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They don't. They constantly fly by the seat of their pants and rely on the lovely ingrained line-cook mentality that by suffering the most, you win. Then when they finally quit, they hire some other poor schmuck who works way too long and way too hard for a lovely wage.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:11
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Ridiculous amounts of turnover are pretty much expected in this industry. At the last four restaurants I've worked at making it three years in the kitchen would pretty much always make you the longest tenured line cook. Obviously there are some restaurants that are better about staffing/pay, but given how competitive the market can be and how entrenched prices are because of larger franchises being willing to run very small margins to corner a market there's not a ton of wiggle room even for owners who want to treat their staff better. And yeah, the Stockholm Syndrome of just manning up and dealing with it is also a big thing. Hell, I'm the top cook at a small diner and I'm way more concerned that we're overstaffed and wages are too high then the owners are.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:43
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giacomo posted:Over the last two Sundays, we've lost ~40% of our kitchen staff, including the assistant km. I warned the GM it would happen when they over worked their cooks (leaving at 1am, being back at 8am) The clo-pen is never sustainable. Just like when I got dudes coming in already working five days and wanting to fill the remaining two? Nope. That will last a month or so before they bitch out.
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Jun 11, 2014 08:09
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True fact, if you're scheduling your closers to open you have failed. I wouldn't do that to mindless fast food slop artists, much less someone I expected to be on the ball and cooking well.
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Jun 11, 2014 08:47
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giacomo posted:We started doing brunch last week. Over the last two Sundays, we've lost ~40% of our kitchen staff, including the assistant km. I warned the GM it would happen when they over worked their cooks (leaving at 1am, being back at 8am) but he seemed to believe in the willpower. I know the extreme hours and long shifts are normal for the industry, but given that there's a decent market for good line cooks and chefs, this isn't too surprising. Basically it only works short term, and it only works if the people doing it care more about the restaurant/their job than their own health and sanity. If there's a healthy job market then people won't do it for fear of losing their job, so the only thing that remains is if they care enough about the restaurant or if they're getting some other perk that they couldn't find elsewhere. For instance, I've done a clopen every week since I started at my current place, and have, on occasion, done multiple open-close days in a row (where open is 6 or 8am and close is midnight or so). I did it because I was getting paid for it, and because it afforded me some opportunities like menu control and ordering control and I just honestly really enjoy it. That said, if we'd waited another month to hire an additional employee (now with her there I get a couple short days a week and always have 2 off in a row) I probably would have burned the gently caress out and found something else anyway. And while I did this to myself and I know I was overworked for a while, I sure as gently caress would not do it to anyone else and I'm stupid and firmly entrenched in the "gently caress it this is what we do" line cook mentality and it's unhealthy as poo poo. If your restaurant is doing that to employees without talking to them about it first and without any big reward (mine is that I get to plan and cook literally anything I want for our dinner menu) then that poo poo is going to crash and burn really hard and you should probably bail asap.
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Jun 11, 2014 09:09
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Our newish assistant manager may have had a small heart attack at the end of service today. He's going to go see a doctor tomorrow I think. It was a fun shift.
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Jun 11, 2014 10:14
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giacomo posted:We started doing brunch last week. Over the last two Sundays, we've lost ~40% of our kitchen staff, including the assistant km. I warned the GM it would happen when they over worked their cooks (leaving at 1am, being back at 8am) but he seemed to believe in the willpower. I know the extreme hours and long shifts are normal for the industry, but given that there's a decent market for good line cooks and chefs, this isn't too surprising. They start with gas lighting. They had it worse, no you don't get the day off because you're "vomiting every 20 mins", etc gently caress owners/chefs like that. They don't deserve good cooks. Clo-opens at Butcher were more of a necessary evil, and I only got one every week or two. We were paid well and tipped out though. Isaac Asimov fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 20:39
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manchild anxiety baby's fine dining adventure begins now hahahahahahahahaha
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Jun 12, 2014 05:23
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If you've read any news lately you'll sympathize when I say we've had to do all of our credit cards manually. On the same day as a new rollout. That half the kitchen was not real clear on. In the middle of a sudden rush after 2 DEAD weeks. Leaving me with 9 tables and some very very angry people because our place refuses to hire a busser and the loving credit card machine was down. Somehow I still walked out with a fat purse. And may be owed another $100? Maybe? im so confused and everything hurts
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Jun 12, 2014 06:49
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Just a small question I've always wondered: on average, about how much markup is there from ingredients purchased to finished dish? I realize there's a lot more that goes into the costs than that (chef time, storage, overhead costs, so on), I just was wondering if there was some sort of standard conversion on that.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:22
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Jon Joe posted:Just a small question I've always wondered: on average, about how much markup is there from ingredients purchased to finished dish? I realize there's a lot more that goes into the costs than that (chef time, storage, overhead costs, so on), I just was wondering if there was some sort of standard conversion on that. Depends on the kind of place really, the average food cost percentage is probably around 30%. This is going to be a lot higher in places that pay more to use a lot of prepared foods, ready made sauces and the like to save time and labour and somewhat lower in places that do in-house butchery, prepare everything from scratch and minimize waste effectively. Most successful places will set a target food cost percentage and monitor inventory, sales and waste to make sure that they're keeping on track. The places that close their doors after a year are the ones that have no idea what any of those terms mean.
