Arturo Conde

While we often know the history and culture of the foods we eat, and their prices at the supermarkets and restaurants, many of us still neglect the human cost of each meal. How many hands pick the fruits and vegetables that we buy? How many anonymous cooks and servers work hard to make each dining experience memorable? That is why Congresswomen Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) teamed up at 9:00 am this morning withRestaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) and other restaurant worker advocate organizations to announce a new report that condemns the systematic discrimination of women workers in the restaurant industry.

The report, “Tipped Over the Edge,” documents the exploitation of working women, who make up 55 percent of the workforce, a workforce that is 22 percent Latino. Many women restaurant workers earn poverty wages because the federal minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 per hour for over two decades. According to the report, servers, who are 71 percent women, comprise the largest group of all tipped workers and experience almost three times the poverty rate of the workforce as a whole. Consequently, the report explains, many of the women workers who serve American patrons rely on food stamps at almost twice the rate of the general population — and in some cases, cannot afford to feed themselves.

The restaurant industry is one of the few sectors where the majority of male workers have a different minimum wage than the majority of their female counterparts. Non-tipped workers are 52 percent male, earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25, while tipped workers are 66 percent female, earning $5.12 less per hour. This wage inequity between men and women, explained Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and co-director of ROC-United, is not arbitrary.

“It’s a matter of employers paying women less,” said Jayaraman in a phone interview with Univision News. “And in the restaurant industry [this discrimination] is also a matter of law. The law states that the industry can pay less to women because tipped workers are in fact the majority female. And the reason for it is not economic or necessity, it’s political.”

According to Jayaraman, the National Restaurant Association does not oppose overall minimum wage increases as long as the minimum wage for tipped workers remains frozen. The lobbying powerhouse, which defends the interests of over 380,000 restaurants, gained a foothold in the national spotlight when former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain led them, first as a board member and then as president. Under his tenure, the association allied itself closely with cigarette makers to fight restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunk driving, upheld the minimum tip wage freeze, and opposed a patients’ bill of rights in defense of the restaurant industry’s interests.

Not having any job security or health benefits is another concern that affects many restaurant workers like Morena, a 26-year-old Salvadorian server/barista who we will refer to only by her first name to protect her identity. After eight-hour and sometimes twelve-hour shifts in her Washington, D.C. restaurant, Morena can earn as low as $30 with minimal tipping. On her best night, she has earned a maximum of $150, but her average weekly salary hardly covers her expenses. Even by renting an affordable room at her aunt’s home, she still has difficulty paying her car and phone bills.

Morena, like most restaurant workers, relies on her job out of necessity. In El Salvador, she was a supervisor at a textile factory. But in the United States, she has been unable to find comparable work because her English is limited, she lacks a U.S. diploma, and has no textile labor experience in the U.S. Working as a server is her most reliable option, but without any laws to protect her from discrimination, she has needed to count on organizations like ROC-United to defend her worker rights and interests.

ROC-United was born out of the tragedy of September 11, when the surviving workers of the restaurant Windows on World, which was located on the 107^thfloor or the World Trade Center, came together to defend restaurant workplace justice. In just over 10 years, it has grown into a national movement with over 9,000 members in 9 cities. And today, with the support of Congresswomen Edwards and Norton, they hope to remind restaurant patrons nationwide that food is a collaborative experience that brings us together as a community. By permitting the unjust wages that keep many restaurant workers in poverty, we dishonor the culture and history that we celebrate with food.

http://univisionnews.tumblr.com/post/17550642487/restaurant-workers-receive-much-needed-support-from

Laura Flanders

Call it part two of last week’s report. No sooner had the blood cooled from the “he-covery” than in came more stark news from the world of women’s work. This time, it’s not just discriminatory employers at fault; it’s the federal government.

“In most industries, the gender wage gap is due to employer discrimination. In the restaurant industry, it’s also a matter of policy,” says Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the workers’ group, the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC).

Virtually alone among employers, in the restaurant industry predominately male positions have a different minimum wage than predominately female positions. Since 2007, non-tipped workers (52 percent male) have a federal minimum wage of $7.25. Tipped workers (66 percent female) have a federal subminimum wage of $2.13.

