Yup free enterprise........
Stand on the other side of the kitchen doors for a few years and watch "Free enterprise" at work coming into your establishement. The prevailing attitude for customers is to get whatever you can for free, and failing that at a discount, and failing that at least "give 'em a piece of your mind". Something like 8 out of 10 restaurants don't make it in the first year, for a variety of reasons: Under capitilized, ignorent of health/municipal codes, poor marketing, you name it. And the public love it, for a restaurant slowly going under is bleeding itself dry--great bargains to be had before it goes under. Failed businesses are hard on the economy, hard on the owners, hard on it's suppliers, even hard on it's ex-employees. Everyone has sob-stories about working at "X" and didn't get paid becasue it went under--everyone: employees, suppliers, landlords.
The ones that make past the first and second years are invariably run by people with experience in the industry. It don't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why driver's licenses are mandatory, or electrician's certificates or gas fitter's tickets are required. Meh, a 60 seat restaurant only has the capacity to kill or maim 120 guests per shift........
Go ahead with Free Enterprise, the used food equipment dealers will love you to death......
There are two ways to make an employer pay you more:
The first is to put a gun to his head and threaten. This is the only tactic in the hospitality union's book--strike or else.
The second is to train up the employee, making them much more desirable and capable of making the business earn more.
For this you need standards and qualifications, and every other manual trade has these. Going rate for plumbers is $70/hr, HVAC $80/hr, Electricians,O.K. you get the message, they have standards and benchmarks and are paid acccording to this. Cooks have none, and the Unions are doing diddly-squat about it, and the employers keep on buying more and more convienience food and getting unexperienced people to open pouches
because they have no "real" cooks, and have shaved every penny so it is impossible to hire and pay for a "real" cook, and....... O.K. you get the message, it's a nasty cycle.
Someone has to hold the Culinary School's nose to the doo-doo under the couch too. "Free enterprise" at it's best, and "Caveat emporium" too, as Mr. Bourdain so nicely points out, forking out 40-60 grand for a diploma so's you can get to earn minimum wage for the first few years isn't good.
Free enterprise my sweet cheeks. Look at any media source and therse no mention of the pittfalls and current situation, only who's "top Chef".