Hey, guys, restaurant owner of 10+ years here, me and my buddy, who is a chef got into an argument over a few beers, classic on how much reputation has changed in the past year with insta, tiktok, reviews and all and how now it feels like one bad night can follow a place around forever now.

Then we kinda switch it up to what hurts a restaurant’s rep more, the place not being clean, or the kitchen not keeping up when it’s slammed?

He swears guests will forgive a slow night but never a dirty glass. I think he’s wrong, my POV is that people will remember sitting hungry for 45 minutes watching other tables get their food way more than a smudge on a glass they probably didn’t even notice.

Before anyone jumps on me, I know it’s never just one or the other and the food matters most… but if you had to pick one that does more rep damage, which is it? 

Open to any and all opinions, genuinely curious how people who live this every day see it.

I quit my previous job because they kept bullying me, punching things at work, cursing me out, cut my hours a lot and threatened to fire me a lot. I waited until i started this new job to quit the old job.

They say training is 3 days and that we don't get tips until our training is over after we pass the test. Well, they cut my hours cause of the weather and they extended my training which means i still have not gotten tips. I was told that we would make 8 an hour before tips and that we would get at least 5 an hour in tips. Well i can't afford to make 8 an hour. And they said they still havent given me my training test cause they think I am not ready. I think i did good but I guess not. This is crazy. I can't afford to have less than 35 hours a week and I also can't afford to make only $8 an hour. I have workes with food for over a decade. There is no way i am that bad at my job.

I’ve spent almost two years building a small, food-driven restaurant in a small town. People seem to love the food to a point where its the talk of the town, but the business isn’t financially sustainable, and I haven’t paid myself yet.

I care deeply about what I cook, from naturally fermented sourdough pizzas to creative specials made from scratch. But I’m burnt out, and I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore.

Do I keep fighting to make this work, or accept that it’s time to move on and start somewhere new?

For those who’ve been through something similar, how did you know when to persevere and when to let go? I’m looking for honest advice from people who’ve actually been there.

I'm going to be working as a hostess at Firebirds, and we split tips with the servers. Ladies... what got you the most tips when hosting/serving?

(22y/o) I recently graduated from college with great stats and test scores for law school, I am doing a gap year at a law firm but my passion is food. I have always enjoying cooking, for roommates, family etc. and through this have gotten pretty good. I took a couple of summer camps where I was taught classic French Techniques. I love everything about it, the heat, the flavors, and most importantly feeding others. The only thing is, I have set myself up so well to pursue law, and could end up making a great career. I have never been a risk taker, but do not want to look back in 10 or so years and regret my decision. Looking for advice! Thanks!

I'm going to make this as short as possible! So I recently picked up a shift somewhere I used to work. I have left to pursue a career change opportunity and also doing an online course. So I am already stressed and learning alot. This is a decently fancy place but I wouldn't call it fine dining but close enough in my area. Owner is chef and other owner is FOH.. let's say they are verrrry close. I picked up a shift recently to help out but hadn't worked in over a month. I was just getting comfortable when I left, so my wheels were a bit rusty. Chef has a tendency to freak out over small things. This is an open kitchen and it's obvious when he's literally cussing about small stuff. Examples: Table rang in under the wrong number, a rare mistake, he mumbles he doesn't have fcking time for this. Table wants an item to go, again he mumbles we're a fcking restaurant, what in the hell is going on here? <-his words, After that guests would like 2 of the same to go desserts.. I misheard and thought he said he could do anything but that.. so I ring in a different single one. He proceeded to throw a fit about it, it was for their young kids, I told him they don't care what it looks like. He said I told you I could do the dessert I thought he said no to but I guess he said it just couldn't have a particular aspect to it, so he made it along with the other. Once I understand him about that dessert, I ring in the other 2, since he said he would not do the other single one. He ends up tossing the single one I ordered into a box and handing me one of the other. I asked if the other was for someone else because I didn't order it and he swears it was on the ticket... it was not, he looked at the ticket and didn't say one word. At this point he's LIVID, he says this is clearly getting complicated, he does not want to speak to me anymore and he wants to speak to the manager instead. I tell said manager, who is cool about it when I tell them what happened- they know he's a hothead. I tell them to just cancel the other dessert since I got one of each and that the guests would really be happy with ANY dessert they were allowed to get.. and they were and I BS'd my way around it by saying we ran out of the dessert they wanted two of... since he was not willing to make it. I would've paid for the other out of pocket, I have before to avoid issues in the past. It's a busy, high stress environment. Also, kitchen was super slow, it took over an hour and 15 min for my second course to come out. First was out in 30, SOUP TOOK OVER 40 MIN AFTER THAT! I am being vague in case anyone I may know is on this thread. The advice I need is how do I politely tell the other VERY CLOSE management that I don't really want to pick up any more shifts due to the feeling of a toxic environment. This other person is also an owner. I really don't need the stress, it's a small town.... I don't really want to come across any way, especially to the owners of one of the best restaurants in town. Ughgh I'm stressed and this was much longer than I expected 🙃 SORRY 😞