Congress established that sub-generous subminimum for tipped workers back in 1991. Thanks to active lobbying by the National Restaurant Owners Association (one of the top twenty-five lobby groups in the United States), it has stayed at $2.13 ever since.

“The outcome is that servers, 71 percent of whom are female, are suffering a gender gap that doesn’t just mean inequity, it means the difference between living below or above poverty line,” says Jayaraman. (The federal poverty line is $18,000 for a family of three.) Food servers, it turns out, are twice as likely as the general population to use food stamps.

“The millions of workers who serve our food can’t afford to eat,” says Jayaraman.

Think about that as you sit down for your next meal. If Valentine’s Day 2012 is anything like last year, some 70 million lovey-dovey eaters will be served. According to a new report from ROC and a dozen partner organizations, within servers, the industry’s largest occupational category, full-time, year-round female servers are paid 68 percent of what their male colleagues earn ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually). Black female servers are paid 8 percent less than that, costing them a deficit of more than $400,000 over a lifetime.

Mayaba Liebenthal, an African-American server at Stanley restaurant in New Orleans, has been in the business for fifteen years and sees no chance that she’ll ever move into a management post or to a better-paying “fine dining” establishment. “As a worker, I’m not able to access healthcare; I have to work when I’m sick and [I’m dependent on tips that vary every week]. I can’t save money, I can’t afford time to go to school.”

As for those tips? While managers generally decide whether tips are gathered into a pool, workers themselves determine how tips are distributed. So pay rests on subjective interpersonal relations, says Liebenthal. “It’s not fair, and it’s painful always to be wondering if this person going to pay me what I’m worth as a server or what he or she thinks I’m worth as a person?”

The law says that employers are supposed to ensure that tips make up the difference between the tip minimum wage and the regular minimum wage, yet the researchers behind the new report say they’ve heard from many workers that not only does that not happen but employers also tell workers to report that they are earning minimum wage. This means that workers end up getting taxed on income they don’t have. As a matter of law, taxes—levied on wages and tips—are deducted from wages. Workers making a good deal in tips (cash) have to remember to put money aside to cover the taxes they owe that their wages weren’t sufficient to pay.

“Diners may be aware that they are subsidizing their server’s wages; the thing that people don’t know is they’re subsidizing the wages of runners and busers and all the tipped workers” says Saru. Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association is forecasting a record-breaking $635 billion in revenue in 2012.

ROC is equipping interested diners with information-packed palm cards to hand out to managers and servers. “It’s going to take customers speaking up and showing they care to make things change,” says Jayaraman. “Twenty years ago, customers started asking about organics and locally produced food, and the industry responded.”

ROC has also issued a 2012 directory of restaurants that take the high road and pay their tipped workers the same or close to the same as the federal minimum wage. Seven states have already done away with the subminimum, including California, the number-one restaurant state in the country.

“Running a restaurant is hard. Running it right is profitable,” says Barbara Sibley, owner of La Palapa, New York City. Sibley says she spends more on wages, but far less on waste and retraining.

Real change, however, needs to come from Congress. Maryland Democrat, Donna Edwards, showed restaurant workers some love this week by calling for Congressional action in an op-ed co-authored by Jayaraman for the Hill:

“There is no reason that the women who cook, prepare, and serve our meals should trade their health for wages and face limited opportunities for career mobility. America’s working women cannot live off the status quo and we must show them the economic respect they are long overdue—in the form of living wages, paid sick days and health coverage, and an end to discrimination and harassment.”

President Barack Obama pledged to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an Hour by 2011. It hasn’t happened. If he put some muscle into the push for that (indexing it to inflation as he promised) and into raising the subminimum too, he just might be forgiven. As he said back in 2008, “people who work full-time should not live in poverty.” Raise a glass to that this week—and leave a tip—at a high-road restaurant where the workers don’t starve.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166235/tip-your-servers-valentines-day

February 9, 2012

By Holly Rosenkrantz

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/foods-great-but-does-the-chef-get-vacation-02092012.html

February 7th, 2012

This Valentine’s Day, the restaurant industry’s busiest day of the year, a new research report shows that women who work in the industry face systematic discrimination, poverty wages, a lack of sick days, and five times more harassment than the general female workforce.

