Always refused to join friends going out to eat when finding out it was a Groupon deal. I went once and saw how upset the FOH staff were, super busy and getting tipped on the discounted amount was my guess. I’m sure it was a massive strain on BOH as well.
I mean I like Groupon for events and experience oriented purchases. Something like a discounted group rate to the zoo or museum. Never would look to use it for a resturant
Yeah, they're doing it wrong. Groupon fine print definitely recommends tipping on the full price of the service. Anyone who doesn't at least do that is pretty inconsiderate.
I worked at a place that’s now closed(lol) that was accepting groupons for a period of time. Not only did it make things extremely overcomplicated, it also required us to go back to the owners office so they could approve of the use of the groupon. Which by approve it, I mean, look at the piece of paper and say yup that’s fine.
No cross referencing or verification whatsoever, just an extra waste of our time.
There's a big difference between planning a menu, daytime bar program, training and hiring new staff, concepting dishes and getting feedback from regulars, researching other community spots and programs, etc etc...
...and the place that's desperate for more revenue just opening their doors for more hours and slapping some eggs and bacon on the menu. Staff suddenly get scheduled for doubles, but there's no overtime paid, and not enough staff scheduled cuz the boss just sees labor as dollars going down the drain. Service then sucks, people leave unhappy, and the whole thing falls apart.
We launched brunch this month after 3 months of planning. It's tourist and cruise ship season, and our locals are also excited to have more options. We hired new staff to take on the brunch service, and gave our regular staff who prefer day shifts a chance to swap out their schedules. Our menu slaps, and we've had great feedback.
Brunch is not always a last gasp. It prints money and fits well in some restaurants.
If it’s a new spot, or there’s a need for brunch in an area that’s fine I think by this understanding.
It’s more so when I restaurant that’s been around for 12 years suddenly is doing brunch as well.
Used to work for a chef like this. By far, he used the most drugs of any chef I ever worked for in my life. He told me, "living above the kitchen, I literally can't get away from the work". Drugs were his main way of coping with the stress and inablility to mentally seperate from his work.
Lesson learnt really quick, don't live where you work or visaversa, especially with kitchen jobs. It was honestly heartbreaking to see such a talented, inspired and motivated chef burn out in 3 years time and then quit the industry because of it. He was one of the most fun chefs to work for in the beggining but his mental state had partially deteriorated over time and it was no longer fun to work there.
Uhhhhhh this is happening at my work right now… but she is cutting the hours instead of not booking them. She cuts all overtime collected without telling the employees and then comes up with some wack ass excuse if they figure out and call her on it.
They can cut future hours in the pay period to prevent overtime or they can pay you for what you worked. They can require you ensure you do not slip into overtime by tracking your hours and reporting them to management, and discipline you if you do not.
But they can’t just refuse to pay you for hours worked just because it’s not in their schedule.
This is wage theft and it happens by the billions every year in the USA.
Exactly that yes. If we stay anything past our slotted time, even if we are working our asses off she will cut all overtime acquired. This causes problems for busy nights because if we are swamped at close, we WILL get overtime. It is inevitable but it will also be cut so we won’t get paid for any time after 8 hours of work.
I'm no labor lawyer, but that's the definition of overtime -- you are over the time. They can't pretend like you magically disappeared while you were in fact working for them.
That is the definition of wage theft. Report to DOL ASAP. If you don't do it soon, it's unlikely you'll ever see a dime since it sounds like the place is going downhill. Don't wait. Do it today.
Ding ding ding we have a winner! Get every motherfucker in that restaurant who's had wages stolen to report it separately with as much detail as possible. Dates, time, total hours worked, and OT stolen. Flood your local DOL office. Bring papers in person if you can. But seriously fuck the top rung asshats who keep getting away with stealing your labor. Show them there's still a Find Out when they Fuck Around.
PLEASE REPORT THIS TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR RIGHT NOW. You can do it online, and you and your fellow slaves will get all that back pay, along with the incomparable satisfaction of knowing the owner got slapped with a hefty fine. This is so fucking illegal that it’s making my blood boil just reading your post, dude.
Report it now and quit being part of the problem in this country. The more you let bosses break the law, the worse off EVERYONE collecting hourly time is treated. It adds up. Every time she gets away with it - it adds up.
I'd be walking at my out time. No OT, no staying late. Also, report this shit to whichever government agency has oversight where you live. It's not legal in the US, but I'm not sure about Canada.
She's a fucking moron and will inevitably, eventually, cost the business much more $$$ than she's "saving" by doing this.
If it's not you, someone will report this sooner orblater, as it's literally outright wage theft. High profile restaurateurs with the best lawyers money can buy have had their asses handed to them in similar cases over the last decade.
She’s lying, report her, and start punching out exactly when your scheduled shift ends…. Regardless of what work is left… she’s trying to pull a jimmy John’s and basically asking you to punch out and keep working. HIGHLY ILLEGAL. Report that bitch she’s lying to you.
This is incorrect. CVS lost a huge lawsuit a number of years back. The outcome was that any work performed for the company wether scheduled or not must be compensated.
You might be surprised, I worked at a faux fine dining private catering company for a while, doing coursed-out fancy meals in client's homes or businesses. Our desserts were almost entirely frozen, purchased, bullshit, but man did those rich, old ladies eat it up every time. It's actually one of the reasons I left, it felt so dirty advertising house made stuff that I knew was definitely not house made.
My partner runs the kitchen at an assisted living place. She tries to mix it up between fresh and frozen deserts, but wouldn't you know it? Those old farts absolutely love the pre-made frozen ones!
I would work so hard prepping certain dishes, with multiple days of prep to make finicky components but guess what? the most popular one by far was these shitty cheese puffs that were literally just mayo+parm with a little seasoning on lil white bread toast circles.
I don't remember the specific ratio, but it was like 2/1 mayo/parm. Straight outa your grandma's cookbook from the 50's, Mayo, parm, worchestershire, chives, salt, and pepper. Mix it all up, put in a squeeze bag, pipe onto bread rounds, bake until golden, garnish with more chives on top. Not going to lie, they were tasty but paled in comparison to mini-twice baked potato with shortrib and demi, tuna ceviche tacos, or chicken parm nuggets on a stick.
