Even before COVID-19 flashed its teeth, the value of the work in the kitchen was decreasing and it is not getting any better
To be clear, cooking is a beautiful thing, be it the little dance of combining ingredients or the aroma of spices doing what they do best. However, relocating this to restaurants does not translate too well. When the waiter leaves a dish in front of a consumer, it’s all too easy to forget that there was a team behind who had to prepare the ingredients so that the team put everything together in shifts.
These kitchen teams are falling apart. Overall, the hospitality industry has seen a massive drop in staff since COVID-19 joined the party. After reducing shifts and panning to take-away and delivery service during the lockdown, many industry veterans have left and many have not returned. While it would be easy to blame government aid like CERB for this, the reasons are actually much simpler. Government benefits have largely diminished and many jobs are still vacant.
In a recent conversation with a colleague, I was told that this phenomenon is not particularly related to the coronavirus. There are many reasons not to work in the hospitality industry, even if you enjoy cooking. It’s hot to start with, the pay is low, the stress is often high, and the kitchen staff generally doesn’t see much of what the waiters take home in the way of tips. Throw a mask requirement in poorly ventilated kitchens and you have some poor working conditions. After working on the grill at a steakhouse last summer, I can say with confidence that the mask turns into a wet rag with ease.
So what’s the deal? From my own observations of industry peers and interactions with management teams, I can say that everyone just wants to keep their heads above water. Delivery problems have reduced the number of menu items and operating costs such as rent, utilities and food prices have increased. This has left restaurateurs in an awkward position trying to put together teams of competent employees while trying to make a profit, if at all.
For a while now, average restaurants have been hiring people they know can pay less: teenagers! From a business point of view, this makes sense for operation. You can pay them the minimum wage with the lure of potential tips and the occasional free meal.
The caveat is that you get what you pay for. Throw a bunch of 17-20 year olds with little to no experience into a busy kitchen and see how quickly things can fall apart. If orders come in nonstop and the waiters call out how long they’re waiting, they can make mistakes and the food will be sent back to the kitchen. The culinary assembly line can slow down and fall apart very easily unless a leader or two keep it afloat.
This massive lack of people willing to work in kitchens and at a high level makes this a good moment for industry veterans. Compared to the skills of everyone, the skills of experienced chefs are in great demand, because even if they have a higher salary, restaurants are happy to put this money in competent hands. That being said, the key workers here have more leverage to ask more of their employers than their teenage counterparts. Because you cannot run restaurants without people behind you who prepare the ingredients and put them together during service hours.
Amid the dearth of people who want to work in the kitchen and who know what they’re doing, people with years of experience negotiating working conditions can ask more of their employer. Better work-life balance and higher wages tend to be high on the list, although work-life balance is more difficult when restaurants are scarce everywhere.
While it appears that wages will absolutely skyrocket in response to the scarcity, it has not. While some corporate-sponsored restaurant chains can afford to pay additional compensation, many independent restaurants and chains have not increased their starting salaries. Overall, the idea holds that restaurant wages will rise, especially for chefs who have stayed in their original positions or have been poached by other desperate kitchens. The average kitchen worker doesn’t see a noticeable increase in salary.
What seems to have happened is that people laid off at the initial stoppages have rightly found work in other sectors. Last spring, when I started a new kitchen job, my personal scruples were: Why should I work for $ 15 an hour under these conditions, with no breaks or free meals, when I could earn the minimum wage elsewhere? Then I would at least finish when I should and leave my shift without being all sweaty and stressed. For example, at 40 hours a week, the wage gap between a minimum wage job and a $ 15 / hour job is largely negligible. When the toll of demanding restaurant work is weighed against a small wage gap, minimum wage jobs end up being better for those who can afford it.
Is there an answer to the problem as a whole? Is there a way for kitchen jobs to appreciate after such a long downward trend? Having worked in a handful of restaurants since I was 17 and still in one of them to this day, I can safely say that it is relatively gloomy. I’ve worked in the low, middle, and high end areas, but the end result is that all of these are trying to survive. I can take it easy on that, but my colleagues and I are still human. We have goals, families, and lives that go beyond the kitchens where we come together to make a living.
Making things better for both the people and these companies is a difficult balance as it is about money. Regardless of rising or falling wages, kitchen culture will never die. A bunch of slippery and sweaty people sharing a cigarette after dinner has proven its worth.
If coworkers really do the job, these bonds will continue to grow no matter what those kitchen teams are made up of. That kind of camaraderie among people who work in the service industry will not be diminished by the shortage or excess of a few dollars an hour.
People are still walking away, however, and the kitchen teams are getting thinner and thinner – with the idea of things getting back to normal is the only element holding them together.
Artwork by James Fay
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