One major cause of poverty for these working women is that restaurant lobbyists have succeeded in keeping the federal minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers frozen at only $2.13 per hour for the past 20 years.

The new report, “Tipped Over the Edge,” was released today on Capitol Hill by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United), U.S. Representatives Donna Edwards and Eleanor Holmes Norton, and other major research and advocacy organizations, including Family Values @ Work, HERVotes Coalition, The Institute For Women’s Policy Research, Momsrising, National Coalition On Black Civic Participation’s Black Women’s Roundtable, National Council For Research On Women, National Organization For Women, National Partnership For Women & Families, National Women’s Law Center, Wider Opportunities For Women, Women Of Color Policy Network (NYU Wagner), and 9to5 National Association for Working Women.

“Everything else has gone up in the past 20 years – meal prices, CEO pay, and the cost of basic necessities like housing and health care,” said ROC-United Director Saru Jayaraman. “Congress needs to say no to restaurant lobbyists so the women who serve America its food can afford to eat.”

Mayaba Liebenthal, a server in New Orleans, said it is difficult surviving on $2.13 an hour. “I have had my phone and electricity cut off, having to make the decision of what I could without for a few days until I could afford it,” she said, ”Millions of people across America like myself deserve more.”

Findings in the report include the following…

Profiting from poverty.
Since 52% of all restaurant workers are women, but 66% of tipped workers are women, the lower minimum wage for tipped workers is essentially creating legalized gender inequity in the restaurant industry. In most industries, the gender wage gap is due to employer discrimination, but in the restaurant industry, it’s also a matter of law.
7 of the 10 lowest-paid occupations in the United States are restaurant occupations. Most of these occupations are majority female and pay median wages below the poverty line.
Servers – of whom 71 percent are female – are almost three times more likely to be paid below the poverty line than the general workforce and nearly twice as likely to need food stamps as the general popula tion.
Despite having the same poverty rate for the overall workforce of 6.7 percent, states that follow the federal tipped subminimum wage have a much higher poverty rate for servers than states without a subminimum wage (19.4 percent vs. 13.6 percent), and this burden of poverty falls mostly on women.

Discrimination by design.
The industry follows a conscious business model of confining women to the lower-paid positions within restaurants. Women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the cooking at home.
In addition, women are confined to the lower-paying seg ments of the industry such as quick-serve and family style rather than the highest-paying fine dining segment. So even within the same job classification of server, full-time, year-round female servers are paid just 68 percent of what male servers are paid ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually). Over a work career, that means the industry takes an extra $320,000 from each female server – money that might otherwise make it possible to buy a home or car or send children to college.

Five times more sexual harassment.
Nearly 37 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed by women with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) come from the restaurant industry –

more than 5 times the rate for the general female workforce.
Food handling while sick.
While only 31 percent of U.S. employers don’t provide health coverage for employees, 90 percent of restaurant workers surveyed nationwide reported not being provided employer-paid sick days or health benefits. Two–thirds reported having to cook, prepare, and/or serve food while sick because they could not afford to take unpaid time off.

Unpredictable scheduling.
Restaurants typically choose not to provide workers with predictability and more than a few days’ advance notice of schedules, a burden that falls hardest on women juggling child care or elder care arrangements.

Raise the minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers
In 1996, restaurant industry lobbyists convinced Congress to overturn 30 years of past practice that provided that the subminimum wage for tipped workers automatically rose with federal minimum wage increases for other workers.

Since then, seven states have eliminated the subminimum status of tipped workers entirely and provide that restaurants must pay them at least the minimum wage.
But even if the federal subminimum for tipped workers were raised to 70 percent of the normal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (the same percentage as before 1996), that increase to $5.08 per hour would immediately improve incomes for the families of nearly 837,200 workers, 630,000 of whom are female, who are not in states that already provide higher minimums or subminimums, and raise the wage floor for five million women. It would also decrease the gender pay equity gap in the industry by one fifth.

