11 ms·

The worst part about some of these 3 star restaurants, is that staff are often unpaid. It's basically what Americans call an internship, i.e. the only "salary"

The worst part about some of these 3 star restaurants, is that staff are often unpaid. It's basically what Americans call an internship, i.e. the only "salary" is that you can add working in a 3 star restaurant to your CV. I once visited a 3 star restaurant in Spain (Arzak), where this was the case. If you look at the cost of eating there, and consider that most of the staff is unpaid, it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The business model is similar to cruise ships. You buy something very expensive produced by slave labor, that makes a few people obscenely rich, while all others suffer.

atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Wait, why is this like cruise ships? I thought people on cruise ships were paid alright (considering also the tips they can make) compared to the alternatives they have at home (my understanding is that the vast majority of workers are non-American/W. EU)
- bjarneh 5y ago
  > Wait, why is this like cruise ships? I It's a "luxurious experience" fueled by slave labor.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  You tip dishwasher or floor cleaners? Cruise ships are set up to exploit every loophole out the being a legal entity on international waters under flag of loophole county. Everyone would be better of if that industry died already. Including environment.
  - atlasunshrugged 5y ago
    No, but I assumed there was some sort of tip sharing deal between them; isn't this common in restaurants too (e.g. I tip the server because that's who I'm interacting with and it'd be weird if I walked through the kitchen giving individual small tips to the line cooks, busboys, etc.)
    - me_me_me 5y ago
      > I assumed there was some sort of tip sharing deal between them Oh sweet summer child... Some people are nice... and some people dont get their fair share especially when they are replaceable.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mnw21cam 5y ago
      One thing I learnt from a Gordon Ramsey TV programme is that the chef traditionally doesn't get any of the tips, because they are expected to be paid properly anyway.
- maeln 5y ago
  I don't know for the staff in the restaurant and entertainment position, but usually, the sailors are recruited from very poor country and paid very low wages. Only the captain and some officer are paid a decent salary.
  - atlasunshrugged 5y ago
    To me unpaid and low paid are dramatically different. When you talk slave labor as OP did I think of people being exploited or coerced into jobs and not ever being paid, not that people from low income countries do a job that is low paid but probably better than what they get at home.
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  Not sure what people on cruise ships get paid, but my old room mate from college got his Master's degree in nautical/maritime engineering, and went to work on huge cargo ship (the course of becoming a captain). Apparently the pay was almost unlivable, for the first 2-3 of years - under minimum wage, by western standards. And 90% of the crew were from Philippines etc. Should be mentioned that my friend was not a deckhand, but worked with the officers on the bridge. Where I'm from (Norway), and probably most seafaring nations in the west, this has been an issue for years - social dumping by using Asian labor.
- dazc 5y ago
  The public-facing people maybe paid OK, the people you don't see are certainly not.
FDSGSG 5y ago
Dunno, I've known lots of rich kids who flew private to work these kinds of unpaid internships. They seem to think that the experience was more than worth it, at the very least it's something to brag about in any food related conversation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rich_sasha 5y ago
> [...] that makes a few people obscenely rich [...] No contest that relying on unpaid labour is awful. But "obscenely rich"? My overwhelming impression is that despite all this, no one really gets rich on running restaurants. Certainly not when you factor them going out of business all the time (or even falling out of fashion, that's basically death for a Michelin starred eatery).
- 734129837261 5y ago
  Yeah, most restaurant owners, regardless of the number of Michelin stars to their name, aren't rich at all. Nor are their top class chefs. You'd make more money working in IT and your hours are far less stressful. If you want to make it big you need to treat it like a business, like Gordon Ramsay does. He owns 23 restaurants (maybe more) all over the world, his name is known by many, and the income from tv-shows would pay the bills by themselves; they also serve as advertisement for establishments with his name attached. The few restaurant owners I know who make a good income here in Amsterdam tend to own more than 5 restaurants. Some have their own branding going on, some just take care of the business side of things. And even then I think it's a whole lot of work and stress for relatively little pay.
- bjarneh 5y ago
