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Wolfgang Puck can’t find waiters because of labor shortage


Armybrat

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Factor in cost of living and that is basically $70k in one of the most expensive places to live (with evictions suspended) in the country (with hard work and shorty hours). CA is paying over $50k to not work with combined benefits. 
 

 

Edited by ChickenSandwich
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Sounds like it's a skill shortage. I'm sure he could hire cooks and wait staff with IHOP experience if he wanted but your average burger flipper isn't going to cut it.

 

“I think the government really should loosen up and have cooks come, if it's from France or Italy or from South America or wherever, so we can get the workforce up to par. If they are professional, why not get jobs? And then they pay taxes, and everything will get better,” said Puck.

Edited by F250
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14 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

I worked for several years as a server. This reckoning for restaurant owners has been a long time coming. I thoroughly enjoyed the work before switching to a different pathway and job during the pandemic, but restaurant life is a stressful experience for most everyone else I worked with. Many people just do not want to return to that lifestyle once they have gotten away from it for an extended period. I made more money where I worked than anyone outside of the GM, was able to do it just working 40 hours with no weekend shifts (I really had a great setup) and only one night, but I would not return to having another job in that line of work. 

You enjoyed the work, made good money it sounds like, on a schedule that worked for you. In an extremely low margin business for the owner. Only the owners risk to lose everything...sounds like a pretty decent gig to me. 

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1 hour ago, Post Oak said:

I have a hard time feeling bad for these business owners who are struggling to find help.

I kind of hope it continues.

Wishing that it were harder to survive in the restaurant business seems like an odd take. 

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8 minutes ago, Lhorn said:

What the fuck are you talking about?  It’s not just millionaire celebrity chefs who don’t step into their own restaurants but every 6 months that are struggling to hire workers. I don’t give a shit about Wolfgang Puck and the .5% of restaurant owners who are lighting cigars with $100 bills.  A lot of people barely surviving in the industry have gone out of business and a labor shortage ensures that shit ton more will in the near future. Coming off COVID and finally getting to really open up but not having staff is a dire problem.  You think about economics like a child. You want to fuck the 10% of those that can afford to pay more even if it means fucking the 90% of those who can’t. 
 

I’m failing to see how anyone is trying to “fuck” anyone here, other than the guy cries about having to pay a free market wage without bringing in dirty immigrants.  

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To answer the two above posts, TO was wishing for the labor shortage to continue which is idiotic. 
There were other contributions to the thread which alluded to the issue being wider than just Wolfgang Puck. It’s an industry wide problem. How do you think WP is going to have a hard time hiring people paying $120k a year or whatever he pays, and those same market forces aren’t going to affect people far closer to minimum wage?

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7 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Also just FYI.

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Wolfgang-Puck/salaries

But please, continue to be outraged.

So our poor dear Wolfgang pays about what Cheesecake Factory pays and he expects people who live in places like Santa Monica and LA to be lining up to work for him. 

If there was only some way to fix this 

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27 minutes ago, Royalfan5 said:

I’d venture to guess that servers in a place like that have to put up with a tremendous amount of bullshit for that up to 120k

Yeah, have you ever read any of the Surly gourmets in the Food/restaurant forum?

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5 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

So our poor dear Wolfgang pays about what Cheesecake Factory pays and he expects people who live in places like Santa Monica and LA to be lining up to work for him. 

If there was only some way to fix this 

Pay everyone $50/hr.  They’ll have really good jobs for about 2 weeks before the restaurant goes under.

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31 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

What's the fucking title of this thread?

we in here talkin’ about Wolfgang Puck. I mean listen, we talkin’ ’bout Wolfgang Puck. Not a diner, not a drive-in, not a dive. We talkin’ about Wolfgang Puck. Not a hole-in- the-wall, not a, not a, not the burger joint that I go out there and die for, and eat every tater tot like it’s my last. Not the double bacon cheeseburger with jalapenos. We talkin’ bout Wolfgang Puck, man. I mean how silly is that? We talkin’ bout Wolfgang Puck.

Go start another thread if you want to talk about Diners Drive-ins and Dives.

 

Uh, did you even read the linked article which serves as the premise for this thread?

