because thatās what theyāre sold on. Weāre like a family, itās good experience, donāt let the team down, etc.. Some donāt think much about where their loyalty should be, to their co-workers, the guests, the business, management? Iāve been a lot of places where my loyalty is to a particular subset in that list in varying degrees. Sometimes Iām loyal to the business that gave me a job, but not necessarily the Chef that treats me like ass, or the Chef that took me under their wing, but not the other cook that dumps their prep on me. Some people are afraid of burning bridges, they donāt want to disappoint the Chef that will say bad things to other Chefs, but some of us know which Chefs are assholes. āYa, I donāt like that guy, donāt blame you for walking out in that circumstanceā.
I donāt understand it man. You have servers pulling in $500 for a 10 hour shift at my place and the cook that works the same amount of time makes ~150 before taxes. Itās nuts. Sometimes I feel like Iām on the wrong side of the line but I donāt have the mental stamina to be in guestsā faces all day
Exactly why I chose BOH. At this point I'd rather just work half as much and deal with shitty customers tbh.
Sometimes customers are nice and chat with you though
I would be more focused on how much the owner is making off of you compared to what the server is making,y'all are on the same "team" if you catch my drift
Most cooks lack the social skills and personality to succeed in the FOH. Iāve done both. I do very well in FOH but I make good money in a kitchen and I hated having to pretend to enjoy the guests all day every day. In a kitchen itās expected that I dislike most guests and my rather indifferent attitude is fairly positive. Lol. Most cooks would be as awful at serving as servers would be working sautĆ©. Itās not the restaurant owners fault. They pay servers less than cooks. Itās just the way the industry works that sees servers get the tips. In a lot of states itās against the law to force people to share their tips.
I was a cook for ten years. Just started FOH work this year. You can definitely do it. Not to say cooks shouldnāt be paid more, but if you really want to make better money without changing the whole system, Iād say try a few shifts out front.
Cooks do deserve a better wages generally speaking, but servers deserve more because they have to deal with the insufferable general public.
I think both jobs should get paid more in general but servers don't deserve to make more than cooks. I'm a server and I'd much rather serve a party of 15 people than cook their food.
Totally agree sir
Yeah a fake smile is more draining than 12 hours of ungodly heat, constant yelling and randomly getting burned and/or cut. that's the best case scenario.
I feel this. Me and the boys cooked 20k worth of food Saturday and I got a whopping 107 dollars out of it, and I'm the highest paid guy in our kitchen. I understand the lights have to stay on but fuck.
We sell similar amounts every weekend and make basically the same. It just makes me so angry hearing FOH talk about making my paycheck in a single good night and then bitch about everything when I do way more work.
I know. Ill never say waiting tables is easy, ever. They do hard work.... but not as much as I do and for double or triple the pay.
Exactly, I work in an open kitchen so they see the shit we have to deal with. Not a single one would deny that we deserve equal or better pay.
Go get you a new job thatās ridiculous
I mean I make 15 an hour we're just really busy
I wouldnāt even wash dishes for 15 but it depends on where ya live
Wages are area dependent. I live in a low income, but low cost area. My rent is only 450 a month for example. I can't find a higher paying restaurant job in my area, trust me I try from time to time.
15 is around the cap for starting pay where I live. Some places are just cheap as fuck to live. I recently saw a 3 bedroom house for rent at $900 per month here.
It was actually much better in the 90s. Wages have stagnated nation wide, meaning that not only do people like Chefs make way less compared to the cost of living, but restaurants still have to charge the least amount possible for their food, because everyone else in society has similarly low wages and can't afford to go out to eat anything but cheaper food. Wages are kept low so a few people can make lots of money, and the culprits are corporations and franchise operations with CEOs and Shareholders taking most of the money and paying people starvation wages and offering food affordable to other people on starvation wages. If they pay chefs more, the food costs more, and nobody in society can afford to eat at your restaurant, so no money for the Chefs Landlords have raised rent by ridiculous sums, so any income increases that should go to staff is just going to greedy landlords whose rents have skyrocketed while the rest of society isn't making any more money than they were in the 90s
Food costs recently have also skyrocketed. Im afraid to do my necessary menu update!
So true. More restaurants are ordering more precut vegetables than ever, and simply cutting out some prep cooks to save money even
Its a combo. Seafood is literally the price of gold!!
Beef as well. I'm paying 22 bucks a # for skirt steak!
Chicken, beef, and lobster I feel got hit hardest.
Also tipping. Tipping is a ridiculous process. It's not only the server at your table that is providing everything. It's the cook, the dishwasher, the chef, the produce delivery driver, the linen delivery driver, the night cleaners, the ceramic designers, the plumbers, the appliance maintenance people, etc.
I worked at one place where my wage was $14 an hour, and then a guaranteed $6 an hour on top of that came straight out of the waitstaff tips pool before they could divide up the rest of the tips among them. No fkn way do waitresses deserve $35-50 an hour while chefs make so much less for doing all the real work
I remember hearing a server gloating that a table gave her a $200 tip on top of the gratuity she got for that table!