  > My overwhelming impression is that despite all this, no one really gets rich on running restaurants. Simple napkin-math from when I was at the restaurant. I.e. multiplying the amount of people at restaurant by the number of days in a year they were open, multiplied by how much one of those "tasting menus + wine pairing" cost (which almost everyone buys); would suggest that their revenue would be somewhere in the range of 20-30 million dollars in revenue a year. That restaurant is always full, I think we booked our table 6 months in advance. Clearly they serve you expensive wine, and a lot of expensive produce goes into their food making. But I would guess that the main cost of running that place would be the cost of paying the employees; which they don't. That 3-star restaurant (and many others), are making their owners extremely rich. The restaurant business is extremely competitive, and most businesses struggle, but some are making good money. I live in a small town in Norway (200.000 inhabitants), and even here there is a guy who runs a bunch of restaurants, with profits in excess of 3 million dollars annually.
thefounder 5y ago
>> that makes a few people obscenely rich For some reasons I thought these restaurants are actually not very profitable .
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  They aren't, it's a constant struggle for survival unless you become Gordon Ramsay. If someone wanted to make money with restaurants they'd probably be better off sticking to something that scales better.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
Considering the owners of Arzak are not in jail and that not paying your workers would be a serious violation of Spain labor laws, I am going to go on a limp and posit that what you say is probably not entirely true.
- dazc 5y ago
  I lived in Spain for a couple of years and I was of the understanding that many bars, cafes and restaurants existed on this basis. A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced. I witnessed myself, on many occasions, groups of kids coming in, filling in forms and being interviewed for these non-paid intern positions. If I am wrong about these people not being paid it is because I was specifically told this, it isn't something I just assumed.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > groups of kids coming in, filling in forms and being interviewed for these non-paid intern positions. Kids applying to be interns in not the same thing than staff being unpaid and slave labor. That put clear limits on the duration of they work and that means they have no qualification. It's just a normal internship. Three stars restaurant tend to have many interns because they have a lot of basic prep work to do and it's a good formative experience. That's fine. That's what internships are for. Usually interns are still paid a modest sum but the hospitality industry tends to operate on thin margins so they might be uncompensated. Where I kind of agree with you is that there is a general issue with abuse of staff in the industry so they are likely not treated as well as they should. Still I would not call that slave labor. > A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced. Being replacable is not the same as being unpaid. Spain is part of the EU so the labor law of Spain has to adhere to the EU directives on labor. That means every employee is paid at least at the national minimum salary.
jhgb 5y ago
> i.e. the only "salary" is that you can add working in a 3 star restaurant to your CV. Spain has salaries? I thought that was largely a US concept.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  Do you mean as in being paid a fixed sum for a given period, as opposed to by hours worked or something? No, that’s a worldwide thing, and a very old concept.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Yes, that's what I mean. Not quite sure how worldwide it is, but as far as I'm aware, my country doesn't have it - either that or it's limited to a very special caste of workers, maybe CEOs or board members or something, but definitely not "normal people" with regular employment contracts as per our labor law.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      May I ask where you are from?
      - jhgb 5y ago
        I'm Czech.
        Cederfjard 5y ago
        Thanks. So do every white collar worker log and get paid by the hour? Government officials, etc?
        jhgb 5y ago
        Around here, the major distinction is not between salary and wage, but rather between "mzda" (private sector remuneration) and "plat" (public sector remuneration). "Mzda" as far as I'm aware is strictly hourly. Perhaps the closest thing that comes to a salary in the private sector is a certain kind of arrangement called roughly "accounted working time" that ensures that even if your actual working hours fall below a minimum of something like 80% of your notional working hours, your pay will be capped from below at this rate relative to your long term average income. Or something like that. The whole regulation is quite complicated for a layman, me included. As far as "plat" is concerned, well, Wikipedia directs me to "salary" from the Czech page for "plat", whereas it directs me to "wage" from the Czech page for "mzda", so perhaps public sector remuneration might qualify as salary, with a number of qualifications (such as that the remuneration is never negotiated but dictated by government tables, that overtime pay is still a thing, etc.) The base component of "plat" is monthly, so perhaps similar to salary, except it's being adjusted in ways that make it difficult for me to tell whether the whole result is salary or not (think overtime adjustments, night work adjustments, personal performance adjustments, etc., most of which require working hour logging anyway).
krageon 5y ago
> staff are often unpaid No. Perhaps you have found an example of this (which I doubt strongly), but this is not something that happens "often".
olivierduval 5y ago
Surprising!!! It's not possible in France, because internship is always paid... and quite well paid in 3 stars restaurants
dopidopHN 5y ago
I don’t know for Spain, but unpay internship are illegal in France. Also, I doubt the staff member are interns?

