Author Topic: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities  (Read 9770 times)

MillCreek

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vaskidmark

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2015, 01:19:29 PM »
Especially hard hit are Chinese take-outs and haute cuisine French restaurants.

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2015, 01:32:16 PM »
Declining illegal immigration?  In what fanciful land is this occurring?
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

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birdman

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2015, 01:42:00 PM »
Declining illegal immigration?  In what fanciful land is this occurring?

Correction:
Declining illegal immigration of folks who work.  Given many place's policies, the more illegals that can get benefits, the less they need to illegally work.

MechAg94

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2015, 02:13:04 PM »
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The glitz and glamour of rising through the ranks in the restaurant industry isn’t what it used to be.
When was this a thing?  I don't remember ever hearing about the "glitz and glamour" of the restaurant industry.  I always figured if you didn't own it, you ain't getting anywhere.
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MechAg94

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2015, 02:21:48 PM »
Quote
One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where a cook can expect to make between $10 and $12 per hour, and the median rent runs upward of $1,200 a month, living in the city is a near impossibility. As a result, people end up living far from the restaurants where they work. Add to that how late dinner shifts can end, causing people to arrive home well into the night.
Here we go.  High cost of living and wages that aren't all that great.  I would guess most who want to work are finding there are other jobs that pay better.

My cousin worked up to wait staff manager for a chain of Italian restaurants then the same at other jobs.  He eventually got out of it and got a job as a sales rep for a alcoholic beverage outfit which let him work better hours.  Sales was a good fit for him. 
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just Warren

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2015, 02:54:01 PM »
Places will need to find someplace to save money so they can bid more for cooks. I see an opportunity here for outsourced customized prep services with just-in-time delivery.

I've spent more time than I care to remember in restaurant kitchens as an outsider and I've noticed that prep takes a lot of people a lot of hours to do. So if you can outsource that there might be some real savings.

You'd hire a prep place and give them your requirements and then they order in and process the food and deliver it to you as you need it for the day.

The prep place can get to an economy of scale by having dozens of restaurants that it services, ordering in massive bulk, automating as much of the process as possible, and eliminating duplication. That is much of the veggies that get used in restaurants are prepped the same way so instead of doing it in dozens of small batches it can be done in one big batch.

So there's labor savings, plus not having to be in the place hours before opening, the food cost might be less, and there may well be a savings on the power bill.
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Blakenzy

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #7 on: August 16, 2015, 03:05:29 PM »
If you can't take the heat, Get out of the kitchen!  =D
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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2015, 04:15:34 PM »
So, they can't afford to pay enough to have an ample supply of applicants to choose from?  Then, they're either flushing extra money down the toilet, or the public won't pay enough for the food for the restaurants to be able to afford to operate without some sort of "subsidy".  i.e. illegal pay-em-under-the-table labor.

Sounds like more of a supply and demand problem instead of a "let 'em all in" problem.  Some folks need to learn what those appliances in the kitchen do.  And some restaurants need to fail.
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MillCreek

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2015, 06:32:07 PM »
I have known some culinary school grads who had stars in their eyes, and the reality of restaurant work, with the long hours, crappy pay and crappy working conditions, was a real eye-opener for them.  But they had to pay back those school loans. Apparently, some people think restaurant work really is like the Food Channel.
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Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
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just Warren

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2015, 06:36:24 PM »
Amusingly, in my experience, it's the hated middle-value (Applebee's etc.) chain restaurants that have the most space and better conditions.

Of course it's hard to do the assembly line thing they do in a cramped space.
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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #11 on: August 16, 2015, 09:04:14 PM »
Quote
The glitz and glamour of rising through the ranks in the restaurant industry isn’t what it used to be. Long hours, low pay and a series of other cultural and economic factors have made lower-tier restaurant work a much less desirable path than it once was, leaving many kitchens chronically understaffed.

One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where a cook can expect to make between $10 and $12 per hour, and the median rent runs upward of $1,200 a month, living in the city is a near impossibility. As a result, people end up living far from the restaurants where they work. Add to that how late dinner shifts can end, causing people to arrive home well into the night.

Top it all off with the fact that culinary school graduates are often working through significant amounts of debt, and the burden can be insurmountable.

And here we see the insidious result of bringing in Mexicans (and other furriners) who are willing to work for less than what constitutes a fair wage for the work. For awhile, restaurants were able to enjoy easy profits. There had to be a time/day when the chefs in American restaurants were mostly Americans. Then we opened the doors to the immigrants (legal and illegal) who were willing to work for less, thereby pushing Americans out of that type of work.

So now we've run out of Mexican chefs, and Americans aren't interested in working for peon wages. Now who could have predicted that? It seems to me that the restaurants have created their own problem. Now they need to pay more to get chefs, and to pay more they'll have to raise prices because there isn't a lot of margin to absorb a significant uptick in kitchen salaries.

But let's be honest. What's all this talk about culinary school graduates? There just aren't a lot of Mexicans who graduated from any culinary school, either here or in Mexico. The restaurants haven't been hiring Mexicans because they graduated from the CIA (no, the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America). No, they've been hiring Mexicans because they'll work cheap.