“Poverty-wage women are subsidizing restaurant CEOs and their Wall Street shareholders,” said Jayaraman “It’s Robin Hood in reverse.”

The National Restaurant Association just released its 2012 forecast, which predicts the restaurant industry will earn a record-breaking $635 billion in revenue this year, despite the country’s economic downturn.

Over the years, the industry has become dominated by wealthy chains that often have large Wall Street stockholders. These chains lead the National Restaurant Association in fighting to keep wages low and benefits out of this growing industry.

For example, Darden Restaurant Co., the nation’s largest full-service chain, made more than a half billion dollars in net income in fiscal 2011. Darden owns and operates approximately 1,900 restaurants, including Capital Grille, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, and 17 Seasons. Major shareholders include J.P. Morgan Chase, State Street Corporation, Capital Research Global Investors, Lazard Asset Management, and other Wall Street banks and investment companies. Darden’s CEO, Clarence Otis Jr., a former executive of J.P. Morgan; Kidder, Peabody & Company; and First Boston Corporation, had compensation in 2011 of $8,480,148 along with stock shares and options worth $22,126,933.

In addition to an increase in the subminimum wage for tipped workers and a raise and indexing to inflation of the federal minimum wage for all workers, the report’s recommendations include establishing a national standard for paid sick days; mandatory sexual harassment training; support for job training and career ladders; stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws; and support for collective organizing among restaurant workers.

###

From Los Angeles to New Orleans, to Miami,  to Washington, D.C., ROC members are meeting with Congressional representatives to tell them STOP THE ATTACK ON WORKING WOMEN by restaurant lobbyist and increase the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13!

TAKE ACTION - Send a letter to your representative, tell them that 20 YEARS OF $2.13 IS TOO LONG! RESTAURANT WORKERS CANNOT AFFORD TO BE LEFT BEHIND!

The new report is endorsed by a number of advocates for women’s rights – including U.S. Representative Donna Edwards and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and other major research and advocacy organizations, including Family Values @ Work, HERVotes Coalition, the Institute For Women’s Policy Research, MomsRising, National Coalition On Black Civic Participation’s Black Women’s Roundtable,  National Council For Research On Women, National Organization For Women, National Partnership For Women & Families, National Women’s Law Center, Wider Opportunities For Women, Women Of Color Policy Network (NYU Wagner), and 9to5 National Association for Working Women.

“Everything else has gone up in the past 20 years – meal prices, CEO pay, and the cost of basic necessities like housing and health care,” said ROC United Co-Director Saru Jayaraman. “Congress needs to say no to restaurant lobbyists so the women who serve America its food can afford to eat.”

Mayaba Liebenthal, a server in New Orleans, said she faced difficulties working as a server earning $2.13, “I have had my phone and electricity cut off, having to make the decision of what I could without for a few days until I could afford it. Congress needs to the raise the $2.13 minimum, to help myself and millions of other Americans across the country.”

Findings in the report include the following…

Profiting from poverty

• Seven of the 10 lowest-paid occupations in the United States are restaurant occupations. Most of these occupations are majority female and pay median wages below the poverty line.

• Servers – of whom 71 percent are female – are almost three times more likely to be paid below the poverty line than the general workforce and nearly twice as likely to need food stamps as the general popula­tion.

Discrimination by design

• Women are confined to the lower-paying seg­ments of the industry such as quick-serve and family style rather than the highest-paying fine dining segment. Within the same job classification of server, full-time, year-round, female servers are paid just 68 percent of what male servers are paid ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually). Over a work career, that means the industry takes an extra $320,000 from each female server – money that might otherwise make it possible to buy a home or car or send children to college.

Five times more sexual harassment.

• Nearly 37 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed by women with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) come from the restaurant industry - more than 5 times the rate for the general female workforce.

Food handling while sick.

• While only 31 percent of U.S. employers don’t provide health coverage for employees, 90 percent of restaurant workers surveyed nationwide reported not being provided employer-paid sick days or health benefits. Two–thirds reported having to cook, prepare, and/or serve food while sick because they could not afford to take unpaid time off.