atlasunshrugged 5y ago

Wait, why is this like cruise ships? I thought people on cruise ships were paid alright (considering also the tips they can make) compared to the alternatives they have at home (my understanding is that the vast majority of workers are non-American/W. EU)

bjarneh 5y ago
> Wait, why is this like cruise ships? I It's a "luxurious experience" fueled by slave labor.
me_me_me 5y ago
You tip dishwasher or floor cleaners? Cruise ships are set up to exploit every loophole out the being a legal entity on international waters under flag of loophole county. Everyone would be better of if that industry died already. Including environment.
- atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  No, but I assumed there was some sort of tip sharing deal between them; isn't this common in restaurants too (e.g. I tip the server because that's who I'm interacting with and it'd be weird if I walked through the kitchen giving individual small tips to the line cooks, busboys, etc.)
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    > I assumed there was some sort of tip sharing deal between them Oh sweet summer child... Some people are nice... and some people dont get their fair share especially when they are replaceable.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
    One thing I learnt from a Gordon Ramsey TV programme is that the chef traditionally doesn't get any of the tips, because they are expected to be paid properly anyway.
maeln 5y ago
I don't know for the staff in the restaurant and entertainment position, but usually, the sailors are recruited from very poor country and paid very low wages. Only the captain and some officer are paid a decent salary.
- atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  To me unpaid and low paid are dramatically different. When you talk slave labor as OP did I think of people being exploited or coerced into jobs and not ever being paid, not that people from low income countries do a job that is low paid but probably better than what they get at home.
TrackerFF 5y ago
Not sure what people on cruise ships get paid, but my old room mate from college got his Master's degree in nautical/maritime engineering, and went to work on huge cargo ship (the course of becoming a captain). Apparently the pay was almost unlivable, for the first 2-3 of years - under minimum wage, by western standards. And 90% of the crew were from Philippines etc. Should be mentioned that my friend was not a deckhand, but worked with the officers on the bridge. Where I'm from (Norway), and probably most seafaring nations in the west, this has been an issue for years - social dumping by using Asian labor.
dazc 5y ago
The public-facing people maybe paid OK, the people you don't see are certainly not.

FDSGSG 5y ago

Dunno, I've known lots of rich kids who flew private to work these kinds of unpaid internships. They seem to think that the experience was more than worth it, at the very least it's something to brag about in any food related conversation.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rich_sasha 5y ago

> [...] that makes a few people obscenely rich [...] No contest that relying on unpaid labour is awful. But "obscenely rich"? My overwhelming impression is that despite all this, no one really gets rich on running restaurants. Certainly not when you factor them going out of business all the time (or even falling out of fashion, that's basically death for a Michelin starred eatery).

734129837261 5y ago
Yeah, most restaurant owners, regardless of the number of Michelin stars to their name, aren't rich at all. Nor are their top class chefs. You'd make more money working in IT and your hours are far less stressful. If you want to make it big you need to treat it like a business, like Gordon Ramsay does. He owns 23 restaurants (maybe more) all over the world, his name is known by many, and the income from tv-shows would pay the bills by themselves; they also serve as advertisement for establishments with his name attached. The few restaurant owners I know who make a good income here in Amsterdam tend to own more than 5 restaurants. Some have their own branding going on, some just take care of the business side of things. And even then I think it's a whole lot of work and stress for relatively little pay.
bjarneh 5y ago
> My overwhelming impression is that despite all this, no one really gets rich on running restaurants. Simple napkin-math from when I was at the restaurant. I.e. multiplying the amount of people at restaurant by the number of days in a year they were open, multiplied by how much one of those "tasting menus + wine pairing" cost (which almost everyone buys); would suggest that their revenue would be somewhere in the range of 20-30 million dollars in revenue a year. That restaurant is always full, I think we booked our table 6 months in advance. Clearly they serve you expensive wine, and a lot of expensive produce goes into their food making. But I would guess that the main cost of running that place would be the cost of paying the employees; which they don't. That 3-star restaurant (and many others), are making their owners extremely rich. The restaurant business is extremely competitive, and most businesses struggle, but some are making good money. I live in a small town in Norway (200.000 inhabitants), and even here there is a guy who runs a bunch of restaurants, with profits in excess of 3 million dollars annually.

thefounder 5y ago

>> that makes a few people obscenely rich For some reasons I thought these restaurants are actually not very profitable .