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Jun 13, 2014 01:30
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Jon Joe posted:Just a small question I've always wondered: on average, about how much markup is there from ingredients purchased to finished dish? I realize there's a lot more that goes into the costs than that (chef time, storage, overhead costs, so on), I just was wondering if there was some sort of standard conversion on that. Rockzilla's about right. Most dishes on a menu are going to be designed to be between 22% and 35% food cost, with your average somewhere around the 30% mark. If you've ever been at, say, an Italian place and wondered how they can charge $22 for a dish that has a shitton of seafood on it and still make money, the answer is they can't - that dish is probably costing them 35%+ in food cost, and a bit extra in labour if they clean their own seafood etc, but it looks good on the menu and brings in the type of people that will also buy a $9 app that's running a 25% margin and a glass of wine that they were able to sell at a 350% markup. Meanwhile the basic spaghetti and red sauce dish that's $17 probably only cost them $2.50 to make and they likely sell a lot more of those than the seafood-laden fancy dish. That's why inventory and sales control is so important: It's great if you know that you're not making enough money for what you're spending on food and labour, but if you don't know where it's going (since it could be wastage, or someone stealing, or over-prepping, or just that you're selling too much of a high food cost menu item) you're pretty much hosed.
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Jun 13, 2014 04:38
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Can we have a hoo-rah for the dishwashers like me? I do dishes, prep, run poo poo for the cooks, do ancillary cleaning and am at the overlapping whims and wishes of the cooks, the owner and the waitresses. And I do it all for minimum wage.
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Jun 13, 2014 05:29
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That's why the italian bistro I worked at had so much fried eggplant dishes. They were ultra-cheap to mass-make and could be sold at an absolutely hideous upcharge. Seriously I was choking on those things on an almost daily basis. Chef I worked with told me he knew of this one guy who used eggplant to make sandwiches and make out like a bandit because he could sell them for x10 the material price.
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Jun 13, 2014 05:29
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Korthal posted:Can we have a hoo-rah for the dishwashers like me? I do dishes, prep, run poo poo for the cooks, do ancillary cleaning and am at the overlapping whims and wishes of the cooks, the owner and the waitresses. And I do it all for minimum wage. Three fuckin' cheers, place would choke without you, now hit the dishpit and we'll have a beer or three after shift.
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Jun 13, 2014 05:33
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Black August posted:That's why the italian bistro I worked at had so much fried eggplant dishes. They were ultra-cheap to mass-make and could be sold at an absolutely hideous upcharge. Does anyone else have a huge issue when they go out to eat, that you can't justify paying for something if you know it's the "cheap dish"? I've written and made so many menus at this point that I basically just see food cost %'s beside each dish on a place's menu when I'm out to eat and if something looks like it's the 20% dish, I can never make myself order it even if it sounds good.
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Jun 13, 2014 07:03
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Naelyan posted:Does anyone else have a huge issue when they go out to eat, that you can't justify paying for something if you know it's the "cheap dish"? I've written and made so many menus at this point that I basically just see food cost %'s beside each dish on a place's menu when I'm out to eat and if something looks like it's the 20% dish, I can never make myself order it even if it sounds good. I'm not even a career cook and I suffer from this hardcore. I don't order anything if it sounds like something I could make reasonably well myself in my sleep - just on the principle of the thing. I don't wanna pay 30 bucks for a steak, for example, or some roast chicken, or eggplant parmesan or a caprese salad or whatever. it's gotta be something interesting enough or challenging enough where I feel ok parting ways with money. I'll usually veer towards the wild game / seafood dishes, or things with lots of components - they usually sound much more interesting, and I'm sure they're tighter on margins - so I feel a little better about spending tons of money.
