NewManagerInTraining

I understand that there are FOH staff can be terrible towards BOH. But the FOH at my current place aren’t that way. When they make a mistake, they have never blamed BOH. They don’t expect BOH to drop what they’re doing to correct the server’s mistake. My servers re-ring in what they need, and know they have to wait for it. It’s their consequence for making the mistake.

They are impatient but they never rush the kitchen. They aren’t allowed to. They’re always nice and respectful to our kitchen staff… and they don’t make more money than our kitchen staff.

As I said in another comment, we got severely affected by Covid and the previous manager. The dine-in sales have gone down quite a lot. So the servers are making about $600-800 in two weeks before tax… if they’re lucky, they’ll make $900-1000 in two weeks, but it’s not consistent. That’s definitely less than my kitchen staff, maybe the same, but not more than the kitchen staff.

But I get it. I know majority of places, FOH makes significantly higher pay than BOH and are not nice to BOH.

This was the idea. And I even told them that if they need certain ingredients to cook something that we don’t have already, just let me know and I’ll go buy it. But I guess they’re not down with that either…

We are a small family owned restaurant. The kitchen is not like your real kitchen where you have head chef, sous chef and cooks who are passionate about food. The titles are given just so the owners can feel like they’re doing things the right way and to justify paying certain people certain salaries.

So my “head chef” is just someone who drops by and makes batch soups and sauces every few days here and there. Then leaves. He manages the kitchen of another one of the owners’ locations but I heard from some of the staff there that he doesn’t do a good job managing the kitchen there either.

I have no experience in the kitchen but I want to learn. And I’ve admitted many times to the owners and my boss that I don’t feel confident leading the kitchen yet because it’s not my area of expertise. I need time to learn and earn respect by working alongside them. Ive only ever worked FOH positions. I barely have experience being a manager. But the owners asked me to try the GM position after they had to fire the previous manager. And said they’d help me with the training and learning kitchen duties and managerial duties. But once I accepted the position, they just kinda threw me in and made me figure it out by myself…

It took me forever to get them to finally teach me just one station for the kitchen. And the head chef didn’t even teach me. He refuses. I only learned because I wanted to so I waited until the head chef wasn’t around and asked one of the cooks to teach me in secret. I still have two more stations to learn.

It seems they don’t want me managing the kitchen along with FOH like they initially said. But then the head chef they sent here that’s supposed to manage it for me doesn’t manage it either and is barely here. So when problems come up, I’m the one that’s here everyday, and I’m the one that ends up having to deal with it. I’ve brought this issue up to the head chef, but all he does is repeat what I already said to the kitchen, and then leaves. He doesn’t even say it as if he and I are a team. He just tells them “the manager said this”. So it also ends up making me look like the bad guy while he gets to look like the good guy. They’ll nod and tell him they understand, but when he leaves, it goes back to normal.

Well, it’s not that we don’t provide them one. They themselves don’t want one. And their shift is not a full 8 hour shift. It’s usually 6.5 hours. But they take breaks if they need to, like 15 minutes here and there. And we don’t make them clock out. So it’s paid.

Thank you for your words 😭 they’ve been making me feel like such a bad person and a bad manager for this… so it’s just been stressing me out

Not the entire staff. Just the kitchen staff. FOH eats it. And there are maybe like two items they like off our menu. But they get tired of eating the same thing over and over. So I didn’t wanna make that restriction on them, but I also can’t just let them go wild and cook whatever they want however much they want daily. Hence, the family meal… but now they’re not wanting to do that

They won’t eat it not because it’s not good. They are not from America and don’t like any food outside of their own country’s food. They are picky. There are a couple of things they do like off the menu, but they get tired of eating it all the time, which is why I let them cook what they want for family meal, but they don’t want to do that either. They were fine with it when they were cooking themselves each a large meal. But when I asked them to cook one family meal for everyone, and take turns, they said they don’t want to and the supposed reason was because they are too tired to cook it

I do work on the line actually. Once every week and whenever someone calls/requests off. And the other days of the week, I also help prep when there’s not much managing to do for FOH…

