Yeah. And yet here I am just thinking "I can haz job AND respect? I haz sharp knivez."Yeah a lot of people got out of it. Where I’m at nobody really seems to want to commit to anything either employers or employees, buyers nor sellers
If you don’t mind sharing, I’m curious where you work.I'm pulling tips and BOH are getting 25%. Comes out to an extra $3-5 on top of the $19-$23 wages. Due to unemployment funds being so high this is the first time in SF that theres more cooks than servers because most cooks are undocumented. Now if you're talking about cooks that went to culinary school and have dreams of becoming a chef, forget about it. They're at home collecting unemployment. I dont mind those hack jobs and their egos staying at home anyways.
I didn't mean to sound so jaded in my last post but..... well.... I'm a bit jaded. lol.
Pay in SF, and I'm sure most major cities, is a huge issue. Right before the pandemic hit it was near impossible to find a cook. There were the cooks who were willing to make very little money working fine dining for the experience and then there are the cooks who need to feed a family. Most cooks were working 2 jobs and SF got so damn expensive that even working 2 jobs you couldn't come close to surviving. The talent pool was very limited and quality cooks were an issue. We're not a hip restaurant so we weren't getting the young "I want to be a chef one day" guys and gals. I went thru about 30 cooks in 2 months to fill 2 roles and had finally got myself a full staff on, March 16th, the same day we closed.
The cooks I have are not nearly as talented as a lot of cooks that have more experience and are well trained but they are good people and I can do a lot more with that. I quickly had to get myself to stop playing the pay for experience game. Yea a lot of great restaurants are paying horrible wages for really great cooks and I'm paying more for less skill but I'm paying as much as I can right now for the work that they do. It's not enough but I hope as the business builds back up I and everyone else can start making more money. I'm not really worried about other restaurants because I have enough to worry about for my own restaurant. Eventually the talent will get better because the the restaurant will continue to get better and that can't happen with cooks who dont want to be better.
Now it's harder to find good servers because they aren't making as much as before, especially with the larger tip share. But lets be honest, most aren't cut from the same cloth as BOH staff. Even though they are making $40plus an hour with tips, their shifts aren't long enough and too many are too comfortable to not go get a second job so they aren't making enough to survive in SF. The servers I know that had a cooks mentality of survival in SF and would hustle, used to make close to 100k if not more a year.
Unfortunately with everyone on unemployment in California making 4k a month to not work, a lot of people are just milking it. I think it was good for a lot of cooks and I dont blame them for taking a step back and reassessing the way they make money but also it has crippled a lot of the hustle in people.
Oh I ditched the "work forever on the one day you requested to be off and had steaks that grew legs because **** paying the cook correctly that's working on the single day a week that was requested when hired that's not a day on the weekend!" place. I now work in a respectable establishment.@M1k3 Time to call the nearest work release center
Oh it gets better. California passed a law that basically allows Uber and the rest of the food delivery apps that cut into restaurant profits to be able to operate outside the law and not have the same restrictions restaurants do.
Oh I ditched the "work forever on the one day you requested to be off and had steaks that grew legs because **** paying the cook correctly that's working on the single day a week that was requested when hired that's not a day on the weekend!" place. I now work in a respectable establishment.
Tell me about it. They wanted me to work Wednesdays because "they don't have anyone else to work the station" that day. Even though the same exact crew works Thursday minus meScheduling is a mess at my current spot, its almost comical.
The "Chef" that makes the schedule redoes the schedule 2-3 times a week. Couple weeks ago, I was scheduled for split days. Got called in for one so after my one day off on thus, I look at the schedule and lo and behold, it says I was supposed to be off weds too. After I already worked it...
We're currently dinner only except for Sunday brunch. Pretty much everyone who works it closes the night before. Except for me, theyve been scheduling me off sat the past 2 weeks so they could keep me 13-14 hrs on sunday, but theyve been calling me in on sat anyways. Today was my 1st fully off sat.
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