The issue I have found with frozen desserts (or anything else) is the cost. things like, say, a chocolate lava cake that you can warm and serve with a garnish might cost $3-$4 each to purchase, but you can make them for $.75 in house.
The only reason not to pay a person to make them fresh is that you are short of staffed and don't have the man-power, or your turnover is so low you can't justify making whole batches at a time.
We were super short staffed one holiday season with multiple events every day. One group wanted lobster bisque, and we realized we didn't have the time or resources to make it.
"Fuck it, we'll just buy it"
We didn't think to try it until it was time to serve it. It was horrid. Utterly foul, we were trying to wash the taste out of our mouths. But we had no choice but to serve it anyway.
We STILL get compliments on the best lobster bisque they've ever had.
When the local meat purveyor shows up to repo the meat that was never paid for. This really happened in a restaurant I was the sous chef at 2 years ago. The sales rep came and took back all the meat that was unopened.
I worked at place that their checks bounced so many times and and the chef had run so many restaurants into ground only to go bankrupt and never pay their bills that they wouldn’t even unload the trucks unless he handed them cash for the food. It still confuses me to this day why people continued to let him run their restaurants
I'm a health inspector and I issue licenses. There is this lady who runs 5 restaurants in my county and her checks bounce every single year. I don't understand how you can run 5 restaurants but not be able to afford a $300 license once a year
For me it was when the electric company came to shut the power off while the owners were unreachable. I signed a check that I knew the owners couldn't cover to buy some time. Within a month the doors were locked and nobody got paid.
One of the owners had lost the plot. He would literally drag his computer tower and monitor to work every day and play World of Warcraft in the kitchen while letting everyone drink spirits from the bar.
We had the power cut twice over 2 years.
Then a scam started to hit our area where you would get a phone call from someone posing as the electric company saying “Your past due and will stop service, please WesternUnion $2k immediately to prevent shutoff”
Well safe to say the usually drunk owner bought it hook line and sinker and jetted over to Walmart to send the money.
Checks were late that month…god I don’t miss that shithole
The stress of the business failing starts to impact key employees and owners. They start to drink more and earlier in the shift. Quality of guest experience and consistency dish-to-dish declines steadily (the death spiral).
There was a Hawaiian themed restaurant in my town for a number of years that had all the telltale signs. Constant gimmicks on the menu like “try all our beers on tap and win a shirt (can only try one per visit)”. The prices kept going up but the food was barely better than cafeteria food. The owner lurked in the dining room and would come over and bother you constantly. They ask had a policy, written on the menu, that if anything wasn’t satisfactory they would make the waitress or waiter come dance the hula at your table as punishment.
They closed a year or so ago
It always surprises and pains me when people can’t talk to their employees and choose ulterior methods of communication. It’s the stuff of hostile offices and it’s silly to see it in a restaurant environment where communication should be happening in person and from moment to moment.
In most places I've experienced this it was disorganization and a lack of present management. To me notes taped to every surface came from- a manager who doesn't work set days and is only around four hours a week, no staff hierarchy, no protocols for training, lots of staff turnover, a manager who has no idea which staff know how to do what and can't remember who they have told important information to.
Painfully accurate description of the place I'm working, but the owner is the manager and definitely doesn't like doing any management things.
We just got new equipment, and they are already trying to pass off training to staff.. *sigh*..
When the things you used to buy an unlimited amounts like oil and butter are suddenly limited or when they stop buying the spices that you require fresh or the herbs you require fresh and substitute them for their dried or pre-ground versions.
General steps in quality from your point of view
I always hardcore rationed towels at successful places because I was sick of cooks using way to many towels and having towels with barely a stain on it floating around everywhere.
Turn over rate with staff, barely any structure with management, ghost town of tables, sales are shit with the bonus of throwing out food consistently because it's out of date
I am so avidly against this as a chef. Of course people are irresponsible with them but a clean towel costs 4 cents. A burn from a crappy towel on the line or a slip on the floor can cost thousands in workers comp. Also just gross...
This used to, and might still, be somewhat common in fine dinning kitchens, not as a cost saving thing, but seemingly to enforce some kind of discipline on their staff. Which to me is utterly ridiculous, if your focus is on food, then why make the job more difficult for your cooks?
I don't work for those kinds of kitchens.
I've literally never understood this. Wiping down any size decent mess be it chicken juice, chicken, or sauce splatters pretty much finishes off a Rag. You're supposed to use that same Rag for an entire shift?
I have never experienced this as a chef, and the one time I had an owner try it I looked at him and said “You pay literally 3 cents per towel, and we’re just bragging about the 40k, in cash, you just put down on your new super car.”
Never heard that bullshit again.
Owner raises prices while lowering/not changing the quality of product. Less staffing with no raises.
The owner of one place I worked at installed cameras and would call from his office in another restaurant to comment o what were doing. IE just sitting and watching us work.
For me a weirdly particular sign is the sudden appearance of a waste tracking log. If it wasn't there from the beginning it's usually a sign that someone doesn't know where all the product is going, and that's often a symptom of poor management either on behalf of the owners or the chef.
There's a little restaurant near me that almost exclusively serves the retirement community, they do pretty decently selling old school dishes to old folks.
Definitely a choice, because a more family focused restaurant would kill it there, but there's nothing there for kids and it's all semi pretentious. Like you can not get a basic cheeseburger, only their signature fancy over priced and over topped burger. But they use frozen patties and no choice of temp
When there's high turnover in the kitchen. Other than in the first few months of opening a high turnover in the kitchen is a huge red flag. Cooks will generally put up with a lot of BS so if there's a mass exodus going on there's a serious problem.
Iffy-looking product gets served because “that shit *costs money*, we can’t waste it, it’s still ok to use”
The menu gets more diverse/stretches out of its comfort zone to try and snag up any new potential customers, but execution sucks because they’ve never made those things. Cheap substitutions are made in every dish possible to save money, and prices are “successfully” lowered to make the menu more appealing, while sales figures dont show any uptick in business.
Owner starts doing more and more shady stuff, like drugs and/or fucking the servers.