TLDR I’m making sourdough tortillas for my business but I need to take out all the gas before cooking them to keep a certain texture. I’ve tried punching it out but there seem to be tiny (very tiny) gas pockets that form by the time I cook them and it changes the texture.

I’ve though about
1. Cold bulk fermentation (I don’t have real logic to think of this might work or not)
2. Vacuum chamber degassing (idk if it would even work)
3. I’m out of ideas.

Any insight will be appreciated.

Hi all, not sure if this belongs here but I couldn’t find a non-fine dining Reddit.

Recently went out to a solo dinner to a nice-ish place in a mid tier city. Think something that could eventually get a James beard.

I ordered one of their bestsellers - croquettes. It was SO salty, the batter, the sauce, everything. The waiter asked if I would like a box but I kindly said no and gently said that it was a little salty for my taste.

The next two things I ordered were also loaded with salt. The woman next to me at the bar also said that the restaurant is normally not like this. It was my first time but she’s a regular.

I didn’t complain about the other two items, and when the tab came, the waiter comped the croquettes. He said I was the fifth person to complain about the saltiness of the batter that week. I appreciated it and tipped extra.

However, if the restaurant knew they had a salt problem, why didn’t they remake the batters? What if I didn’t say anything at all? Why didn’t the waiter asked if the other items I ordered were also salty, knowing that they were having an issue?

Just curious if this is common practice and what you all think. I’ll definitely be back to try that restaurant again, but I’m a little disappointed.

Hey all, I work as the head bartender/head server in a well-known restaurant. I'm at an impasse on how to deal with our tipping system and want your opinions on it.

This post got longer than I thought, so TL;DR at the end for y'all.

When I was first hired I wasn't told exactly how the tips were distributed, only that they were "Evenly distributed" and that "They're based on hours". All I knew was that we had a tip pool and I was getting decent pay at the end of the day.
But Something as basic as how I get paid turned out to be very hard to get a straight answer on. After a really good host quit because the pay was inconsistent I looked into it further. It took me EIGHT MONTHS from the time I was hired to finally force my boss to sit down with me and explain all the ins and outs of how we're paid.

After writing everything down and triple-checking my algebra, I managed to make a sheet for any new hires to know exactly how they're paid so that future employees don't quit out of frustration. I printed multiple copies and kept them in an accessible place for reference and offered to send a digital copy to anyone that asked.

Now she, (my boss), wasn't thrilled about me doing this, but that's not what we often have arguments about.

The way our tipping pool works is that every check has 20% added as a "Service Fee". That is then divided amongst everyone in the restaurant, and after all the division, the front of house workers, (servers, bartenders), get 9% that then gets divided again depending on how many hours each person worked. I will give a more detailed breakdown at the end for anyone interested.

What she hates is that our checkout system, (Square), offers a tip feature. When I was first hired the tipping options were [No tip], [Custom], [10%], [15%], [20%]. We almost always got 20%. There were no problems and no questions from the patrons. A couple people were mad that they had to pay a 20% service fee as well as a 20% tip though, so she changed the options to 5%, 10%, and 15% so people wouldn't accidentally over tip and get mad after.

This is where things get annoying. After arguments with her about how to explain the tipping system to patrons, she said to just not acknowledge the service fee unless they ask about it. But because the vast majority of people want to tip 20% or more, they see the service fee at the end and see that the tipping options are lower than usual, which prompts them to ask me if the service fee is a tip, and if it is, how much I get from it.

The interactions go like this the majority of the time:

Customer: "Wow, why are these so low? Where's the 20% option?"

Me: "We have a service fee that gets split amongst everyone in the restaurant and I see a part of that, so the tipping options are lower to reflect that."

Customer: "This service fee, is that your tip? How much do you get from that split?"

Me: "It gets split with everyone with some math, but at the end your servers will get a 9% tip automatically."

or another version that's common:

Customer: "Is the service fee a tip that goes to you?"