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Jun 13, 2014 09:27
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Naelyan posted:If you've ever been at, say, an Italian place and wondered how they can charge $22 for a dish that has a shitton of seafood on it and still make money, the answer is they can't - that dish is probably costing them 35%+ in food cost, and a bit extra in labour if they clean their own seafood etc, but it looks good on the menu and brings in the type of people that will also buy a $9 app that's running a 25% margin and a glass of wine that they were able to sell at a 350% markup. Meanwhile the basic spaghetti and red sauce dish that's $17 probably only cost them $2.50 to make and they likely sell a lot more of those than the seafood-laden fancy dish. That's why inventory and sales control is so important: It's great if you know that you're not making enough money for what you're spending on food and labour, but if you don't know where it's going (since it could be wastage, or someone stealing, or over-prepping, or just that you're selling too much of a high food cost menu item) you're pretty much hosed. I have seen so many places tank on that whole "Make it up on the drinks" approach. It's just a way to shoot yourself in the loving foot because either a) you're making yourself work for no pay by selling something that costs you money to serve, b) you'll have to change/remove the dish before long and the people who were coming for that dish will stop coming (not that they were helping you keep your doors open anyway). Every six months or so my neighbourhood seems to have some bar and grill open with insanely underpriced food for the a while and soon goes to poo poo.
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Jun 13, 2014 15:35
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CommonShore posted:I have seen so many places tank on that whole "Make it up on the drinks" approach. It's just a way to shoot yourself in the loving foot because either a) you're making yourself work for no pay by selling something that costs you money to serve, b) you'll have to change/remove the dish before long and the people who were coming for that dish will stop coming (not that they were helping you keep your doors open anyway). Every six months or so my neighbourhood seems to have some bar and grill open with insanely underpriced food for the a while and soon goes to poo poo. This Mexican place opened in a high-end shopping mall near my workplace. They had a soft open in April of 2012. To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, they offered their entire menu for $5, regardless of the dish...for the entire month of May. Guess who went out of business shortly afterward?
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Jun 13, 2014 15:54
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Naelyan posted:Does anyone else have a huge issue when they go out to eat, that you can't justify paying for something if you know it's the "cheap dish"? I've written and made so many menus at this point that I basically just see food cost %'s beside each dish on a place's menu when I'm out to eat and if something looks like it's the 20% dish, I can never make myself order it even if it sounds good. When my wife and I first got together I'd always have a hard time justifying the price of restaurant meals because I knew what it cost to make and I knew that I could make the same thing for cheaper. She's told me that I've kinda ruined restaurants for her because of my inside knowledge. I've kind of gotten over it now that I think of it as paying to save myself the hassle of shopping and prepping for a meal, especially when it comes to something like sushi or izakaya food where I'm going to have to buy and prep a lot of stuff and spend so much time in the kitchen to make the 4 or 5 things that I would order that I'm sick of looking at food afterwards and can't enjoy all of my work. Not that I don't do a ton of cooking at home, I just don't feel bad about going out to eat anymore.
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Jun 13, 2014 20:03
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The Midniter posted:This Mexican place opened in a high-end shopping mall near my workplace. They had a soft open in April of 2012. To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, they offered their entire menu for $5, regardless of the dish...for the entire month of May. Guess who went out of business shortly afterward? This is hilarious.
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Jun 13, 2014 20:18
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I am surprised they lasted the entire month of may.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:05
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Totally a money laundering operation.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:11
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For those of you who went to culinary arts school I have a few questions. When you graduated what could someone reasonably expect from you? Could a newly minted graduate plan and create a menu of side dishes that changed seasonally based on ingredients available? Could that person handle a shift in a 40 seat restaurant with 1 other person? What would your salary expectations be in that scenario? What did you feel your limitations were at that point?
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Jun 13, 2014 22:18
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Errant Gin Monks posted:For those of you who went to culinary arts school I have a few questions. Drawing from what my ex-girlfriend's capabilities were after her JWU dietitian program: 1 You could probably jump right into Kitchen Manager or Sous positions. Or a high-paying line cook gig easily(>$12/hr). 2 Yes definitely. My ex made a menu for my birthday once in like 5 minutes after asking me some questions. 3 Totally depends on your motivation and your systems really. Being a line cook can be pretty demanding and stressful. 4 Salary, not sure... google? 5 The only limitation my ex had was that she didn't have money to open her own place. She grew up working in a cafe where she had free reign, but she didn't have experience as a pro saute line cook. So that was new to her when she got a job at a big restaurant. She is smart though, and highly motivated. Most people are only one of those or neither!