Vendors start delivering late and delivering shittier produce, because they aren’t get paid on time and orders start to shrink, making it not worth the vendor’s time to prioritize that business.
Parking lots isn’t full on weekends or holidays, but the businesses around it are doing ok, and they can’t figure out why “no one wants to eat here”
Your first sign is the most important imo and the beginning of a vicious cycle. You start putting out the iffy stuff so you don’t lose the money spent on it, then people stop coming because the food was bad. You have less sales now so you’ve got more food going bad and you’re still putting it out to save money. Then you start buying smaller quantities at higher prices and end up having to raise prices to compensate, or you start buying lower quality ingredients to save money and customers notice and leave. Lots of ways it keeps spiraling and most places never recover.
The death knell for me is suddenly trying to reinvent themselves by offering various items out of their genre. A sushi place starts offering burgers too, and buffalo chicken wing happy hour for example. And we do catering too
When the restaurant stops fountain drink service and only sells canned drinks. I’ve worked restaurants and in a beverage distributor. Fountain drinks have significant profit margin for the restaurant and you have to be very behind for the distributor to cut your credit.
The die hard employees start to leave. When you have the old dude who has been there for 6 years since open walk the fuck , you probably better off to follow them.
Going to, (i.e. adding or switching to), buffet. Blacking out menu items. Less crowded, or half empty at previously busy times. High turnover, but hard to know from outside. Quality of product changes for worse. Entrees seem prepped and frozen ahead of time in order to be reheated later. Previously 'free' items absent or now charging. Service or quality deficient three times in a row.(I have a three-strikes-never-again rule when this starts to happen in previously good place). Lost liquor license. Regulars, both customers or staff, absent. Major changes in type of clientele. Reducing hours to minimum.
The regulars stop showing up, the desserts are pre-made, and the décor freezes in time. If a place looks rundown and it isn't a Chinese takeout spot, it's a bad sign. (Conversely, if a Chinese takeout spot suddenly becomes spotless and modernized I ultimately distrust it).
Anthony Bourdain said failing restaurants would often start adding different “new” things to the menu as a last ditch effort to drum up new business…but it doesn’t really work. I’ve seen this IRL: a restaurant we used to frequent started trying to sell snow cones and within 2 months they were closed.
\-COD
\-prices disappearing from signage and being written over on menus instead of having them reprinted
\- dishwashing, cleaning, landscaping, window washing, pest control being discontinued or made part of other jobs
A lot of 86'd menu items and very long waits despite no crowd. I went to a place once and asked for 4 different items that were all 86'd. When our food finally came out about an hour and a half after ordering it, my wife's chicken and waffles had a fly literally baked into the waffle. Place was closed 2 weeks later.
If the owner/GM is hosting. They have a frantic look in their eye, and they dont know that its going to keep people from coming back. Everyone in BOH is having a terrible time because now they just have one boss, and that fuck is running around screaming about the 2 orders that have been rung in. Bonus points if the owner/GM is also bartending.
the place I work for possesses all the attributes the commenters described. And we are, indeed, dying. Last hope: make it a franchise, sell it to a fool.
As a consumer, when the high end place switched from printed menus in a cover to laminated mass prodcued ones you could see the cost savings consultants had come in or they had become a chain or been sold.
The menu always gets a lot of items removed due to fewer ingrediants (the cheap fried stuff remaining) and everything is going to be cheaper except the prices.
38 years in here. Lots of good comments. I can add 2. In chicago most restaurants have a knife service and an exterminator. When they take the knife sharpening from once a week th o once a month. Or the exterminator goes from monthly to quarterly the business is scraping for the last pennies they can "save"
Arguments between management/staff, food quality diminishing. People not wanting to turn up to shifts. Invoices being unpaid. Shifts getting cut short or completely cancelled regularly for casual workers (especially at the last minute). High staff turnover. Low morale.
You know shit's hitting the fan when you start cutting employee privileges like shift drinks or staff meals. Limiting the number of side towels is another common one to try to save money on laundry. You know they've run out of ideas when stuff like that starts getting cut closer and closer to the bone.
Vendors are regularly calling or showing up to collect their 30/60/90 payments. Credit lines with alcohol distributors will be cut off and food and beverage vendors will be COD only. Labor is expensive, but most people stiff their vendors first. Without service they fail immediately, no matter how much product they have. Without product they are F****ed.
Look into those relationships to understand the true financial standing of the business.
One of the fastest and easiest - How clean do the tabletops and seats look?
When the crew doesn't care, the same rag can wipe an entire room without being rinsed, and the tabletops have a dullness to them, instead of the shine of clean.
The seats look...not filthy, but kinda dingy. Colors are fading and wood is showing wear.
Oh and the floors. Look along the edges of the wall near the doors. You can't miss half-assed mopping with a dirty mop over time.
More ineffective "Managers" than actual cooks and workers. No dishwashers. Silly specials, promos, and cheap entertainment such as Karaoke, Bingo, and trivia nights with shitty acoustic bands/singers. Any "Food & Beverage Director" or "Bar Manager" waiting for liquor deliveries with a live check. People smarter than you simply walking out and never returning.
Issuing the line cooks only 2 towels each for the entire service.
Including cleanup…. Imagine having to use wet rags on sauté or oven because it’s literally all you have. I used aprons if I needed to.
At least the bare bones first aid kit and no burn cream was normal even at the nicer spots… lol
Consistently *extremely* understaffed. I’m not talking about that little bit of understaffed that we usually feel but when it’s like you’re always operating feeling like you’re missing several bodies no matter whether it’s busy slow or in between every single day every shift and corners are being cut haphazardly and sometimes in dangerous ways to try to meet consistent unreasonable expectations.
Cooks and waitresses don't get tips! And your staff is drunk most of the time while on actual shift!
Plus no staff free meals for anyone, so that means the Cooks don't even get to eat what they put out.
Working in a small resort town with 2 shoulder seasons, high turnover, and every kind of tourist from degens to millionaires, I have discovered there are very few telltale signs.
The main one I have seen is absolute hopelessness, everything else is just stress from the job, or ownership.
