Insider Secrets: What Restaurant And Bar Workers Won’t Tell You About How They Cut Costs Behind The Scenes
4—- At a restaurant in California: Labor laws in CA mandate that employees working more than 6 hours are required a 30 minute break. To accomodate this law, most restaurants staff an extra server for each shift to watch the tables of the other servers while they take their breaks. Because they don’t make tips, this server is usually paid a higher hourly wage to compensate. To get around having to pay that extra person, one restaurant that I worked for would have their employees break at the very end of their shift, after the restaurant or their section had closed. A break at the end of your shift is pretty pointless, because you are about to be off anyway. So after we had finished with work for the
Watered down liquor.
Bread or food that appeared to be salvaged from another diner or diners who didn’t eat it or touch it.
I never worked in a restaurant or bar but these were observations of things someone told me sometime or that I might have read even that rather freaked me out. Not the end of the world but not appetizing.
Good time enders.
When I was in high school in the early 70’s, I worked as a car hop at a famous root beer brand franchise in Sikeston, Mo., which served its root beer and other drinks in heavy frosted mugs. The owner was astoundingly cheap, as was his son, who was a partner in the business.
When the mugs came back in, they were cleaned in a 3-bay sink by 1. Pouring out the drink and ice remnants in the first sink and upending the mug, twisting it over a bristled scrubber that was suctioned-cupped to the sink bottom. Then 2. doused in the next sink compartment, that had detergent mixed in, then 3. Doused in the next compartment, which was a rinse sink. Then placed in a rack to dry and get re-frosted. Per mug: about 3–4 seconds total.
That was fine, efficient and I’m sure sanitary. What wasn’t was that this owner made us dunk the returned plastic straws in the detergent and rinse and re-use them. This place is no longer in business and hasn’t been for many years. I haven’t lived in Missouri since 1972 but from what I understand, the owner and his wife eventually passed away and the word was that the son and his wife took a Class A motorhome out on a test drive and never came back. I don’t know if that rumor is true, so Jerry, my apologies if it isn’t…
There seems to be particular liquors that somewhat emulate the taste of more expensive brands that some places refill bottles with. Sauza Silver is pretty similar to Patron, Cutty Sark is pretty similar to Jameson, and over rocks it’s pretty hard to tell the difference. At least not so much that someone would start an argument with a server as it’s also kind of impossible to prove.
Of course there’s a lot of this at restaurants as well especially with intentionally mislabeled fish. Also, anyone selling Kobi beef anything or Truffle anything is likely to have zero percent of those actual ingredients unless it’s served as the whole ingredient and you pay a truly significant price.
A local popular chinese restaurant advertise all you can eat sushi. People start with plates of food, eat 1/4–1/2 and then when the bill arrives they find out the restaurant is charging them for the uneaten food in an effort to minimize waste. So they quickly see their patronage decline to the point they changed the way the all-you-can-eat sushi was being given. A waiter would be assigned to a group of tables and you had to order what food you wanted, and they would get it for you, no more serve-yourself. Again, people would order food, not like it, and then waste it. So they’d get pissed-off again for being charged for the wasted food. And so their patronage dropped yet again. Finally, they stopped offering all-you-can-eat and went back to a traditional restaurant type of service, and stopped trying to charge customers for wasting food.
Eventually, they finally closed their doors to business. People stopped going and had had enough. Too bad really as their bento-box ordered food was great and they also made an amazing curried pork.
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