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Jun 13, 2014 22:40
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Errant Gin Monks posted:For those of you who went to culinary arts school I have a few questions. I disagree with Isaac Asimov on a few points. I went to a good but not well known school in Austin Texas (Texas Culinary Academy- got bought out by LCB in 2007) 1. Basic knife skills, extensive knowledge of ingredients, mastery of basic techniques on a small scale, basic knowledge of management, nutrition and wine. 2. Yes, but said menu would probably be unreasonable due to practical considerations, cost, labor or logistics 3. In her first week? Absolutely not. 4. Totally depends on locality. In my experience most recent culinary grads start as prep cooks with the expectation that they will be promoted to the line quickly. 5. The huge limitation is that a new grad isn't going to have line cook chops, unless she's been working in the industry already. There are a lot of make-or-break qualities that simply can't be taught in school, like work ethic, heat tolerance, multi-tasking and psychological toughness. It's totally possible to ace culinary school and still be completely unsuited for work in a kitchen.
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Jun 13, 2014 23:30
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How does being a dietitian connect to the catering industry, rather than dietetics?
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Jun 14, 2014 00:08
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Wroughtirony posted:5. The huge limitation is that a new grad isn't going to have line cook chops, unless she's been working in the industry already. There are a lot of make-or-break qualities that simply can't be taught in school, like work ethic, heat tolerance, multi-tasking and psychological toughness. It's totally possible to ace culinary school and still be completely unsuited for work in a kitchen. I feel like this point cannot be emphasized enough. The number of students the local culinary arts program (which is apparently actually pretty decent) pumps out that can make an amazing dish if you give them unlimited time but can't handle cooking for more than a single table at a time is absurd.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:35
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Crazy Larry posted:I feel like this point cannot be emphasized enough. The number of students the local culinary arts program (which is apparently actually pretty decent) pumps out that can make an amazing dish if you give them unlimited time but can't handle cooking for more than a single table at a time is absurd. Agreed. I've seen so many culinary school graduates burn out in their first six months in the kitchen because they've never had their asses kicked for real and discover that they just can't take it. Hell, I couldn't take it anymore, at least not for the money they were willing to pay.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:01
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The only time I would ever suggest someone go to culinary school is if they're already an accomplished line cook and want to get their technique down to move on to cheffing at a fine dining place, and even then I would just tell them to go stage for 6 months at the fanciest place they can find.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:08
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Culinary school is great and anyone who wants to should definitely go. ...as long as they're independently wealthy or someone else is paying for it.
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Jun 14, 2014 11:39
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Seconding that. Or find an adult education program at your local technical school, much cheaper.
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Jun 14, 2014 13:20
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Crazy Larry posted:I feel like this point cannot be emphasized enough. The number of students the local culinary arts program (which is apparently actually pretty decent) pumps out that can make an amazing dish if you give them unlimited time but can't handle cooking for more than a single table at a time is absurd. This has been my experience with culinary arts grads. I'm sure there's variance between different programs, but the ones from my area tended to produce
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Jun 14, 2014 15:06
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Manuel Calavera posted:Seconding that. Or find an adult education program at your local technical school, much cheaper. I went to a community college that had a fantastic program that cost me a few grand all together. They even bussed us up to skagit valley every other week in the summer to learn about/do some farming. Laughed my rear end off when they told us about it because it was straight out of a Mitch Hedberg bit.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:05
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My brother went to culinary school but he first worked in a kitchen before going and worked while in school too. Recently he got.promoted to purchasing chef for his resto's groups three newest ones.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:18
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:The only time I would ever suggest someone go to culinary school is if they're already an accomplished line cook and want to get their technique down to move on to cheffing at a fine dining place, and even then I would just tell them to go stage for 6 months at the fanciest place they can find. How do you afford to stage for six months on a line cooks wage? do you usually work two jobs? My issue is that i'm already working 50+ hours at my paying job, and I can't imagine a fancy place wanting a cook for just 20ish hours a week.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:25
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Just wanted to say that I'm finally fulfilling a dream of mine - in two weeks I move to NYC and trail in my first Michelin starred restaurant.
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Jun 14, 2014 20:04
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Welcome and good luck. NYC LAN chat is pretty good with apartment talk. PM where you're trailing and I can give you an idea of what trains you want to live off for minimum hassle. Don't forget to enjoy summer in the city on your days off.
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Jun 14, 2014 20:36
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Murkyhumor posted:How do you afford to stage for six months on a line cooks wage? do you usually work two jobs? My issue is that i'm already working 50+ hours at my paying job, and I can't imagine a fancy place wanting a cook for just 20ish hours a week. You can't. Let's be honest, it seems that to get into fine dining without experience you have to either have financial backing enough that you don't -need- the work, or be young enough to have no financial responsibilities and willing to live like a pauper for a couple years.
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Jun 15, 2014 02:40
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The new kid pretty much called our Exec an idiot to his face twice during the plate-ups tonight. I wish we weren't so tragically understaffed so we could fire his rear end.
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Jun 15, 2014 04:02
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