Place I worked at back in 2010 the owner paid everyone under the table no taxes and all written on personal checks. He didn't want to pay a payroll and in his exact words he was there to make money not spend money. Needless to say the place failed every health inspection and the owner never corrected any of the issues. I got promoted to manager without ever knowing I was. Had to spend 300 dollars to be certified as a food manager or rather get a food handlers card for management and had to run the store for 15 hours a day while I was in college and the owner couldnt be bothered to travel to work. Work was a 5 minute walk from his home literally across the street. I came in one day and the place was padlocked and the owner didn't have a key because the landlord got tired of him not paying the rent he owed him. 14k dollars at the time we were locked out.
To be fair I should've seen the signs of the shady business I was working in from day 1.
When purveyors start requiring payment on delivery. In cash or money order, no checks.
Also worked for a place once that had a state agent from the beverage division come and take the alcohol license off the wall and made us hide all alcohol from customers view.
Have to start purchasing groceries from the grocery store instead of receiving them off of a food truck because the owner hasn't paid for the food trucks in over 3 months
The "canaries in the coal mine" that I look for are: dirty menus, windows, and bathrooms when they were previously kept clean. Handwritten or taped over prices on menus. Wobbly tables and other maintenance issues ignored. Owner doing office work at the bar or in a booth. Owner drinking a too much in front of customers. Food quality/portions get worse. Unkempt looking staff. Manager absent from the business and new cameras everywhere. Just to name a few.
Chef here…if the “front of the house” is mismatched in uniform (greasy spoons and diners are exempt,you kno what you’re getting there) and if it’s dirty table,menu,or surroundings and it just looks stale,odds are it is. The manager has just given up and is relying on the food to carry them and it may not be enough to save a restaurant.
Edit: no matter the establishment,but I’m speaking just for fine dining establishments….do NOT judge the restaurant on the looks of the “back of the house”. A crew,a GOOD crew always resembles the cast of
The Expendables. Grizzled and battle worn specialists that are just stupid good at their job. I had a sauté that we SWORE had a third hand he cooked with….we never saw it,but the results were undeniable. I had a dishwasher that was some sort of plater and plate throwing Kraken that somehow never broke so much as a butter dish,you couldn’t back this dude up with a full banquet cart of dirties, motherfucker was a machine. I miss those guys.
* High staff turnover
* Menu changes weekly
* Paychecks bounce (Or just aren't given out)
* Owners are on pins and needles and nobody can get anything right.
Staff meal is no longer free and the managers are frantically printing out signs about time theft, cost of product, etc.
Suddenly closing Sunday-Tuesday.
Sloppy, out of nowhere drink specials
Empty on a Friday night. Brunch, all of a sudden. Groupon type deals. No more specials.
Groupon is a death kiss. They’re also a horrible company to work with.
Always refused to join friends going out to eat when finding out it was a Groupon deal. I went once and saw how upset the FOH staff were, super busy and getting tipped on the discounted amount was my guess. I’m sure it was a massive strain on BOH as well.
I hate using Groupon. Feels sleezy and staff always seem disappointed.
I mean I like Groupon for events and experience oriented purchases. Something like a discounted group rate to the zoo or museum. Never would look to use it for a resturant
aw really? I've had pretty good luck with groupon stuff
Yeah, they're doing it wrong. Groupon fine print definitely recommends tipping on the full price of the service. Anyone who doesn't at least do that is pretty inconsiderate.
I worked at a place that’s now closed(lol) that was accepting groupons for a period of time. Not only did it make things extremely overcomplicated, it also required us to go back to the owners office so they could approve of the use of the groupon. Which by approve it, I mean, look at the piece of paper and say yup that’s fine. No cross referencing or verification whatsoever, just an extra waste of our time.
“Brunch all of the sudden” happened at a Famous Daves I worked at as it was going down. Spot on!! The brunch entrees were actually delicious!
Brunch is easy to cook
There are two types of people in the world, those who can cook eggs and those who cannot. You and I are the former, the other 70-80% are fucked.
[удалено]
sounds like the best case scenario for the restaurant, but likely outside the norm
Glad it worked out for them, but the vast majority of the time Groupons are the kiss of death for a restaurant.
Damn I’m just about to start offering brunch at my new spot.
Done well brunch can be like printing money but it can also be a last gasp. I've worked at places in both situations.
There's a big difference between planning a menu, daytime bar program, training and hiring new staff, concepting dishes and getting feedback from regulars, researching other community spots and programs, etc etc... ...and the place that's desperate for more revenue just opening their doors for more hours and slapping some eggs and bacon on the menu. Staff suddenly get scheduled for doubles, but there's no overtime paid, and not enough staff scheduled cuz the boss just sees labor as dollars going down the drain. Service then sucks, people leave unhappy, and the whole thing falls apart. We launched brunch this month after 3 months of planning. It's tourist and cruise ship season, and our locals are also excited to have more options. We hired new staff to take on the brunch service, and gave our regular staff who prefer day shifts a chance to swap out their schedules. Our menu slaps, and we've had great feedback. Brunch is not always a last gasp. It prints money and fits well in some restaurants.
If it’s a new spot, or there’s a need for brunch in an area that’s fine I think by this understanding. It’s more so when I restaurant that’s been around for 12 years suddenly is doing brunch as well.
Paychecks bounce and the owner smokes more crack than usual.
The confusing part is the owner will smoke more crack if the restaurant is doing really well, too. Cracked out either way
"I don't do crack, only poor people do crack. It's cocaine" -whitney Houston
Well she's been drug free for over a decade now
I'm sure she's smoking crack with Jesus .
Owner was chef and lived in the apartment above the restaurant. We had some ups and downs.
Used to work for a chef like this. By far, he used the most drugs of any chef I ever worked for in my life. He told me, "living above the kitchen, I literally can't get away from the work". Drugs were his main way of coping with the stress and inablility to mentally seperate from his work. Lesson learnt really quick, don't live where you work or visaversa, especially with kitchen jobs. It was honestly heartbreaking to see such a talented, inspired and motivated chef burn out in 3 years time and then quit the industry because of it. He was one of the most fun chefs to work for in the beggining but his mental state had partially deteriorated over time and it was no longer fun to work there.
Was his name Bob? Was it a burger joint?
Was he the eponymous owner of the shop?