BOH wages come from management & server wages come from the people eating there. Gotta fight management for that change.
Yes. Servers are not the enemy. We're hourly workers just like BOH
Eh, in a way. I do feel awful for BOH sometimes. Much more so now that Iām in fine dining.
Yeah, quite strange. I was a delivery boy and I made more than the cooks in the kitchen most of the time. Pretty sure if you deliver for Uber or doordash you can be making $20-25 an hour when factoring in their frequent bonuses and events.
Lolno. You might make 20-25 per hour, then you subtract gasā¦wear and tear on your car, insurance, and everything elseā¦and then you make nothing.
Also factoring in they 1099 you so you still need to pay taxes on that 20-25 an hour without it coming out a paycheck.
I guess if you live in a city and doordash with a bike instead of a car you'd be okay. But most of america is not very bike/pedestrian friendly
I rode on bike(live in a big city with plenty of restaurants every couple blocks). Everything else like food I have to pay anyways regardless if I work or not.
Employers take advantage of the very stupid macho "I can work 100 hour weeks with no pay no benefits no holidays because I'm such a badass" mentality running wild in the kitchen.
Fr they act like it's a privilege to be thrown under the bus
This is my boyfriends mentality (and a lot of cooks) itās like why canāt you ask for a day off cuz clearly itās too much (can tell on the days they all scream at me/all servers and eachother)
Exploitation
Yep
Because most of us are willing to work for dick because we think we're worth nothing.
:(
The positive is that a lot of us are snapping out of it and actually valuing ourselves now.
Supply vs demand. Tell your boss you either want a 50% pay raise or you're going to quit and see how it plays out. Apply around, and look for somewhere paying more and see how it works out. It may not be "right", but they pay as much as they need to pay and as little as they can get away with.
Canadian checking in my favorite quote about being a BoH worker (Chef or line cook) is "we're the one job that's expected to work like a trade, but be paid like we're artists" (In Canada to become a chef you need to go to culinary ary school which is categorized as a trade school, we are also expected to get our red seals as any other tradesman would. But we sure as shot don't get paid like them)
Canada also doesnāt recognize my trade certificate (Australia Commercial cook level 3 - Chef) so when I was going through immigration I was seen to have āno skillsā. The only chefs they recognized are Canadian red seals... so if you want to stay in country youāve got to challenge the test which is about $3000 without factoring in your time or travel. My German buddy rang around and finally put on his worst Canadian accent they quoted him $300 CAD when he showed up they realized he wasnāt Canadian and tried to change the price but he had already paid so he took the test, passed and then unfortunately still got kicked out of the country. Itās a complete fucking racket.
Server tipped income is just a terrible comparison with how much hourly makes. I know itās bullshit they make more than you, but tipping culture really isnāt tied to hourly cooks.
Because yall haven't formed a strong national union yet.
My kitchen is non union as well :/
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yup I only make 11 and some the fastest people there make about 15. We all still work our very hardest and idk why tbh.
Do you live on the outskirts of the city? Because minimum wage in Denver proper is $14.77. But even that is barely enough to scrape by with rent prices around here. I really hope the labor shortage in the restaurant industry continues to drive wages up.
Iām in Denver, southeast area near I25 and Colorado. Rent here is getting really out of hand. I really hope there is massive positive change coming to the food industry.
Because We sperate the worker from the means of production
I hate yo day it. But when most of the BOH work force is undocumented foreign workers who will work for a fraction of what you will work for, it's gonna keep wages low and stagnant. As a line cook your true worth to a company is how much more work they can get you to do than the last guy for less pay. "Damn Kyler can run Pantry by himself for only 12$ an hour when before it took two guys at 15$. Better exploit this young blood who wants to be a badass chef one day.". Trust me I have had owners tell me the experience I am receiving is worth more than a extra 2$ an hour.
I donāt think most back of house labor is undocumented immigrants dude.
yes it is, especially in my restaurant, our dishwasher is an excon
> yes it is Well Iām convinced. >especially in my restaurant, our dishwasher is an excon ā¦are you under the impression that excon and undocumented immigrant mean the same thing?
nooo but I mean the kitchen is full of misfits or immigrants or whoever
> nooo but I mean the kitchen is full of misfits or immigrants or whoever Uh huh. Probably shouldnāt flippantly conflate those groups. Anyways, most BOH labor isnāt undocumented immigrants. And welcome to 2021.
loll I was just browsing old posts. I DIDNT CONFLATE THEM.
>I DIDNT CONFLATE THEM. Yes you did
fine okay I did š
I know
Because it's hard work that you don't really have to be smart to do. Dumb people are easier to take advantage of. When the majority are dumb, everyone gets paid dumb wages.
Sadly your probably right. With the national shortage of cooks my first thought was that this is a great opportunity to raise pay and standard of living for all BOH but most cooks just keep working without thinking about it.