Break out the violins.

It's time to build that wall, and start deporting large numbers of illegals. Once we get back to where the majority of the work force is comprised of legal workers, maybe the economy can begin to correct itself and we can get back to being the United States of America instead of the United States of Mexico.
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just Warren

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #12 on: August 16, 2015, 09:13:01 PM »
It would be easier to remove payroll and SS taxes and whatever local taxes there are so there's more money for raises and it reduces the advantage an illegal has in setting the price for his labor.

It's not just they charge less, that's the only cost. Employers don't pay taxes or insurance for these guys so there's a huge gap they can exploit. Narrow that gap and their advantage slips away proportionally.
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Scout26

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #13 on: August 16, 2015, 11:39:54 PM »
What Hawkmoon said plus eliminating welfare/foodstamps/Section 8 housing after 12 months.  (with a lifetime maximum of 24 months).

Bet that will get more people back in the workforce...
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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2015, 12:26:00 AM »
Because of an improving economy Uganda is also facing a chef shortage. They used to fill the gaps with people from other countries but all the new hotels and restaurants want higher quality people that have a pedigree.

So culinary schools are popping up and on the video I watched on one the facility looked low rent but the training was sharp and they all had proper uniforms and everything.

So their illegals are going to have a hard time once a sufficient number of professionally trained chefs get into circulation.

None of this is relevant to the problem here but I thought it was an interesting contrast and compare case study.
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Firethorn

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2015, 06:36:50 AM »
I figure the problem will solve itself eventually. 

They'll have to pay more money and advertise/recruit a bit to get more cooks, which will lead to somewhat increased prices on the menu, which will lead to people eating out a little less, and a few restaurants will go out of business.  Or more acurately - the failure rate of restaurants will kick up a notch until a new stability point is reached, given that something like 30% of new food places fail within 2 years or such.

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #16 on: August 17, 2015, 06:55:07 AM »
This article is a sign of the difficulty of writing "crops rotting in the fields because not enough illegals" propaganda articles in the middle of a california drought.
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cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re:
« Reply #17 on: August 17, 2015, 07:31:25 AM »
Not so hard writing those stories
http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-u-s-farms-fewer-hands-for-the-harvest-1439371802

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cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #18 on: August 17, 2015, 07:32:32 AM »
I figure the problem will solve itself eventually.  

They'll have to pay more money and advertise/recruit a bit to get more cooks, which will lead to somewhat increased prices on the menu, which will lead to people eating out a little less, and a few restaurants will go out of business.  Or more acurately - the failure rate of restaurants will kick up a notch until a new stability point is reached, given that something like 30% of new food places fail within 2 years or such.
More like 80 percent once you factor out the sure things like macdonalds


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It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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RevDisk

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #19 on: August 17, 2015, 11:21:25 AM »
I have known some culinary school grads who had stars in their eyes, and the reality of restaurant work, with the long hours, crappy pay and crappy working conditions, was a real eye-opener for them.  But they had to pay back those school loans. Apparently, some people think restaurant work really is like the Food Channel.

I read the article and laughed. They hit on the same point. If you want someone to work long hours, do high skill/talent work, mildly to moderately dangerous and deal with crappy working conditions, you have to pay for it. I am always mystified when bosses/owners expect people to work long grueling hours for peanuts but with an insane laundry list of skills and experience. I've seen it happen enough times that I'm not shocked, but I'm still mildly...  surprised? disgusted? at how common this attitude is. And the reaction to saying "Did you try offering above market wages for above market performance?"
 
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Re:
« Reply #20 on: August 17, 2015, 11:53:07 AM »
Not so hard writing those stories
http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-u-s-farms-fewer-hands-for-the-harvest-1439371802

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I stand corrected.  There could be zero actual harvest to bring in and there would still be "crops rotting in the fields" articles written by those who desire a society more like Brazil and less like the USA.

Despite Drought, Crops Rotting in the Field Right on Schedule
http://www.unz.com/isteve/despite-drought-crops-rotting-in-the-field-right-on-schedule/
http://www.vdare.com/articles/pearanoia-latest-scam-from-the-cheap-labor-lobby

Quote
An annual autumnal tradition here at iSteve is the crops-rotting-in-the-field stories about why we’re all going to die unless farmers get to import more peasants from Latin America to work cheap for them from such agriculture-savvy outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. In 2015, it’s still summer, but from today’s WSJ:

Quote
On U.S. Farms, Fewer Hands for the Harvest
Producers raise wages, enhance benefits, but a worker shortage grows with tighter border
By ILAN BRAT
Updated Aug. 12, 2015 9:03 a.m. ET

Last year, about a quarter of Biringer Farm’s strawberries and raspberries rotted in the field because it couldn’t find enough workers.

You might think that, what with the well-known water shortage in California idling part of the country’s most labor-intensive farmlands, that we could skip the crops-rotting-in-the-fields ritual this year, but PR firms need to generate billings whether or not the hysteria makes even less sense than usual.