FDSGSG 5y ago
They aren't, it's a constant struggle for survival unless you become Gordon Ramsay. If someone wanted to make money with restaurants they'd probably be better off sticking to something that scales better.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

Considering the owners of Arzak are not in jail and that not paying your workers would be a serious violation of Spain labor laws, I am going to go on a limp and posit that what you say is probably not entirely true.

dazc 5y ago
I lived in Spain for a couple of years and I was of the understanding that many bars, cafes and restaurants existed on this basis. A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced. I witnessed myself, on many occasions, groups of kids coming in, filling in forms and being interviewed for these non-paid intern positions. If I am wrong about these people not being paid it is because I was specifically told this, it isn't something I just assumed.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  > groups of kids coming in, filling in forms and being interviewed for these non-paid intern positions. Kids applying to be interns in not the same thing than staff being unpaid and slave labor. That put clear limits on the duration of they work and that means they have no qualification. It's just a normal internship. Three stars restaurant tend to have many interns because they have a lot of basic prep work to do and it's a good formative experience. That's fine. That's what internships are for. Usually interns are still paid a modest sum but the hospitality industry tends to operate on thin margins so they might be uncompensated. Where I kind of agree with you is that there is a general issue with abuse of staff in the industry so they are likely not treated as well as they should. Still I would not call that slave labor. > A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced. Being replacable is not the same as being unpaid. Spain is part of the EU so the labor law of Spain has to adhere to the EU directives on labor. That means every employee is paid at least at the national minimum salary.

jhgb 5y ago

> i.e. the only "salary" is that you can add working in a 3 star restaurant to your CV. Spain has salaries? I thought that was largely a US concept.

Cederfjard 5y ago
Do you mean as in being paid a fixed sum for a given period, as opposed to by hours worked or something? No, that’s a worldwide thing, and a very old concept.
- jhgb 5y ago
  Yes, that's what I mean. Not quite sure how worldwide it is, but as far as I'm aware, my country doesn't have it - either that or it's limited to a very special caste of workers, maybe CEOs or board members or something, but definitely not "normal people" with regular employment contracts as per our labor law.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    May I ask where you are from?
    - jhgb 5y ago
      I'm Czech.
      - Cederfjard 5y ago
        Thanks. So do every white collar worker log and get paid by the hour? Government officials, etc?
        jhgb 5y ago
        Around here, the major distinction is not between salary and wage, but rather between "mzda" (private sector remuneration) and "plat" (public sector remuneration). "Mzda" as far as I'm aware is strictly hourly. Perhaps the closest thing that comes to a salary in the private sector is a certain kind of arrangement called roughly "accounted working time" that ensures that even if your actual working hours fall below a minimum of something like 80% of your notional working hours, your pay will be capped from below at this rate relative to your long term average income. Or something like that. The whole regulation is quite complicated for a layman, me included. As far as "plat" is concerned, well, Wikipedia directs me to "salary" from the Czech page for "plat", whereas it directs me to "wage" from the Czech page for "mzda", so perhaps public sector remuneration might qualify as salary, with a number of qualifications (such as that the remuneration is never negotiated but dictated by government tables, that overtime pay is still a thing, etc.) The base component of "plat" is monthly, so perhaps similar to salary, except it's being adjusted in ways that make it difficult for me to tell whether the whole result is salary or not (think overtime adjustments, night work adjustments, personal performance adjustments, etc., most of which require working hour logging anyway).

krageon 5y ago

> staff are often unpaid No. Perhaps you have found an example of this (which I doubt strongly), but this is not something that happens "often".

olivierduval 5y ago

Surprising!!! It's not possible in France, because internship is always paid... and quite well paid in 3 stars restaurants

dopidopHN 5y ago

I don’t know for Spain, but unpay internship are illegal in France. Also, I doubt the staff member are interns?