[expazl]

> Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr without raises prices to above what customers are willing to pay

There are restaurants that charge north of 800$ per person which are always fully booked half a year in advance with glowing reviews even from the worst critics hellbent on being negative.

You certainly can pay workers $250 an hour without raising prices above what customers are willing to pay depending on the product. Of cause that's not the case at those restaurants, the workers make closer to $30 bucks an hour and the money goes to the owner/investors. Imagining a restaurant with that kind of success where the owners and investors are the workers is a nice thought.

I know of one of these restaurants that always top the list of best restaurant in the world basically gave their main dish washing guy a small owning stake because the owner/chefs like him, and he's now making way more than just $250 an hour washing the dishes. But that is of cause just a case of the rich throwing leftover bones to the dogs eating scraps at the table for shits and giggles, not a case where workers owning a restaurant leads to a fair distribution of the profits for all of them.

[TulliusCicero]

Restaurants charging $800 per person are an extreme outlier. It's like talking about the car market in terms of Bentleys and McLarens.

99.9% of restaurants cannot charge super high prices, you're just being pedantic.

[KptMarchewa]

Even more than Bentleys. There are three Michelin star restaurants that cost fraction of that.

[tashoecraft]

I’m going to call bs on that. I’ve dined at high end restaurants and there is no way you can pay people that much and survive. The problem is everything cost more. It’s not like it’s a $20 meal that’s 800.

There’s expensive plates, bowls, silver wear, custom presentation items. High end materials every where. You’re hiring more staff so that you can pay attention to every detail. The wine cellar might have several million dollars worth of wine in it.

[geodel]

Well, Noma can charge customers up to $1500 per person and average worker is paid around $50/ hr.

Masa Sushi charges $1000/ person and hourly worker pay is $20.

There maybe a rare one but I don't know of a restaurants that charges $1K / person can pay worker $250.

[Melting_Harps]

> Well, Noma can charge customers up to $1500 per person and average worker is paid around $50/ hr.

What are you talking about? This was never the case, and when Rene had to pay market prices on labour he shut the place down.

People who dine at these places are all too self-infatuated to ever realize but you are litterly working for slave wages in those kitchens, the saying goes that 'you were paid in knowledge' in order to start your own concept if you survived (as very few would decide to stay as a Sous) those barren years of your career. Never would they offer $50/hr when most heavy season days are easily 12+ hours long.

Just the amount of money they paid to stages racked up 40k GBP/month [1].

Personally speaking, Noma had the cache because of Rene's affiliation to Feran Adria cohort and then Bourdain (who initially dismissed Adria's work as needless snobbery) to most outside of the culinary World, but after El Bulli closed I felt that an era had ended (culinary avant garde) that would never be truly replicated again as it existed mainly during the bubble era before 2008.

Noma tried to re-ignite it with it's creative work-shopping and focus on local-foraging twist but it had all the pitfalls El Bulli had with none of the ground-breaking innovation (I think David Muñoz did a better job of that with XO concepts and he never worked for Feran), including not paying it's workers.

0: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/09/worlds-bes...

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/108856...

[TylerE]

At high end fine dining the guest:employee ratio is probably reversed from what it is in the typical place.

[blackoil]

> There are restaurants that charge north of 800$ per person

All of them will have a star chef/brand who'll have to leave lot of money on the table. i.e. only way everyone will make $250 is if someone is giving it for free.