By Ike Spry
Working in the culinary world is one of the hardest jobs in the service industry. Experienced chefs work countless hours before achieving professional kitchen standards. Working as a line cook can be extremely stressful, and many cooks turn to vices to calm their stress. The standard for higher level culinary jobs is rigorous. Unlike being a waiter, you need plenty of former experience, and cooking is not something you can immediately pick up or adjust to.
This brings us to the salary ordeal. Chefs barely are making a liveable wage, and usually they make less than waiters and waitresses–who get tips. The problem is that restaurants are incentivized to pay less to their staff. No business wants to lose money if they don’t need to. Restaurants are consistently pressured to lower overhead and prices, and chefs, as a result, often get lower wages. While most people assume that waiters make higher tips for better service, studies show that it is a cultural standard to give waiter tips so they can have a liveable wage. Tipping as a custom is really only a thing in the United States. I’m not going to say that waiters should be paid less, or chefs should be paid more because that won’t do anything. My suggestion is to get rid of the tipping system. Restaurants could universally raise prices because it is not the customer’s job to give a worker a liveable wage; it should be the business’s job to pay a minimum wage. If a customer doesn’t have to pay a tip out of pocket, they are likely to pay more for an entrée. Restaurants can legally pay under minimum age and let tips equalize the rest. Federal law allows businesses to pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour (dol.gov). If there was less of a demand for restaurants to lower prices, restaurants in turn could use the money to pay their staff’s wages appropriately. The chefs making high wages are usually celebrity chefs, or partial business owners. Line cooks, sous chefs, and even head chefs are struggling with wages nationwide. Thus, many cooks and chefs are becoming private chefs and caterers, as they can make more money, and there is usually less stress involved. I think it is important that people are aware of the issues that chefs and waiters face, as working in the service industry is becoming harder during a pandemic.
I hope one day soon restaurant owners can abolish tips and give their staff a livable wage. Being a cook is one of the hardest and most stressful jobs out there. Yet, chefs aren’t making enough money. Accomplished chefs I’ve met in person have told me, “Don’t go into the industry.” That’s unfortunate. I have a passion for cooking and would like to make it my living, and until the industry provides sufficient salaries, I’ll be looking at the many, less stress-inducing jobs available as private chef.
Very fine piece of writing, Ike.
When I was a lad I worked in the restaurant industry in New York City. I made my living as a waiter at a relatively distinguished small restaurant in Greenwich Village. The owners had a long history in the business in New York – one had long been a chef, and the other had long been a waiter and front-of-house person. They knew from personal experience how inequitable the compensation could be.
The place was very small: one chef assisting the owner/chef, and two waiters and a busboy assisting the owner/Maitre d in the front of the house. At the end of the evening all of us who were waiters pooled our tips. We would count up the total. Then ten percent went to the busboy. The rest was distributed equitably among 2 waiters and 1 chef. Seemed a sensible and fair system. (The underpaid busboy was waiting his turn for a waiter spot to open up, so it was worth it to him to pay his dues.)
The owners imposed this system of their team. I knew of no other restaurant where the chefs participated in the tips earned.
The owners earned their income from the profitability of the restaurant. And it was very profitable. The front of the house owner remained my close friend for the next 30 years until his passing in 2008.