We are closed for 2 days a week. For us, those days are Tuesday and Wednesday. In France, most restaurants are closed on Sunday and Monday. My wife and I wanted to be able to go out to a nice restaurant on our days off, so we closed in the middle of the week. That also means that on Sunday and Monday, customers have fewer options so we hoped that they would have no choice but to come to our restaurant to eat.
The other five days of the week, I work sixteen to eighteen hours per day. On Thursday, for example, I wake up at 5:30am to go shopping and start organizing the day for my cooks. I usually don’t take a break and I finish my day, after dinner service and clean up, around 11 o’clock pm. That makes 17 hours and 30 minutes of work for one day. Because we have employees, I have begun to ask myself how to structure the work and the day so that they can work a reasonable number of hours and be in accordance with the law of hours worked per day. In France, the maximum number of hours you are legally allowed to work per week is 42. That means cooks are allowed to work just over 8 hours per day in a 5-day work week. These requirements are stipulated in a work contract signed by the employee and employer.
First, I thought about service time. Dinner service starts at 7 o’clock pm, and we take our last table at 9:30 pm. For our restaurant we start to set up the kitchen for service at 6:30 pm. We will be putting out food until about 10:30 pm. Then, it takes about 30 minutes to clean the kitchen. Just dinner service makes four and a half hours of work for everyone. That means we have three and a half hours to do the prep work necessary to accomplish service. That will never be enough time.
I know, I know, three and a half hours seems like plenty of time for a team of four to prep eight total dishes for 24 people, but think about this:
It takes thirty minutes to sear and put in the oven thirty chicken legs to simmer. Then, those legs cook for 3 hours at a low temperature until they are sufficiently tender.
There you have it, three and a half hours gone. Now, I hear you. “But while the chicken is cooking for 3 hours, you can do other things!”
Yes, of course but that is just one component of one dish. Once the chicken is cooked, we have to pick the meat off the bone, reduce the jus to a sauce, and cool and store the finished product. Again, one component of one dish out of eight dishes.
France does not have a monopoly on long hours for cooks and chefs. When I was a cook and chef in America, 12-to-16-hour days were pretty normal. The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the average chef works between 40- and 50-hour weeks.
The idea that many hands make light work is indeed true. To that end, I could hire more people to spread the workload even more. That would entail a higher salary cost for the business which would mean raising prices to cover that cost. At which point, I would not be able to be competitive with the other restaurants in my city who operate on a similar level food wise. Most customers don’t see the time it takes to prepare the food they eat or how many hands prepare it. They assume that they are just paying for that delicious steak on their plates. When, in reality, that steak is relatively inexpensive when compared to salaries, rent, electricity, etc.
I have no good answers to this question of hours spent in a kitchen to produce food that I can be proud of. Most of the amazing people I have worked with over the years don’t count their hours or their money, and I have been one of those. As an employer, however, I would love to give my team more money and more time off. I would love to be able to take care of them as one would take care of their family. They work hard to accomplish my dreams with the hope that one day there will be others to help them accomplish theirs.
I will close with a question that has undoubtedly been asked before. In this time of awakening social justice, is it possible for customers to pay a larger amount of money on a consistent basis for other people to prepare and serve them their food in a restaurant? Will they feel better about paying if they know that the money is going to provide a more sustainable quality of life for those doing the cooking and serving? I, for one, am pessimistic on this topic. History has shown that people will always do their best to pay the least for anything without regard for who they affect with those choices.
For me, the search for a solution to the amount of hours a cook spends on their feet will continue. It must. I have a daughter who, despite my best efforts, might want to become a cook one day. It would be nice to leave her a profession that is better than the one left to me.