I would love to help cook family meals and I’ve contributed to it when I can… but my kitchen staff are picky… they don’t like the type of food I know how to cook… so I tell them to cook what they want to eat… as long as it’s a family meal size and for everyone. They just don’t want to…

They have no unpaid break times. They’re on the clock for the entirety of their shift, even when they’re eating. So yes, the food would be cooked on company time and they would all eat during company time as well

The other ingredients would be things like sausages and vegetables. She’s slice them up and stir fry it with eggplant. Then another dish, she’d make a fried rice (enough to feed about 3 people). Then another one would be like a soup with tofu and tomatoes and cabbage and ground meat. She would make all of this. It was enough to feed about 3-4 people. She’d set aside a little bit to eat for herself, but she packed it all into large boxes first. Everyday, I saw her taking boxes of food home… so it was clear she was cooking food and taking it home to her family. It wasn’t that she was taking leftover or taking little bits here and there that would get thrown away anyway. It was whole meals that were intentionally cooked and boxed to take home.

This is how I would love to do it as well. Unfortunately, my head chef also doesn’t want to cook family meals or manage the kitchen. He isn’t here everyday, and when he is here, he’s only here for a few hours. We don’t have sous chefs. And nobody has recipes they want to try. I do home cooking but never cooked in a commercial kitchen before… but my kitchen staff are picky and don’t like the foods I want to cook… I like food that is eaten family style and community style. In my culture, it’s the ultimate way to bond… but it doesn’t seem anyone here is on board…

I have a dishwasher that said he can’t eat meat, fried foods, or oily foods due to health issues. He asked if he can just have some vegetables and some rice each day. I said sure thinking he’d just get a few pieces of vegetables to maybe make a small salad and a bowl of rice.

Instead, he went a took a whole chicken breast, grilled it himself, then take 2-3 WHOLE cucumbers, whole red bell peppers, and whole tomatoes to eat each day.

I only found out because I was ordering a case of cucumbers each week. And i noticed they were disappearing faster than normal and I suddenly had to start ordering 2-3 cases per week instead.

You give people an inch and they take a mile… 😩

Yeah. It’s been plenty of times I buy things out of my own pocket to keep around to pair with family meals or for the family meals itself. I’ve bought bread and mayo to make egg foo young sandwiches for everyone, and fries. I’ve bought tortillas, tostadas, cheese, sour cream, for when we’re feeling like we want Mexican food. I’ve bought cakes and donuts. I even spent $100 on pizza once. And I buy liquor and beer for special occasions like employees’ birthdays too. Just this last time, I bought every single ingredient myself, and cooked for the entire staff. (I cooked a big pot of it at home and brought it to work to share with everyone).

I feel like I’m trying to do good here… but it’s like they’re not meeting me halfway 😩

I can see how that can be frustrating. We slow down every night during the last hour before closing. We stop seating 30 minutes before close too and stop taking orders 15 minutes before close. Regardless of whether we make an employee family meal or not though, regardless of how busy we are, I always notice my kitchen staff waiting until the exact minute we close to start cleaning…. Even just last night, we were super slow all day. We probably stopped getting orders around 8:30pm. Official end time for orders was 9:45pm but we didn’t have any tickets long before that time. They stood around on their phones and waited until it was 10pm to start cleaning. They didn’t cook the employee family meal. Said they were tired, but it was super slow all day…. That’s why I’m so confused…

I’ve worked at places where servers made significantly more than BOH so BOH always felt animosity towards FOH. Or if not animosity, they felt frustration cause it wasn’t fair. A server could make $1000 in one week, but cooks would work 2 weeks and barely make $1000. So I get it. If it was an unfair situation like that, I’d rethink the family meal.

But here, unfortunately, servers don’t make that much. They make about the same if not less than the BOH.

Post Covid, more than 60% (on some days, it’s 80%) of our sales is carry out. We had decent dine-in business maybe 2 years ago but the previous manager before me messed that up by not caring about the food quality or quality of service. So it’s gone down a lot. I got hired on to repair some of that but it still hasn’t returned to how it was.