Unpredictable scheduling.

• Restaurants typically choose not to provide workers with predictability and more than a few days’ advance notice of schedules, a burden that falls hardest on women juggling child care or elder care arrangements.

Raise the minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers

In 1996, restaurant industry lobbyists convinced Congress to overturn 30 years of past practice that provided that the subminimum wage for tipped workers automatically rose with federal minimum wage increases for other workers.

Since then, seven states have eliminated the subminimum status of tipped workers entirely and provide that restaurants must pay them at least the minimum wage.
But even if the federal subminimum for tipped workers were raised to 70 percent of the normal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (the same percentage as before 1996), that increase to $5.08 per hour would immediately improve incomes for the families of nearly 837,200 workers, 630,000 of whom are female, who are not in states that already provide higher minimums or subminimums, and raise the wage floor for five million women. It would also decrease the gender pay equity gap in the industry by one fifth.

“Poverty-wage women are subsidizing restaurant CEOs and their Wall Street shareholders,” said Jayaraman. “It’s Robin Hood in reverse.”

The National Restaurant Association just released its 2012 forecast, which predicts the restaurant industry will earn a record-breaking $635 billion in revenue this year, despite the country’s economic downturn. Over the years, the industry has become dominated by wealthy chains that often have large Wall Street stockholders.   These chains lead the National Restaurant Association in fighting to keep wages low and benefits out of this growing industry.

In addition to an increase in the subminimum wage for tipped workers and a raise and indexing to inflation of the federal minimum wage for all workers, the report’s recommendations include establishing a national standard for paid sick days; mandatory sexual harassment training; support for job training and career ladders; stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws; and support for collective organizing among restaurant workers.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

DOWNLOAD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

The report shows that women who work in the industry face systematic discrimination, poverty wages, a lack of sick days, and five times more harassment than the general female workforce. One major cause of poverty for these working women is that restaurant lobbyists have succeeded in keeping the federal minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers frozen at only $2.13 per hour for the past 20 years.

Findings in the report include the following…

Profiting from poverty.

• Since 52% of all restaurant workers are women, but 66% of tipped workers are women, the lower minimum wage for tipped workers is essentially creating legalized gender inequity in the restaurant industry. In most industries, the gender wage gap is due to employer discrimination, but in the restaurant industry, it’s also a matter of law.

• Seven of the 10 lowest-paid occupations in the United States are restaurant occupations. Most of these occupations are majority female and pay median wages below the poverty line.

• Servers – of whom 71 percent are female – are almost three times more likely to be paid below the poverty line than the general workforce and nearly twice as likely to need food stamps as the general popula tion.

• Despite having the same poverty rate for the overall workforce of 6.7 percent, states that follow the federal tipped subminimum wage have a much higher poverty rate for servers than states without a subminimum wage (19.4 percent vs. 13.6 percent), and this burden of poverty falls mostly on women.

Discrimination by design.

• The industry follows a conscious business model of confining women to the lower-paid positions within restaurants. Women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the cooking at home.

• In addition, women are confined to the lower-paying seg ments of the industry such as quick-serve and family style rather than the highest-paying fine dining segment.  So even within the same job classification of server, full-time, year-round female servers are paid just 68 percent of what male servers are paid ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually). Over a work career, that means the industry takes an extra $320,000 from each female server – money that might otherwise make it possible to buy a home or car or send children to college.

Five times more sexual harassment.

• Nearly 37 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed by women with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) come from the restaurant industry - more than 5 times the rate for the general female workforce.

Food handling while sick.

• While only 31 percent of U.S. employers don’t provide health coverage for employees, 90 percent of restaurant workers surveyed nationwide reported not being provided employer-paid sick days or health benefits. Two–thirds reported having to cook, prepare, and/or serve food while sick because they could not afford to take unpaid time off.

Unpredictable scheduling.

• Restaurants typically choose not to provide workers with predictability and more than a few days’ advance notice of schedules, a burden that falls hardest on women juggling child care or elder care arrangements.