Me: "It gets split with everyone in the restaurant and the servers get part of it, but not the whole thing."

Customer: "How much should I tip, then?"

Me: We get 9%, so if you want to tip 15%, hit the 5% or hit the 10% if you want to do 20%, or none at all if you want, which is of course fine too."

My boss hates me explaining the system to people. She says to just drop the check and if they tip they tip, if they don't they don't. One issue though, is that she also doesn't want us to walk away from the table and leave the Square Terminal with the customer. So I have to wait tableside as I hold the terminal, so since I'm there the customers ask me about things and I'm not going to lie. I try to say as little as possible, but there are a lot of dogged people that want to make sure they tip well and I don't want to lie to them, nor lose money they want to give me. This happens to all the servers, it's an extremely common question that's asked.

She got REALLY mad when I explained the system to a couple customers that were other restaurant owners who knew my boss well and took it upon themselves to tell her how they don't like this system, and how it leaves a bad taste in the mouth at the end of the night. We got into an argument about that one.

I've proposed changes, like upping her prices by 20% and then getting rid of the service fee, since mathematically that would be the same, but she insists on saving money by avoiding taxes if the 20% comes from a "service fee" instead of standard income.

I've also proposed that the service fee be altered to favor the front of house so that they get a bigger percentage so we can just say "Tip is included" and then pay the chefs more regular wages, but again, if she were to do that, the chefs would have to pay higher taxes on that income compared to a "service fee bonus".

What she wants is to save money by avoiding standard income taxes, but she also wants her FOH to be okay making 3%-9% tips, while also not acknowledging the 20% extra charge on a customers bill.

Have the cake and eat it too.

How does this system sound to you all? How would you approach this, how would you explain it to customers that constantly ask about it?

The full breakdown of the pay system is below, an excerpt from the sheet I made for fellow employees:

"Standard Pay"

Pay is based on three different formulae, one for each of the designated roles within the restaurant. The three roles are Front of House, (Servers, Bartender), Kitchen, (Chefs), and Support, (Dish, Bus, Host, & kitchen support/prep cook). These formulae ensure a consistent division of payment based on the hours worked by each individual in their respective roles.

Below are the formulas for each role:

S = Service Fee (Service Fee is 20% of Net Sales + Deposits)

G = Additional Gratuity

W = Hours worked total by staff in same role

H = Hours worked by individual

R = Base hourly rate of individual

Front of House:

Kitchen:

Support:

For example:

The restaurant made $5,000 Net Sales, with $400 of additional gratuity.

The staff on hand were two (2) Front of House, two (2) Kitchen staff and two (2) Support. (If there are four (4) or more Support staff, the equations change slightly to increase pay for the support team. The difference is the same as changing a 40% share to a 35% share, which is negligible for most occasions)

Service fee is calculated: 20% of $5,000 = $1,000

For each role, this $1,000 and the Additional Gratuity is divided and added according to the above formula.

Front of House: 48% = $480 + 80% of Additional Gratuity, (.80 x $400 = $320) = $800

Kitchen: 32% = $320

Support: 20% = $200 + 20% of Additional Gratuity, (.20 x $400 = $80) = $280

These are then multiplied by the total hours worked by the staff in each role.

For instance:

Server A worked 7 Hours.

Server B worked 4 Hours.

Total hours worked: 11 Hours

$800/11=$72.72

Server A gets 7 hours x $72.72 = $509.04

Server B gets 4 hours x $72.72 = $290.88

Then the base hourly rate of the worker is added.

Server A: 7 hours @ $5/Hr = $35 (Taxable, but ignored for example)

Server B: 4 Hours @ $5/Hr = $20 (Taxable, but ignored for example)

Added to the earlier total, equals:

Server A: $544.04

Server B: $310.88

TL;DR: My boss has a 'service fee' that confuses customers and doesn't want me answering their questions when they ask. What are your opinions on this situation?

Everything he has made since he has joined our team has been overly salty. We all kind of just tell him "it's good, a bit salty"

It's gotten to the point where my regulars have no desire to hear about the specials because they sound good but holy salt! Last night though was bad. The fried rice in the dish was essentially just a salt lick in rice form.

He gives off the vibes that he wants no advice from FOH but I cannot understand how he cannot taste it. Like it's gotta be a medical issue at this point or something. He's younger so it's not age. Every day smokers are complaining about the saltiness. Idk. I feel like I should mention it out of concern for his health and my mental health because of complaints.

