It’s no secret that the lack of travel as well as restrictions on indoor dining are slowly killing restaurants during these challenging times. However, the restaurant industry has been running on an outdated model for decades which makes it incredibly difficult to succeed in the first place. Gabrielle Hamilton’s essay in the New York Times from earlier this year (My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 years. Does the World Need it Anymore) outlines a number of these challenges and acknowledges that maybe it’s time for the entire industry to change and evolve. Although our firm has designed dozens of restaurants, we also OWN our own restaurant and have been among the many small venues that have changed the way we do business to meet the demands of operating in a pandemic. So if you are wondering if your favorite restaurant will be around in a year or why so many venues are closed right now, here are some things about the restaurant industry that you may not know and need to be addressed in order for the industry rebuild itself:
1- Most workers are not paid legally. You’ve probably heard the stories about restaurant owners not properly distributing tips or the kitchen staff getting paid ‘under the table’ and yes, that’s all part of it. But restaurant work requires a lot of hours with a small crew and many full time restaurant workers are paid a ‘salary’ based on a 40-hour week when they clock many more hours than that. So if you are promised $600 per week and told it equates to $15 per hour that assumes you are working 40 hours per week. But if you are paid $600 per hour and asked to work 75 hours per week then before taxes you are actually making $8 an hour. And if you are paid hourly, most states require that you receive overtime pay after 40 hours. Of course, many restaurant owners will tell you that they can’t afford this but if the labor model doesn’t give the workers any benefits then they are not likely to be that loyal. If kitchen staff are undocumented or being paid ‘off the books’ then when they lose their job they receive no unemployment benefits and are likely to take any work that they can get. Given that the residential construction sector is booming right now it’s likely that the line cook from your favorite restaurant is spackling houses right now and getting paid better than before.
2- Shame and Guilt are just the beginning of a ‘toxic’ work environment. Talk to any person who’s worked in a kitchen and they will tell you how they got yelled at for needing to take a day off or eating a meal when they were hungry. ‘Chef Culture’ is a militaristic rank and file system where everyone is given a title and a pecking order and the hazing starts immediately in most kitchens. If you have ever read ‘Devil in the Kitchen’ by Marco Pierre White or ‘Kitchen Confidential’ by Anthony Bourdain you will probably be sad to find out that not much has changed in the last few decades. Women and Minorities are still a very small percentage of people running restaurants and the staff is usually blamed for poor sales or a bad review that results in further cutbacks to the operations of the business.
3- Cleaning and Maintenance are at the bottom of the list. Go to any factory where equipment is used to make something and you will always find a person who’s job it is to maintain that equipment or fix it when it breaks. Although some restaurants have handymen that they can call when something breaks it is more often the Owner or Manager who digs out a tool belt when something isn’t right and often the problem is undiagnosed until a major catastrophe happens. Many restaurants don’t have the extra funds to constantly service refrigeration compressors or exhaust hoods let alone the proper cleaning of these items. At the end of a shift most kitchen staff just want to clean up and go home but it’s a rare thing for the cleaning and servicing of the equipment to be given priority on a regular basis. Like anything else, the performance of a piece of equipment deteriorates over time so of course the quality of the food will also deteriorate unless new equipment is provided. It is almost a guarantee that your favorite restaurant is cooking with pans that are scratched and stained with food residue or cutting on cutting boards that are soiled beyond belief. Most kitchen staff are told they also have to buy their own uniforms (and often their own tools) and take care of all this stuff with their own money while at the same time being underpaid or asked to work excessive amounts of hours.
4- Most restaurants were in the red long before the pandemic. Ask any business owner about their biggest challenge and you will usually come back to ‘Cash Flow’ which is how much money comes in and goes out on a daily basis. The good thing about a food business is that you have cash coming in every day you are open. The bad news about a food business is that you can often negotiate how much cash goes out of your business. For example, if you pay a guy $30 per week to sharpen your knives you can always tell the guy ‘I’ll get you next week’. Until five weeks later you owe the guy $150 and you also owe the apron guy $500 and the soda guy $300 and so on. Restaurants are constantly paying last month’s bills with next month’s money and relying on the money coming in tomorrow to make everything right. The problem is that the pandemic stopped the flow of tomorrow’s money which made many restaurants realize that they were never really running good businesses in the first place. Fortunately, the pandemic gets the blame and many restaurant owners are using it to get out of leases and personal guarantees since the likelihood of being chased down is pretty low. But that doesn’t change the fact that most restaurant owners don’t have MBA’s or don’t really understand cash flow. And if you pay or tip in cash, it’s even more likely that those monies are not getting reported or going to the staff since the knife guy usually gets paid in cash anyway.
5- Mental Health is a big deal. So imagine that you work in a job where you are underpaid or paid illegally, verbally abused regularly, work on equipment that is not performing and then have to do this for 80 hours per week. What do you think your mental state would be? Would you be kind to everyone you meet? Do you have a balanced family life? Do you think you would fall into good habits outside of work? Why would you sign up for this? Strangely, many kitchen staff members form a bond over serving in these environments together (similar to any other job or military troop) and often socialize outside of work to decompress. Sadly, though there is a very high rate of substance abuse among kitchen workers as the physical demands on the job can be overwhelming, especially among younger people. These abuses lead to a degradation of a person’s mental state and then spirals from there. This phenomenon is not unique among high stress jobs, but the weird thing is that many of these conditions are unnecessary. I mean, people love to cook, right? Think of all the cooking shows and cookbooks out there and how many posts you see on social media about people making food. It’s fun, right? Now think of all the review sites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor. Now imagine that your work is constantly degraded and commented on by people who know nothing about how hard it is to do what you do. The disconnect between theory and execution is so big in this industry that the workers take the lion’s share of the downside. And of course, every restaurant gives their staff health insurance and time off to go talk to a therapist about all this, right?
So, what’s the solution here? How does the restaurant industry come out of this pandemic in a better place? All of the issues noted above are never actually SEEN by the guest. Is it even a problem that can be fixed at this point? In short, the answer is scale. Focus on what can be done well and at what quantity and charge accordingly for it. I can’t tell you the number of smaller venues that are now charging what they are worth because they are limited on staff and resources. There are a few places that are actually having their best year ever because they are being honest about what they can and can’t do and they have fewer customers but better margins.
So if you know a restaurant owner who may be struggling with any of the issues above (and I assure you most are) let them know that you might pay a little more so that they can spend a little more time on the stuff ‘behind the curtain’. It’s time the public recognized that what ends up on the plate may not always be indicative of the hands that put it there.