When you realize you are one of the mules at work.
I seem to be at a crossroads of sorts.
My goal for the end of this year was to be ready to take the first exam for the US Bartenders' Guild mixology accreditation program as a spirits professional.
I am not sure that I am ready, but I have definitely learned a lot about cocktails and spirits in the past year. And certainly enough to know that I am very tired of being confined to a bar that has grandfathered in a clause that bartenders can wash all the front of house dishes.
Yes, that's correct, all the front of house dishes for a restaurant that can seat around 90 people at any given time.
So in between making cocktails, we wash dishes - a lot of them. It wouldn't be so sour if we earned as much as the servers on the floor, but at the end of the day, we don't. We make about a third of what the servers make, yet we seem to have the lion's share of labor. So as you might imagine, it is a recipe for demoralization.
Which brings me to pay equity for front of house. It seems the savvy thing to do would be to bump up the base pay for bartenders to bring parity to the pay scale. We could also increase the percentage of tips bartenders receive from the floor, which sounds good at 15%, but is actually 7.5% per bartender, as there are always two of us on shift. That's not much for making all the drinks and washing all the dishes.
But top management does not want to budge, so it is an uphill battle. Still, change may come by way of enforcement if a new minimum wage is legislated in early next year. That may be a boon, or it might have unintended negative consequences overall for front of house workers that might see their overall take home pay flatline well below what they are accustomed to making. We shall see.
What is certain is that the food and beverage industry has not fully recovered from pre-pandemic times, and may not ever. So for our front of house, it would be wise to redistribute percentages and base pay to ensure pay equity across the house.
Otherwise, staff turnover will only get worse over time.
© Dawn Nelson, 2022.