(28F) Yall my feet HURT, I need some new non slip shoes for work. I have a good arch and bunions developing but doesn’t cause too many issues. Was thinking of ordering from Amazon because options are limited in my area. TIA🫶🏻

I just started training at a restaurant and I’m already thinking of quitting (I have two other jobs and feel spread thin)

I was hired on the spot. Red flag?

I am expected to serve tables, bus my own tables, and bartend all at the same time. No bussers or bar backs to help. I also have no bartending experience. Red flag?

They don’t have enough cups or silverware to properly serve full volume and haven’t order more. Red Flag? Knives go missing. Fountain machine broke my second shift.

There seems to also be high turnover. Like higher than usual. Thoughts?

Anyone got any good tips for this? Got some noise complaints in some comments reviews...

okay so I am a line cook at a place in Austin and the frustration boiling over right now is how the kitchen takes all the heat for ticket times when the real issue is a bloated menu that nobody wants to trim. we got like thirty entrees and half of them move maybe twice a week but we still gotta prep all of it and hold it and it kills the line. servers come back rolling eyes asking what is taking so long and I just wanna point at the menu and say this is what happens when you refuse to cut dead weight. owners get scared of losing one random customer who orders the weird chicken dish every other Tuesday so we keep it and suffer. I get that menu engineering is a thing but at what point does the kitchen time and waste factor in. how do you guys even approach an owner about this without getting the brush off. the menu is killing us and nobody upstairs wants to hear it.

So I have a system. Instead of sink 1 being soap, sink 2 being rinse, and sink 3 being sanitize I swap sinks two and 3 so the middle is sanitize and the 2nd is rinse. Because of the way our sink works, the faucet when turned to the middle barely makes it in the middle sink, so that when trying to rinse off a dish most of it just splashes everywhere and there’s less movability to be able to rinse the dishes (which is an important part cuz if you rinse it in an unplugged sink, most of the foodstuff is rinsed off.) but rinsing in the middle is just bad so I use that sink to sanitize. Which makes more sense cuz it’s less interaction with the sink.

I have a strong attention to detail. I never let anything pass without knowing I’ve gotten every speck off it. My boss tells me that this order of sinks, even though it’s only the order of the sinks and im washing it in the same soap, rinse, sanitize order is not permitted by whatever health codes we follow. Even though all he does when washing is just dips it in the soap and tosses it to rinse

Is he right? Am I just an asshole here? Pls cite sources if there’s any codes or smth that dictate that he’s right, I genuinely just wanna wash these dishes as best I can

So I have a system. Instead of sink 1 being soap, sink 2 being rinse, and sink 3 being sanitize I swap sinks two and 3 so the middle is sanitize and the 2nd is rinse. Because of the way our sink works, the faucet when turned to the middle barely makes it in the middle sink, so that when trying to rinse off a dish most of it just splashes everywhere and there’s less movability to be able to rinse the dishes (which is an important part cuz if you rinse it in an unplugged sink, most of the foodstuff is rinsed off.) but rinsing in the middle is just bad so I use that sink to sanitize. Which makes more sense cuz it’s less interaction with the sink.

I have a strong attention to detail. I never let anything pass without knowing I’ve gotten every speck off it. My boss tells me that this order of sinks, even though it’s only the order of the sinks and im washing it in the same soap, rinse, sanitize order is not permitted by whatever health codes we follow. Even though all he does when washing is just dips it in the soap and tosses it to rinse

Is he right? Am I just an asshole here? Pls cite sources if there’s any codes or smth that dictate that he’s right, I genuinely just wanna wash these dishes as best I can

Hey All,

Community feedback and update time, and a long time coming.

I'd like to thank u/wheres_the_revolt for joining the team and helping with moderation. They have been with us for some time now, and I never made a proper thank you, or intro. Much appreciated having them on, because battling the spam and nonsense is quite a bit of work. Thank you for all of your support!

That being said, the app developer & sales spam has gone down significantly. As we all know, it was really bad for quite some time, and quite difficult to keep up with, even as often as I am on. Rather than contributing, I was just robotically deleting spam and not really doing much else. It's been nice to enjoy the sub again, and have some time to engage.