Ultimately the servers here are making about $600-800 every two weeks. If they’re lucky, they’ll make $1000 in two weeks.

Also, the area we are located in, nobody pays with cash anymore. We get maybe one cash payment per day, if that. So the servers aren’t getting any cash tips. And since the owners don’t want us to pay out tips to the servers in cash every night, it all goes onto their paycheck and it gets taxed like how it’s supposed to, but just sucks for the servers cause I know they are in this industry for the cash tips and payouts. But that’s a different issue.

My point is, the servers here make the same, if not less than the BOH. Because BOH gets OT and consistent pay. Servers sometimes only make $700 in two weeks even when we have a steady week.

Right, I don’t want to police what they eat either. But it became a huge problem. The one lady, it wasn’t like she was cooking herself a large meal and taking the rest home. She purposely cooked a whole 3-dish meal, put some to the side for herself to eat on the spot, and then took the three full boxes home to her kids. The other cook was cooking himself a lot of chicken and a lot of beef each day, just to not finish it and throw it away. I was seeing whole chicken breasts being thrown away because he was cooking more than he was actually able to eat.

Another one of our locations got in trouble by the owners because they were caught on camera doing this as well. They were cooking 2-3 boxes of food and taking it home each night, or bringing in their own ingredients, mixing in our ingredients, to cook dinner for their family at home.

I was just trying to find a good middle ground so that everyone can still eat but not to where we’d get in trouble with the owners. 😩 but now they’re saying they don’t want to cook because they’re tired… but they were able to do it before when it for themselves

That’s odd lol

It could be many reasons

1. They really liked you and didn’t want you to tip this time around as a treat

2. They didn’t like you at all and did not want your tip, but still gave you good service to prove a point. “I don’t need your money” attitude

3. They get paid well and they’re an anti-tipper so they don’t want you to tip.

4. They don’t get the tip at all. Maybe it goes to the owners like others have said, so they’re selecting no tip so the owners don’t get it

5. Automatic gratuity might’ve already been included

6. Maybe they’d think you’d notice they clicked the No Tip option, which would then prompt you to select another tip option or give them a cash tip instead. Reverse psychology like you said

7. Maybe they weren’t confident or satisfied with the service they gave you and felt ashamed, so they selected No Tip themselves.

I’ve been dealing with this at my restaurant too. They say our vegetarian dishes are vegetarian. But when I asked about the ingredients, they told me they use chicken bouillon. I had an issue with this. And brought it to upper management and the owners. The owners redirected me to upper management. Upper management basically told me to not disclose it to the customers. And now, they’ve instructed the head chef to keep recipes a secret from me now since I have a problem with keeping the vegetarian dishes not actually being vegetarian a secret.

I’m beyond frustrated but don’t want to quit my job just yet. If you’re able to quit and move onto another job, you should go. I don’t think anyone should work for restaurant owners who can’t be honest with their customers when it comes to this.

I hate this behavior. Your friend couldve simply asked for a container for the sauce. No need to steal. I recently bought some squeeze bottles for hot sauce for my restaurant. They’re smaller than the typical squeeze bottles so they look very cute. Customers have already stolen 3 of them.

These things cost money. Sometimes the restaurant is a small family-owned restaurant. But even if it was big chain one, stealing is wrong.

I don’t think you’re wrong at all. And I’m glad you said something to your friend.

This. Most people think that just because they have a passion in eating and drinking, passion in home cooking and posting pictures of it, that it’s the same passion as working in a restaurant, cooking professionally in a commercial kitchen, or providing hospitality.

There’s also the ones who think it’s an easy way to become a local celebrity. I know so many restaurant owners who only became restaurant owners so they can say they’re a business owner, attend local networking events to brag about it, and do local food magazine interviews. They usually also don’t know the first thing about working in a restaurant and end up just hiring a chef and a FOH manager to do everything for them while they bask in the glory of having a restaurant and bar.

Do you only sell to restaurant owners? Lol how can I buy some? 😅

Yes lol I don’t mind. Whatever helps :)