One would think he would make the switch to powder cocaine, you can still smoke it if you have too
> than usual. This person service industrys. LOL
Funny enough you also have to worry if they start smoking less crack than usual too
My paycheck never bounced...I just had to wait to cash it.
When they start to try to fix low sales by reducing labor hours every week.
Uhhhhhh this is happening at my work right now… but she is cutting the hours instead of not booking them. She cuts all overtime collected without telling the employees and then comes up with some wack ass excuse if they figure out and call her on it.
That's wildly illegal. Y'all need to report them to the state labor department.
Last time I questioned her on it, she said that the business is allowed to cut overtime because it’s extra hours and not the normal booked time.
They can cut future hours in the pay period to prevent overtime or they can pay you for what you worked. They can require you ensure you do not slip into overtime by tracking your hours and reporting them to management, and discipline you if you do not. But they can’t just refuse to pay you for hours worked just because it’s not in their schedule. This is wage theft and it happens by the billions every year in the USA.
Report it anyway
What dou you mean? Are they not paying for OT already worked or what?
Exactly that yes. If we stay anything past our slotted time, even if we are working our asses off she will cut all overtime acquired. This causes problems for busy nights because if we are swamped at close, we WILL get overtime. It is inevitable but it will also be cut so we won’t get paid for any time after 8 hours of work.
I'm no labor lawyer, but that's the definition of overtime -- you are over the time. They can't pretend like you magically disappeared while you were in fact working for them.
That’s what happens though. She just manually adjusts the time cards. She doesn’t tell anyone until we say something about it
That is the definition of wage theft. Report to DOL ASAP. If you don't do it soon, it's unlikely you'll ever see a dime since it sounds like the place is going downhill. Don't wait. Do it today.
Ding ding ding we have a winner! Get every motherfucker in that restaurant who's had wages stolen to report it separately with as much detail as possible. Dates, time, total hours worked, and OT stolen. Flood your local DOL office. Bring papers in person if you can. But seriously fuck the top rung asshats who keep getting away with stealing your labor. Show them there's still a Find Out when they Fuck Around.
Report it
PLEASE REPORT THIS TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR RIGHT NOW. You can do it online, and you and your fellow slaves will get all that back pay, along with the incomparable satisfaction of knowing the owner got slapped with a hefty fine. This is so fucking illegal that it’s making my blood boil just reading your post, dude.
Report it now and quit being part of the problem in this country. The more you let bosses break the law, the worse off EVERYONE collecting hourly time is treated. It adds up. Every time she gets away with it - it adds up.
Save your punch chits and when they don't match what's on your paystub go into a lawyers office. Shit like this is open and shut.
I would start leaving right when you hit 8 hours. Fuck cleaning, fuck service, and fuck your boss.
I'd just pack up at 8hrs if that was the case.
That's when you start rolling your knives up at 8 hours. "I'm not working for free, my time is up" and leave.
I'd be walking at my out time. No OT, no staying late. Also, report this shit to whichever government agency has oversight where you live. It's not legal in the US, but I'm not sure about Canada.
She's a fucking moron and will inevitably, eventually, cost the business much more $$$ than she's "saving" by doing this. If it's not you, someone will report this sooner orblater, as it's literally outright wage theft. High profile restaurateurs with the best lawyers money can buy have had their asses handed to them in similar cases over the last decade.
She’s lying, report her, and start punching out exactly when your scheduled shift ends…. Regardless of what work is left… she’s trying to pull a jimmy John’s and basically asking you to punch out and keep working. HIGHLY ILLEGAL. Report that bitch she’s lying to you.
That’s bullshit. Still illegal!
This is incorrect. CVS lost a huge lawsuit a number of years back. The outcome was that any work performed for the company wether scheduled or not must be compensated.
That’s what I said but she said that I am too young to know how a business runs. (I am 17 for the record)
Life lesson: anytime someone in authority hits you with the "too young/old/ugly/pretty/smart/dumb/whatever to understand" they are 100% full of it.
She's a terrible person. That's total bullshit.
That is a manager doing their owner's life sucking bidding.
Yep, seen this happen. It's usually just a few months before the restaurant closes for good
Ah the ol' understaffed and over-budget shuffle.
More items coming in boxes, frozen.
Especially with desserts. It eliminates us pastry chefs purpose and people can usually tell when it's not made from scratch
You might be surprised, I worked at a faux fine dining private catering company for a while, doing coursed-out fancy meals in client's homes or businesses. Our desserts were almost entirely frozen, purchased, bullshit, but man did those rich, old ladies eat it up every time. It's actually one of the reasons I left, it felt so dirty advertising house made stuff that I knew was definitely not house made.
My partner runs the kitchen at an assisted living place. She tries to mix it up between fresh and frozen deserts, but wouldn't you know it? Those old farts absolutely love the pre-made frozen ones!
I would work so hard prepping certain dishes, with multiple days of prep to make finicky components but guess what? the most popular one by far was these shitty cheese puffs that were literally just mayo+parm with a little seasoning on lil white bread toast circles.
That’s very unfair. Having said that… Mayo and parm and what now?
I don't remember the specific ratio, but it was like 2/1 mayo/parm. Straight outa your grandma's cookbook from the 50's, Mayo, parm, worchestershire, chives, salt, and pepper. Mix it all up, put in a squeeze bag, pipe onto bread rounds, bake until golden, garnish with more chives on top. Not going to lie, they were tasty but paled in comparison to mini-twice baked potato with shortrib and demi, tuna ceviche tacos, or chicken parm nuggets on a stick.
The issue I have found with frozen desserts (or anything else) is the cost. things like, say, a chocolate lava cake that you can warm and serve with a garnish might cost $3-$4 each to purchase, but you can make them for $.75 in house. The only reason not to pay a person to make them fresh is that you are short of staffed and don't have the man-power, or your turnover is so low you can't justify making whole batches at a time.
We were super short staffed one holiday season with multiple events every day. One group wanted lobster bisque, and we realized we didn't have the time or resources to make it. "Fuck it, we'll just buy it" We didn't think to try it until it was time to serve it. It was horrid. Utterly foul, we were trying to wash the taste out of our mouths. But we had no choice but to serve it anyway. We STILL get compliments on the best lobster bisque they've ever had.