DOWNLOAD THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT

The potential for the growing restaurant industry to revive a lifeless job market is limited by both bad jobs and racial segregation. The industry’s many poverty-wage jobs are disproportionately held by people of color and the livable-wage jobs, mostly server and bartender positions in fine dining restaurants, are disproportionately held by Whites. The facts and figures laid out in the                          “Blacks in the Industry” report show the severity of the situation for Blacks in the industry and underline the urgent need for action.

While restaurants were a major site of the many sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement that challenged the system of official segregation that denied patrons of color their human dignity, today we are fighting a system of de facto segregation to reclaim dignity for workers of color in this immense and growing industry. Black diners, who contributed almost $25 billion to the restaurant industry in 2010, have the opportunity to stand in solidarity with Black restaurant workers.

Click here to download the brief

Sponsored by the FORD FOUNDATION

January 24th, 2012: The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the national economy. In 2009 it accounted for $277 billion of U.S. Gross Domestic Product and employed nearly 1 in 12 private-sector workers. While the industry has grown rapidly, its long-term stability is threatened by poor job quality. Restaurant workers have the lowest wages of any occupational category, and 90% of restaurant workers do not receive paid sick days, paid vacation, or health insurance through their employer. Moreover, there is often little career mobility and racial segregation keeps people of color disproportionately in the lowest paid positions. These factors increase employee turnover and decrease employee loyalty and productivity, which in turn reduce the quality of food and service. Moreover, restaurant patrons are exposed to contagion when workers cannot afford to stay home when sick.

Illustrating the direct link between job quality and the long-term success and stability of a restaurant, this report provides concrete examples of restaurateurs who have created “win-win-win” solutions for workers, diners, and employers alike. Other restaurant employers can learn from the experiences and insights of these successful business owners.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE

What does turnover really cost the restaurant?

Turnover is widely recognized as one of the major costs in the restaurant industry – increasing costs for recruitment and screening, training, uniforms, admin, and unemployment insurance not to mention its negative impact on team morale, trust building, and relationships with regular customers. Studies place the cost of turnover between $4,000 and $14,000 per employee turnover, and the National Restaurant Association has placed the cost at $7,000, in current dollars.10

What is the High Road?

Employers defined the “high road” as employment practices that support workers and unleash their loyalty, creativity, and productivity to make the restaurant successful. High-road employers emphasized that the benefits of increased productivity of invested long-term workers and the reduced cost of employee turnover outweigh the short-term costs of high-road practices.

While specific practices varied, these “high-road” policies fell into the following three areas:

1. providing livable wages 

2. maintaining a healthy workplace through paid sick days, vacation, or health insurance; and 

3. creating career ladders for employees through training and internal promotions policies  

The following provides information on some of the high road employers featured in the report:

EL FUEGO - Quick Serve – Philadelphia, PA – opened in 2009

El Fuego is a quick-serve “burrito joint” that prides itself on local ingredients and great service. Their operating philosophy is, “If I watch your back, you watch mine.” This philosophy covers staff, customers, and the surrounding community.

- All workers currently earn $9.50/hr or above as a quick serve restaurant. All workers start at $8.75/hr and receive a $.50 raise after completing the 3-month trial period.

- All workers are able to receive paid sick time as half pay for missing a shift or for family or childcare reasons.

- Turnover costs are low. Workers average 5 years tenure. This retention has also helped customer loyalty.

El Fuego says their sick day policy works because it shows the restaurant cares about its employees. Ishem, a counter worker at El Fuego for three years, has benefited from the sick day policy and has repaid through his work ethic. “There was a time when I had bronchitis pretty bad, and I couldn’t work. I got half a week’s pay… and that was really cool. I tried to make it up to them. Later on I went the extra mile as part of my work. … That’s what makes this place a really healthy work environment.”

Peter explained that even though there is no formal cap on the amount of paid sick days that employees can use, “people don’t abuse it. …To be honest, the employees here are so honest. … [It doesn’t] affect the profit of the business.”