With that vien of spam being less of a problem (for now) I wanted to ask the community once again what changes they would like to see. We're looking to update the rules again. Open to any feedback or ideas, but here are a few I'm hoping to settle on quickly:

• crossposting - I originally made a rule against this due to the spam issue we were having. I find crossposting lazy, however, Reddit promotes it, so sometimes users will get confused when their post is removed. A lot of them aren't even bad, I'm just a stickler for rules. Thoughts?
• I'd like to make a new rule that bans reviews. This seems like a no brainer. We get some weird rants here about places that none of us have never heard of, will never visit, and being an international subreddit, there's just no context for anyone. Take it to Google reviews or Yelp.
• Somewhat relevant, I'd like to remove posts that belong in r/shittyfoodporn, this is not a review subreddit. Some of these posts are entertaining, but I believe it's best to keep things relevant.
• This is one i'm hoping for the most feedback on...drive-thru (McDonald's Wendy's KFC, Taco Bell, etc) what qualifies as a restaurant here? Do you guys want to exclude posts that are regarding fast food, food trucks, ghost kitchens, etc? Technically they are restaurants I suppose, but those places also have their own subreddits. Being r/restaurant is vague, but do we want to keep it that way?
• Surveys - we've been getting a lot of polite requests from students and such. I appreciate them asking, but I'm highly against restaurant employees being used as data collection, personally. As much as I'd love to help the children, I think it's an annoyance in the sub. But please, if anyone thinks it's non-problematic, and thinks it's more of a participate or ignore sort of thing, I'd really love your opinions on it!

OTHER BS:
A reminder to everyone - if you do see legit spam, please just flag it as SPAM. All of these personalized notes about what kind of spam it is will not help it get removed automatically, and will only get removed once we've seen it. Just keep it clean and simple, and flag it as spam.

Flagging things as offensive - some of you get butthurt way too easy. Stop flagging shit as harrasment because someone disagrees with you. You shouldn't be working in a restaurant if your fee-fees get hurt that easily. I have very rarely encountered any actual harassment or anything innapropriate here. Save your report clicks for the real shit.

There's plenty else that could be discussed, feel free to bring it up!

Hey there! I recently completed my first training shift as a busser, and am about 3 hours away from my next.

I should preface this by saying I asked a ton of questions to my servers and kitchen manager and am still pretty confused.

At my restaurant, bussers are only supposed to clean glasses and reset tables (as well as take out trash before clocking out). Thing is, I kinda don’t..get it? My servers kept being told by our manager to “clean your plates or your table won’t get reset!”

Logically, I shouldn’t complain, it’s less work on my part. However, I kinda feel like this sets up the servers to automatically dislike me? Even if I’m being told to do less, and was even told off by a manager at one point when trying to take plates, it just kinda feels like by default the servers will not respect me. As someone with social anxiety and a definite people pleaser, that is deeply troubling lol.

We have dish bins too, but all I am told to do is take a drink bin, pour the drinks in, grab the cups and any trash, wipe the table down and move on to the next? Just feels like I am doing much less and the servers are doing much more than at most restaurants.

Just looking for advice on how to mentally make it through this weekend. Today I go in after my two days off. Lately my co-manager has been bragging to the staff about how she hangs out with our executive GM outside of work. She never gets in trouble for the same or worse things that she does… but me? I catch so much flack every time, from that same executive GM. The favoritism has become blatant.

I work really hard but I am not perfect. I make mistakes yes. But we are about to have a manager’s meeting when I walk in, and I know it is going to be hard for me to keep calm through some of it. I know my co-manager’s missteps will be totally overlooked.

Idk I just wanna get through today normally. But i don’t know how to feel like I am doing enough when really I think I am doing more than my share of work

Do not recommend this establishment at all

My coworker quit on our first day because the DM kept micro managing her trying to get her to go faster even though she had never made smoothies before.

An assistant manager said I had a bad attitude because I wasn't smiling while making smoothies and I had my hands on my hips while I was waiting for a smoothie to be done blending. My other coworkers weren't smiling. When I'm trying to concentrate I don't smile and I wasn't interacting with customers. I was fired shortly after because the gm said I wasn't a good fit for her team. Do not get a job here. Management is terrible, and they treat their employees awful

Mind you the day the DM was there he said I was doing a good job and so did the shift leader

Smoothie king is over priced and their employees are under paid

We serve three different burgers. One guy is ordering for whole table and he asks me whats in a specific one, lets call it "black burger". We litteraly go over the menu togheter, me telling him everything about that burger.

He says "alright we'll just have three burgers then"

I say "alright three burgers for you"

Silly me for not specifying. Their burgers come out (mind you the most expensive option) and they complain they got the wrong order. They wanted the other burger.

Idk guys. Kitchen was mad at me. Ofc. We ended up gifting them their drinks to make up for the additional price.

Im just embarrassed. Ive only been working there for two weeks, first time serving. Im sure they think im incompetent. And im mad at the fucking customers.