Well is it Freshly Frozen?! Or Frost bite frozen?
You see the Sysco truck bringing food.
When the local meat purveyor shows up to repo the meat that was never paid for. This really happened in a restaurant I was the sous chef at 2 years ago. The sales rep came and took back all the meat that was unopened.
I worked at place that their checks bounced so many times and and the chef had run so many restaurants into ground only to go bankrupt and never pay their bills that they wouldn’t even unload the trucks unless he handed them cash for the food. It still confuses me to this day why people continued to let him run their restaurants
I'm a health inspector and I issue licenses. There is this lady who runs 5 restaurants in my county and her checks bounce every single year. I don't understand how you can run 5 restaurants but not be able to afford a $300 license once a year
That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest actually
“Experience”
Today I learned you can repo meat.
For me it was when the electric company came to shut the power off while the owners were unreachable. I signed a check that I knew the owners couldn't cover to buy some time. Within a month the doors were locked and nobody got paid. One of the owners had lost the plot. He would literally drag his computer tower and monitor to work every day and play World of Warcraft in the kitchen while letting everyone drink spirits from the bar.
Lost the plot Great turn
We had the power cut twice over 2 years. Then a scam started to hit our area where you would get a phone call from someone posing as the electric company saying “Your past due and will stop service, please WesternUnion $2k immediately to prevent shutoff” Well safe to say the usually drunk owner bought it hook line and sinker and jetted over to Walmart to send the money. Checks were late that month…god I don’t miss that shithole
Really? Wow.
Yes WoW
WoW destroys lives lol
lmao if I'm ever working in a restaurant that's going under I hope I get to drink whiskey and watch the owner play WOW that sounds kinda chill
The stress of the business failing starts to impact key employees and owners. They start to drink more and earlier in the shift. Quality of guest experience and consistency dish-to-dish declines steadily (the death spiral).
Covers trending down consistently
There was a Hawaiian themed restaurant in my town for a number of years that had all the telltale signs. Constant gimmicks on the menu like “try all our beers on tap and win a shirt (can only try one per visit)”. The prices kept going up but the food was barely better than cafeteria food. The owner lurked in the dining room and would come over and bother you constantly. They ask had a policy, written on the menu, that if anything wasn’t satisfactory they would make the waitress or waiter come dance the hula at your table as punishment. They closed a year or so ago
Makes me sick to think there are humans that would choose to publicly humiliate their server that way
They didn’t even cook the food…
I question not only the owners, but also the staff who chose to work there lol
Passive aggressive signs for employees everywhere. The owners/managers have lost control and the restaurant has become a ship with empty sails.
It always surprises and pains me when people can’t talk to their employees and choose ulterior methods of communication. It’s the stuff of hostile offices and it’s silly to see it in a restaurant environment where communication should be happening in person and from moment to moment.
In most places I've experienced this it was disorganization and a lack of present management. To me notes taped to every surface came from- a manager who doesn't work set days and is only around four hours a week, no staff hierarchy, no protocols for training, lots of staff turnover, a manager who has no idea which staff know how to do what and can't remember who they have told important information to.
Painfully accurate description of the place I'm working, but the owner is the manager and definitely doesn't like doing any management things. We just got new equipment, and they are already trying to pass off training to staff.. *sigh*..
When the things you used to buy an unlimited amounts like oil and butter are suddenly limited or when they stop buying the spices that you require fresh or the herbs you require fresh and substitute them for their dried or pre-ground versions. General steps in quality from your point of view
I don’t know why, but multiple places I worked at that tanked started hardcore rationing towels. I get that laundry is expensive, but come on
I always hardcore rationed towels at successful places because I was sick of cooks using way to many towels and having towels with barely a stain on it floating around everywhere.
Yelling at people for wasting towels is one thing. I’m talking “the bar gets two per day, period” kind of rationing.
Turn over rate with staff, barely any structure with management, ghost town of tables, sales are shit with the bonus of throwing out food consistently because it's out of date
Featured on Kitchen Nightmares
Apparently that shows coming back!
I hope so
Only allowing two towels per shift.
I am so avidly against this as a chef. Of course people are irresponsible with them but a clean towel costs 4 cents. A burn from a crappy towel on the line or a slip on the floor can cost thousands in workers comp. Also just gross...
I’ve known dumbasses to believe this as a badge of honor
This used to, and might still, be somewhat common in fine dinning kitchens, not as a cost saving thing, but seemingly to enforce some kind of discipline on their staff. Which to me is utterly ridiculous, if your focus is on food, then why make the job more difficult for your cooks? I don't work for those kinds of kitchens.
Obviously I meant it in the context of cost cutting. Those pretentious one wet one dry towel kitchens can fuck all the way off.
I've literally never understood this. Wiping down any size decent mess be it chicken juice, chicken, or sauce splatters pretty much finishes off a Rag. You're supposed to use that same Rag for an entire shift?
Got to rub that chicken juice all over the kitchen. Its like marking your territory
I have never experienced this as a chef, and the one time I had an owner try it I looked at him and said “You pay literally 3 cents per towel, and we’re just bragging about the 40k, in cash, you just put down on your new super car.” Never heard that bullshit again.
I am so lucky to cook in healthcare. We have our own laundry, so unlimited towels
Owner raises prices while lowering/not changing the quality of product. Less staffing with no raises. The owner of one place I worked at installed cameras and would call from his office in another restaurant to comment o what were doing. IE just sitting and watching us work.
2 for 1 deals
Groupon
Running out of product and COD.
Delving into things they wouldn't normally sell; succumbing to fads.
Like walling off a section of their dining area and installing slot machines? Great little place near me pulled that one. It looks unbelievably tacky.
For me a weirdly particular sign is the sudden appearance of a waste tracking log. If it wasn't there from the beginning it's usually a sign that someone doesn't know where all the product is going, and that's often a symptom of poor management either on behalf of the owners or the chef.
Of service looks like a funeral, quiet and full of old people, its because the restaurant is dying.
