Restaurant profitability isn't all about penalty rates.
I read with some interest yesterday about the cost of meals at Neil Perry's new restaurant Eleven Bridge. Shock and horror as a la carte menu prices creep consistently beyond $60 AUD mark. A matter of time, I thought to myself. Particularly considering the price of rents, food and good well trained staff. The latter are becoming increasingly hard to find within the current hospitality market. From my view Australians are great at knowing the value of a meal, we love good food and have world class chefs and restaurants that push the boundaries of cuisine. Unfortunately what we don't understand is the value of service or the true value of the restaurant meal.
Australians live in first world economy and thus the cost of inputs especially labour are higher. We shame ourselves on the treatment of fruit pickers in Western Australia, earning less than seven dollars an hour to pack fruit and the under paid workers at seven eleven. Yet we don't want to pay more at the checkout or at the restaurant table. We want it cheap and good. Hence the almost hysterical headline regarding the menu at eleven bridge.
If you want a diverse, competitive and world leading restaurant industry then the discussion regarding staff must be at the fore front of the conversation. I see an ever decreasing pool of labour in Australian restaurants. More frighteningly I see a increasing level of de-skilling. De-skilling is a result of a high turnover of chefs and restaurant staff as businesses often don't have well trained senior staff to install best practice on younger staff. Senior staff are often worked beyond what is considered normal thus resulting in a low percentage of long term and well trained staff in senior positions. De-skilling is then borne out by simplifying menus and service to match staff abilities. This in turn leads to lower wages due as workers being perceived as only deserving a minimum of pay. This again leads to higher staff turn over and a shrinking market of job seekers that are less skilled than the previous. I myself am involved currently in a menu consultation that is becoming increasing difficult as my clients are unable to find staff that are competent enough to cook what is a comparatively well balanced and easy to prepare menu. What do we do? Pay more? Well this might be the future. Case in point, I was recently in contact with a restauranteur who told me if I knew of a well trained chef he would pay anything to get someone like that on board. "Double" I asked, to which he replied, whatever it takes.
We have, as chefs allowed this to happen. We have accepted poorer wages and conditions, worked longer hours for no extra money, worked as "stages" in high end restaurants to gain experience, indirectly creating a false economy. We have been dictated to by restaurant owners regarding pay and conditions and we have sat back and allowed the pantomime TV reality chef erode whats left our our trade's credibility. The result is an stampede of chefs and hospitality workers out of the industry. Complain all you want about the staff of today not wanting to work hard, like in the old days. Well those days are gone and there are far more attractive job options than working in hospitality or in the kitchen for sixty to seventy hours a week for forty five thousand a year. There is no perceived financial future for staff entering the industry. This will not be fixed by reducing pay, reducing penalty rates or de-skilling staff further. This will be achieved by investing in staff, proper training and paying staff a good living wage for a proper working week. At the end of the day maybe the consumer might just have to pay more.