“Puck’s plight has become a familiar theme in recent months. The restaurant industry has 1.7 million fewer jobs filled than before the pandemic — that’s the highest on record — despite raising pay and posting almost a million job openings in March.”

So you maintain this thread can only be about WP having a hard time hiring?

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1 minute ago, Bevo said:

So what are the owners of Enchiladas Y Mas, Millionaires or Billionaires?

Or are they Millionaires o Billionaires o Mas? 

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2 hours ago, Lhorn said:

What the fuck are you talking about?  It’s not just millionaire celebrity chefs who don’t step into their own restaurants but every 6 months that are struggling to hire workers. I don’t give a shit about Wolfgang Puck and the .5% of restaurant owners who are lighting cigars with $100 bills.  A lot of people barely surviving in the industry have gone out of business and a labor shortage ensures that shit ton more will in the near future. Coming off COVID and finally getting to really open up but not having staff is a dire problem.  You think about economics like a child. You want to fuck the 10% of those that can afford to pay more even if it means fucking the 90% of those who can’t. 
 

well yes Marx was a child once. 

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3 hours ago, Ridingtosunset said:

You enjoyed the work, made good money it sounds like, on a schedule that worked for you. In an extremely low margin business for the owner. Only the owners risk to lose everything...sounds like a pretty decent gig to me. 

I can unequivocally say that my situation and experience was easily the outlier where I worked and in past experiences it would have been at other restaurants I was at as well. I was with this particular company for several years. There were people there longer than I was who just did it because the job mostly paid their bills.  For me yes it was a very good experience and that had nothing to do with the monetary aspect of the job. I placed a high value on the people I consistently worked with, be it the bartender or host or the cooks that were great at their job. I also thoroughly enjoyed the interactions with the mostly tourist guests we got from around the world. There are several that invited me to see them should I ever travel to where they live. I will eventually take up some of them on that when I get to visit Finland, Brazil and Australia among some other locales.
 

There were several Dominican women in the kitchen that I can say worked harder at what they did than anyone I have worked with in my life. I can only think of a few people who worked as hard as they during my restaurant experiences. Overall though the industry is a place where the owners are now reaping what was sown years before the pandemic turned everything upside down. Treating people like easily replaceable parts and the overall lack of respect management shows to employees in this line of work makes it hard for many people to want to return to this. There are restaurants who are run by folks who genuinely care about their employees, but those are going to also be outliers.

Edited by UpperWestside
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9 hours ago, Lhorn said:

See my post above. But please, continue to pretend my discussion of labor shortage as a whole in the restaurant industry is just a thinly veiled fan boy defense of WP. 

 

3 hours ago, Mole said:

Anecdotally, it seems like many of the more competent service industry folks have found better things to do — with better pay, more stable work, and fewer interactions with the hoards of sociopaths looking to take out their life frustrations on a stranger — those insane people who are apparently everywhere that take such joy in the suffering of others.

So while you’re berating you’re server for the cold burger and for forgetting to bring you your Shirley Temple, take some comfort that the old, competent server has made a better life. Rather than a crisis of refills, we just might be witnessing the American dream in action on a large scale.

Or you know, the entire social order was upended, the world was shut down, lots of people died, we all lost our minds, and maybe transitioning out of that pit might have a few hiccups.

All I know is that I never got my hash browns with my Father’s Day omelette and I was left hungry.

Mole eloquently said what my dumb self was thinking.  I didn’t necessarily think you were defending WP, but rather bagging on people for not wanting to work (particularly in a restaurant).  That $120K was tips before Covid.

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10 hours ago, Lhorn said:

Uh, did you even read the linked article which serves as the premise for this thread?

“Puck’s plight has become a familiar theme in recent months. The restaurant industry has 1.7 million fewer jobs filled than before the pandemic — that’s the highest on record — despite raising pay and posting almost a million job openings in March.”

So you maintain this thread can only be about WP having a hard time hiring?

There is a thread discussing the “labor shortage”. 
 

The person you were replying to was trying to keep the scope limited because this topic is inherently CR. Economic policy and Monetary Policy are literally set by the government. One side is arguing “free market” and the other side is arguing “livable wage”. It should be in the CR. The OP doesn’t like the CR so he posts here because…reasons. 

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