I read the article and laughed. They hit on the same point. If you want someone to work long hours, do high skill/talent work, mildly to moderately dangerous and deal with crappy working conditions, you have to pay for it. I am always mystified when bosses/owners expect people to work long grueling hours for peanuts but with an insane laundry list of skills and experience. I've seen it happen enough times that I'm not shocked, but I'm still mildly...  surprised? disgusted? at how common this attitude is. And the reaction to saying "Did you try offering above market wages for above market performance?"

Seen the same thing.  It is like they think it is their right to have highly/over-qualified folk work for crumbs.

Someone totally not related to me running a small business:
Totally Not-Related Person: "I want someone I can trust to watch the kids and drive them to their activities as well as able to [operate particular systems at small business shop] when I don't want them nanny-ing the kids."

Me: "Sounds expensive."

TNRP: "Why would that be?  I can just pay them what I would pay for [worker bee job] and they'll be happy to do the less-demanding nanny-ing."

Me: "Have you met your children?"

TNRP: "What?!"


Aside from that point, even assuming everything else is equal and accommodating, that job will be worth less to that employee when they leave they and seek future employment.  And TNRP's recommendation, if given, will be worth less. 

And TNRP is rather put out that finding someone to do the job(s) requires so much effort and that turnover is so high.
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roo_ster

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RevDisk

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Re:
« Reply #21 on: August 17, 2015, 01:58:52 PM »
Seen the same thing.  It is like they think it is their right to have highly/over-qualified folk work for crumbs.

Someone totally not related to me running a small business:
Totally Not-Related Person: "I want someone I can trust to watch the kids and drive them to their activities as well as able to [operate particular systems at small business shop] when I don't want them nanny-ing the kids."

Me: "Sounds expensive."

TNRP: "Why would that be?  I can just pay them what I would pay for [worker bee job] and they'll be happy to do the less-demanding nanny-ing."

Me: "Have you met your children?"

TNRP: "What?!"

Aside from that point, even assuming everything else is equal and accommodating, that job will be worth less to that employee when they leave they and seek future employment.  And TNRP's recommendation, if given, will be worth less. 

And TNRP is rather put out that finding someone to do the job(s) requires so much effort and that turnover is so high.

In my experience, they can and do find folks that are desperate. If the gig pays more than unemployment, someone will apply. If the person is actually worth a damn, they'll also leave as soon as possible.

The economy has sucked for the last ten years, and will suck for the next 5 years at least. So, yeah, you can get away with paying peanuts as long as you're willing to accept high turnover and dubious applicants.
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Scout26

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #22 on: August 17, 2015, 02:20:26 PM »
Perhaps it's time to call illegal immigration what it truly is:

Semi-Legalized slavery.  (only instead of the Massa providing food, clothing and shelter.  He simply provides a small st end.)



Edited to add Semi.  What with the Sanctuary Cities and ICE's catch and release program*, several states issuing them drivers licenses, we have amnesty in everything, but name only.

« Last Edit: August 17, 2015, 11:09:20 PM by scout26 »
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Firethorn

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #23 on: August 17, 2015, 02:47:14 PM »
I am always mystified when bosses/owners expect people to work long grueling hours for peanuts but with an insane laundry list of skills and experience.

The one I remember?  Offering $7.50 an hour for a job.  Skill requirement?  3 years welding experience & certification required.  No, that wasn't a probationary wage.  He was so 'generous' that he offered a $0.10 raise after 6 months.  Dude was complaining that he couldn't find enough workers, so obviously we need to change things.

Places offering $20/hour mysteriously didn't have any problems what so ever finding welders.  Any welders that the first guy could find that were worth anything were easily 'sniped' by these companies whenever they had an opening, I wonder why?

Personally, I think that we need to get out of the idea that many of these jobs 'aren't worth the money'.  If a job can't be economically automated, maybe it's worth more than $7.25/hour.  Even if it is considered classically 'unskilled labor'.

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Re: Lack of Mexicans is killing the restaurant business in big cities
« Reply #24 on: August 17, 2015, 03:08:30 PM »
The one I remember?  Offering $7.50 an hour for a job.  Skill requirement?  3 years welding experience & certification required.  No, that wasn't a probationary wage.  He was so 'generous' that he offered a $0.10 raise after 6 months.  Dude was complaining that he couldn't find enough workers, so obviously we need to change things.

Places offering $20/hour mysteriously didn't have any problems what so ever finding welders.  Any welders that the first guy could find that were worth anything were easily 'sniped' by these companies whenever they had an opening, I wonder why?

Personally, I think that we need to get out of the idea that many of these jobs 'aren't worth the money'.  If a job can't be economically automated, maybe it's worth more than $7.25/hour.  Even if it is considered classically 'unskilled labor'.

I've always found it amusing how much time, effort, and money companies will spend trying to perfect the art of the reach around. When any sane person recognizes the reach around wouldn't be needed if you weren't bending your employees over in the first place.

I think most reasonable employees understand that sometimes *expletive deleted*it happens, but no one particularly likes being *expletive deleted*ed with for the sake of it.
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.