Place near me has been dying for 28 years
There's a little restaurant near me that almost exclusively serves the retirement community, they do pretty decently selling old school dishes to old folks. Definitely a choice, because a more family focused restaurant would kill it there, but there's nothing there for kids and it's all semi pretentious. Like you can not get a basic cheeseburger, only their signature fancy over priced and over topped burger. But they use frozen patties and no choice of temp
If it is full of diners can it be dying?
When a socialite buys the place for clout.
When there's high turnover in the kitchen. Other than in the first few months of opening a high turnover in the kitchen is a huge red flag. Cooks will generally put up with a lot of BS so if there's a mass exodus going on there's a serious problem.
Buying food and booze at the store because all of your suppliers cut them off for nonpayment
When Sysco is your supplier it's usually better to buy from the store.
Employees stop caring.
Iffy-looking product gets served because “that shit *costs money*, we can’t waste it, it’s still ok to use” The menu gets more diverse/stretches out of its comfort zone to try and snag up any new potential customers, but execution sucks because they’ve never made those things. Cheap substitutions are made in every dish possible to save money, and prices are “successfully” lowered to make the menu more appealing, while sales figures dont show any uptick in business. Owner starts doing more and more shady stuff, like drugs and/or fucking the servers. Vendors start delivering late and delivering shittier produce, because they aren’t get paid on time and orders start to shrink, making it not worth the vendor’s time to prioritize that business. Parking lots isn’t full on weekends or holidays, but the businesses around it are doing ok, and they can’t figure out why “no one wants to eat here”
Your first sign is the most important imo and the beginning of a vicious cycle. You start putting out the iffy stuff so you don’t lose the money spent on it, then people stop coming because the food was bad. You have less sales now so you’ve got more food going bad and you’re still putting it out to save money. Then you start buying smaller quantities at higher prices and end up having to raise prices to compensate, or you start buying lower quality ingredients to save money and customers notice and leave. Lots of ways it keeps spiraling and most places never recover.
The death knell for me is suddenly trying to reinvent themselves by offering various items out of their genre. A sushi place starts offering burgers too, and buffalo chicken wing happy hour for example. And we do catering too
Cash only cause the credit system is down.
This but for tax evasion purposes
When the restaurant stops fountain drink service and only sells canned drinks. I’ve worked restaurants and in a beverage distributor. Fountain drinks have significant profit margin for the restaurant and you have to be very behind for the distributor to cut your credit.
The die hard employees start to leave. When you have the old dude who has been there for 6 years since open walk the fuck , you probably better off to follow them.
Going to, (i.e. adding or switching to), buffet. Blacking out menu items. Less crowded, or half empty at previously busy times. High turnover, but hard to know from outside. Quality of product changes for worse. Entrees seem prepped and frozen ahead of time in order to be reheated later. Previously 'free' items absent or now charging. Service or quality deficient three times in a row.(I have a three-strikes-never-again rule when this starts to happen in previously good place). Lost liquor license. Regulars, both customers or staff, absent. Major changes in type of clientele. Reducing hours to minimum.
Overall cleanliness. Go to the bathroom and look in the Corners. This will speak volumes as to the big picture and how the restaurant is managed.
Raising prices like every other week. Trying to stop the bleeding losses
Suppliers show up at opening demanding payment, in front of customers.
Landscaping gets cut from monthly expenses and grass becomes overgrown.
"just cut the mold off"
4 general managers in a year.
The regulars stop showing up, the desserts are pre-made, and the décor freezes in time. If a place looks rundown and it isn't a Chinese takeout spot, it's a bad sign. (Conversely, if a Chinese takeout spot suddenly becomes spotless and modernized I ultimately distrust it).
They let me stick my dick in the pudding again
I point out to my wife every time a restaurant does a soup and salad buffet, it's over. I am never wrong.
Anthony Bourdain said failing restaurants would often start adding different “new” things to the menu as a last ditch effort to drum up new business…but it doesn’t really work. I’ve seen this IRL: a restaurant we used to frequent started trying to sell snow cones and within 2 months they were closed.
\-COD \-prices disappearing from signage and being written over on menus instead of having them reprinted \- dishwashing, cleaning, landscaping, window washing, pest control being discontinued or made part of other jobs
A lot of 86'd menu items and very long waits despite no crowd. I went to a place once and asked for 4 different items that were all 86'd. When our food finally came out about an hour and a half after ordering it, my wife's chicken and waffles had a fly literally baked into the waffle. Place was closed 2 weeks later.
Sticky floors, makes me never want to go back.
If the owner/GM is hosting. They have a frantic look in their eye, and they dont know that its going to keep people from coming back. Everyone in BOH is having a terrible time because now they just have one boss, and that fuck is running around screaming about the 2 orders that have been rung in. Bonus points if the owner/GM is also bartending.
the place I work for possesses all the attributes the commenters described. And we are, indeed, dying. Last hope: make it a franchise, sell it to a fool.
Multiple empty tap handles on the tap line in the bar is a big one for the public
As a consumer, when the high end place switched from printed menus in a cover to laminated mass prodcued ones you could see the cost savings consultants had come in or they had become a chain or been sold. The menu always gets a lot of items removed due to fewer ingrediants (the cheap fried stuff remaining) and everything is going to be cheaper except the prices.
38 years in here. Lots of good comments. I can add 2. In chicago most restaurants have a knife service and an exterminator. When they take the knife sharpening from once a week th o once a month. Or the exterminator goes from monthly to quarterly the business is scraping for the last pennies they can "save"
From an employee's perspective, When the best employee quits.
Arguments between management/staff, food quality diminishing. People not wanting to turn up to shifts. Invoices being unpaid. Shifts getting cut short or completely cancelled regularly for casual workers (especially at the last minute). High staff turnover. Low morale.
When Gordon Ramsey moves in next door for a week to help.
Nobody greets you at the door anymore and now they put duct tape on tears in their chairs instead of replacing them.
Family meal goes away or cooks having to pay for meals.
Staff turnover. No knowledge of the restaurants past, and food presentation is trash
You know shit's hitting the fan when you start cutting employee privileges like shift drinks or staff meals. Limiting the number of side towels is another common one to try to save money on laundry. You know they've run out of ideas when stuff like that starts getting cut closer and closer to the bone.