Peter asserts that having low turnover and such an experienced staff has been invaluable to the restaurant. For example, El Fuego is able to shave off $300 a week in food deliveries through portion control. “The guys in the back have eyes on it. They’re really good judges, ‘There’s way too much chicken going out today.’ They look out. Then I can talk to the guys up front.” Low turnover has been beneficial because experience is necessary to gauge portions. The front of the house takes at least six months “to get acclimated. … It just takes so much repetition. Even the way we scoop the food, someone new, they don’t know.”

ZINGERMAN’S - Upscale Family Style – Detroit, MI – opened in 1982

Zingerman’s Roadhouse, part of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB), is a casual fine dining restaurant serving American cuisine. It was opened in 2003 in partnership with James Beard Award-winning Chef Alex Young. The first Zingerman’s business was a delicatessen opened in 1982 by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig with two employees. Since then, Zingerman’s has grown to nine businesses employing over 575 workers and garnering over $40 million per year in revenue. The company has won a number of accolades, including “the coolest small company in America” on the cover of Inc. magazine.

- In addition to fair wages, benefits include subsidized health insurance, paid sick days, paid time off, and matched 401k contributions.

- Employees receive above-average wages, and raises are given with increases in performance and responsibility. Open book management in conjunction with a profit-sharing “game” is used to give workers the tools, knowledge, and incentives to make the business successful.

- Providing ample training and opportunity for advancement has been key to making productive workers that will then stay at the restaurant. Growing the company has helped provide opportunities for advancement.

- Greater diversity at all levels has become an explicit goal in the 2015 vision and a diversity committee has been charged with helping the company achieve their goals.

- Zingerman’s built benefits into its business model from the very start to properly plan for pricing and volume and revenue goals.

- Zingerman’s started as a two-employee deli in 1982 and has grown to an award-winning company with 9 businesses employing 575 workers and over $40 million per year in revenue.

Paul explained that offering benefits was never easy but the payoff was worth it in the long run in: “ What do you get from it? You get a stable workforce. You get a workforce that can stay healthy. You get someone that feels good about the company and is out there trying to help the company be successful. The benefits are enormous. So now you figure out how to make it work. I don’t know what else to tell you. You try different things: What if we sell this product instead of this product? Can we have 15 people instead of 20 work a little harder, but have these benefits? All the levers are out there. Your strategy and how you manage is going to determine whether you’re successful or not.”

NEYOW’S CREOLE CAFE - Family Style – New Orleans – opened 2009

Tanya’s restaurant of over a decade was closed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2009, she reopened with a new name and location. Neyow’s Creole Café, with its quirky but charming dog-themed décor, has seen a steady rise in business over the last two years due to great service, great food and workers who are highly invested in the restaurant.

- Employees are provided regular performance-based raises and bonuses as
business revenues increase as an incentive to make the business better. Most bonuses and raises go to kitchen employees who do not directly see increased compensation through tips when business increases.

- Labor costs are fixed as a percentage of total revenue.

- Workers are cross-trained across different floor and kitchen positions as they are given more responsibility. Workers also have the opportunity to move between front and back-of-the-house positions.

- All job openings are advertised to employees inside the restaurant first. Six out of eight full-time employees have been promoted.

- Turnover costs have been low. Only one worker has quit.

- Business has steadily increased over the two years of being open and 80% of their guests regularly return. The owner has also been able to decrease her own working hours significantly by building a skilled and trustworthy staff.

Wendell, who has worked with Tanya for two years at Neyow’s and eight years in her previous restaurant, appreciates that the rewards of the restaurant’s success are shared with the workers. Aside from the bonuses, he has also received raises. Two years ago he started as a fry cook at $10 per hour. He was given a raise to $12 per hour after his probationary period, and now makes $15 per hour as head cook. He explained that incentives such as bonuses and raises when revenues increase help to motivate everyone in the restaurant to work harder. “We can tell the volume that’s picking up. I see the books. We all see the numbers. As the business grows, Tanya tries to make sure that we get a little bit of that too. … That’s what most places don’t do. It’s frustrating [when business is growing and no profits are shared with workers]. Then you ask “why am I working so hard?” Wendell summed up the work ethic in the restaurant. “If Tanya’s getting it [profit], we’re getting it. So we make sure she keeps getting it.”

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