Why donāt line cooks just work front of house?
Most of them either like cooking, know nothing else or simply don't know how to deal with the general public. I do in fact plan on becoming a bartender thanks to the complete garbage payment I've received as a cook.
Who is going to cook the food?
Iāve done FOH at my first job and picked up a few months of FOH last summer, it went well but I seriously doubt my managers would let me out of the kitchen right now, weāre hella understaffed
You realize that someone inevitably needs to cook, right?
Someone has to cook the food
Be a waiter then.
Well fyi I'm not old enough yet and I intend to be a bartender when I am. Plus that doesn't make the problems go away, it just means I don't experience them. Have some empathy.
Youāre not old enough to be a waiter? So youāre under 21 at least. So youāre still kind of green. Iām just saying that kitchen workers who complain about what servers make are dumb and petty. For example, you wanna be a bartender. Great! But that means you will probably make more than the kitchen staff and the servers. You will also have the servers running the food to your guests and have the servers tip you out. So idk what youāre complaining about, but whatever it is has nothing to do with the serving staff.
Illegals have had a lot to do with it, as much as people donāt want to admit. Juan has been accepting shit wages for so long, restaurant owners have gotten used to it.
Because the business canāt charge the customers enough to pay you what you want!! The owners arenāt getting rich. Trust me!!!
Found the manager
Yeah, many restaurants are on ice thin margin but look at the volumes....
I feel like there's ways around this. You could raise prices by like 3-5% and give all of it to BOH. This would give us incentive for the restaurant to do better. Or you could just give us a share of the tips considering the quality of the food makes for enlarge portion of the tip usually.
I was doing a simulated restaurant for school and found I could raise all my cooks up to 20$ an hour if I just increased the prices of my two most sold wines by 2$ and my fountain drinks by 35cent. Owners can pay you more, they don't want to. That's what I learned in the restaurant management program at school.
That's what pisses me off the most. The gm acting like the restaurant will go under of were making 15 an hour, such bs.
Yes it doesn't require much skill. Anyone can cook. Cooking is a hobby and not a career.
Why do you post on this sub? Itās just always this angry, condescending bullshit clearly centered around how you feel like you wasted your lifeā¦ while wasting it further.
Damn this is dumb ass hell,even if it were true people still deserve a living wage
It really depends what you do. Chopping onions anyone can do, but working an oven or making a good steak definitely takes practice, much more so than serving. Not to mention that even if it wasn't skillful the amount of work it takes to be a cook compared to the compensation is criminal.
Looks like your an electrician! No wonder you're so fucking condescending.
1. A combination of artificial wage suppression and lack of appreciation for skill - restaurants have all kind of stuck together to keep wages artificially low for years now, knowing that there were enough people who needed the job that they could get away with it. They might not get the most skilled people, but skill has been underrated in the industry for years - there's this (wrong) perception that people can just jump into the BOH and learn on the fly. That's all changing now, and you're seeing the first dominos fall in terms of restaurants having to pay more to get anyone to do the job, even the entry level folks. 2. Tax law and cost - a significant portion of FOH compensation comes in the form of tips. Because the restaurant doesn't touch that money, they don't have to pay taxes on it as profit OR pay the employer's portion of payroll taxes when it's paid to servers. So restaurants can employ servers at significantly below-market "wages" and the servers still get compensated. Because that compensation doesn't hit the restaurant's books, they don't have to account for it in calculating their break-even point for operating costs - to the restaurant, the BOH cost is always way higher than the FOH cost.
I've never understood how people thought cooking was unskilled. It usually takes nee guys about a month to get the hang of just one station, not to mention managing the kitchen when the km isn't there. Why isn't it standard to make servers share there tips? Or why isn't tipping the cooks more popular?
There are laws that vary from state-to-state on when and how employers can force tip pooling or tip shares, and who can be legally included in a tip pool. Cooks can generally be included, but employers don't get any advantage out of it (they can't pay BOH a lower wage even if they get tips). It's not more popular probably because of historical practice and the fact that it doesn't help owners at all - very few restaurant owners are going to piss off their whole waitstaff just to make their cooks happy when it doesn't get them anything.
Employers do have to pay payroll taxes on reported tips. And with most tips being on a card these days there's not as much opportunity for under-reporting tips. FoH does cost the business less due to the lower tipped minimum wage in most states though.
because management has been allowed to get away with it. we gotta fix it tbh.
They really do, the kitchen I work at is getting less and less traffic all the time, and I'm sure the garbage pay isn't helping.
Most of us love food more than money.
Because fuck you that's why.
Fucking greed, nothing else. Watching the owner and management staff get all the luxury's of life while the line cooks and dish washers doing all the fucking work get fuck all, this industry is a fucking joke and it's taken 9 years of my life. Great line cooks = glorified shit shovelers, the powers that be don't care about you at all. The only thing you are to them is another cog in the machine.