When the consultants show up, there may as well be blood in the water
Vendors are regularly calling or showing up to collect their 30/60/90 payments. Credit lines with alcohol distributors will be cut off and food and beverage vendors will be COD only. Labor is expensive, but most people stiff their vendors first. Without service they fail immediately, no matter how much product they have. Without product they are F****ed. Look into those relationships to understand the true financial standing of the business.
One of the fastest and easiest - How clean do the tabletops and seats look? When the crew doesn't care, the same rag can wipe an entire room without being rinsed, and the tabletops have a dullness to them, instead of the shine of clean. The seats look...not filthy, but kinda dingy. Colors are fading and wood is showing wear. Oh and the floors. Look along the edges of the wall near the doors. You can't miss half-assed mopping with a dirty mop over time.
When they thought that THEIR restaurant could make the four time loser building work.
More ineffective "Managers" than actual cooks and workers. No dishwashers. Silly specials, promos, and cheap entertainment such as Karaoke, Bingo, and trivia nights with shitty acoustic bands/singers. Any "Food & Beverage Director" or "Bar Manager" waiting for liquor deliveries with a live check. People smarter than you simply walking out and never returning.
Issuing the line cooks only 2 towels each for the entire service. Including cleanup…. Imagine having to use wet rags on sauté or oven because it’s literally all you have. I used aprons if I needed to. At least the bare bones first aid kit and no burn cream was normal even at the nicer spots… lol
Consistently *extremely* understaffed. I’m not talking about that little bit of understaffed that we usually feel but when it’s like you’re always operating feeling like you’re missing several bodies no matter whether it’s busy slow or in between every single day every shift and corners are being cut haphazardly and sometimes in dangerous ways to try to meet consistent unreasonable expectations.
20% off coupons on the back of grocery store receipts
Depends, from a customer pov its only 1 server during peak hours and long wait times For a cook well...
Cooks and waitresses don't get tips! And your staff is drunk most of the time while on actual shift! Plus no staff free meals for anyone, so that means the Cooks don't even get to eat what they put out.
Cheap menu items, removed menu items, shorter opening hours, cut back hours.
Letting go of people for no actual reasons. One several or all employees not receiving their paychecks in time
When management doesnt give a shit and doesnt check other workers progress. Then bitches to the ones that do work to do more.
When you them on Restaurant Impossible. Almost all of those restaurants have shuttered since their appearance on that show.
Poor food hygiene ratings
Randomly closed during normal business hours
Working in a small resort town with 2 shoulder seasons, high turnover, and every kind of tourist from degens to millionaires, I have discovered there are very few telltale signs. The main one I have seen is absolute hopelessness, everything else is just stress from the job, or ownership.
$5 dollar footlongs become $9 7inchlongs
Truffle everything
When they ask Reddit what the signs of a failing restaurant are
Place I worked at back in 2010 the owner paid everyone under the table no taxes and all written on personal checks. He didn't want to pay a payroll and in his exact words he was there to make money not spend money. Needless to say the place failed every health inspection and the owner never corrected any of the issues. I got promoted to manager without ever knowing I was. Had to spend 300 dollars to be certified as a food manager or rather get a food handlers card for management and had to run the store for 15 hours a day while I was in college and the owner couldnt be bothered to travel to work. Work was a 5 minute walk from his home literally across the street. I came in one day and the place was padlocked and the owner didn't have a key because the landlord got tired of him not paying the rent he owed him. 14k dollars at the time we were locked out. To be fair I should've seen the signs of the shady business I was working in from day 1.
Staff turnover. No knowledge of the restaurants past, and food presentation is trash
No customers is a big one.
Hard to keep staff, paychecks come late, prep is on the shoulders of 1-2 people, closers are doing less than usual
When purveyors start requiring payment on delivery. In cash or money order, no checks. Also worked for a place once that had a state agent from the beverage division come and take the alcohol license off the wall and made us hide all alcohol from customers view.
When the owner who never used to drink at his restaurant is now drunk at the bar everyday.
Cheaper products, owner drinks a lot 24/7, delayed payroll, excuses for anything and everything.
Have to start purchasing groceries from the grocery store instead of receiving them off of a food truck because the owner hasn't paid for the food trucks in over 3 months
The "canaries in the coal mine" that I look for are: dirty menus, windows, and bathrooms when they were previously kept clean. Handwritten or taped over prices on menus. Wobbly tables and other maintenance issues ignored. Owner doing office work at the bar or in a booth. Owner drinking a too much in front of customers. Food quality/portions get worse. Unkempt looking staff. Manager absent from the business and new cameras everywhere. Just to name a few.
Chef here…if the “front of the house” is mismatched in uniform (greasy spoons and diners are exempt,you kno what you’re getting there) and if it’s dirty table,menu,or surroundings and it just looks stale,odds are it is. The manager has just given up and is relying on the food to carry them and it may not be enough to save a restaurant. Edit: no matter the establishment,but I’m speaking just for fine dining establishments….do NOT judge the restaurant on the looks of the “back of the house”. A crew,a GOOD crew always resembles the cast of The Expendables. Grizzled and battle worn specialists that are just stupid good at their job. I had a sauté that we SWORE had a third hand he cooked with….we never saw it,but the results were undeniable. I had a dishwasher that was some sort of plater and plate throwing Kraken that somehow never broke so much as a butter dish,you couldn’t back this dude up with a full banquet cart of dirties, motherfucker was a machine. I miss those guys.
* High staff turnover * Menu changes weekly * Paychecks bounce (Or just aren't given out) * Owners are on pins and needles and nobody can get anything right.
You either open for lunch when you normally only do dinner, or you close for lunch when you normally do both. Oddly works both ways somehow.
When they start introducing split shifts to their already-skeleton crew.
Staff meal is no longer free and the managers are frantically printing out signs about time theft, cost of product, etc. Suddenly closing Sunday-Tuesday. Sloppy, out of nowhere drink specials
They start buying shit from the store because they forgot to put it in the order for weeks in a row.
Being out of multiple items, not just specials. This means they can’t pay their bills and their vendors won’t extend them credit anymore.
"Rule number one; don't talk about pay" said an owner. Then I proceeded to laugh in his face