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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   748 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026

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My partner and I are booked for a family dinner tonight, so I made some fresh sourdough bread and hand churned some butter to take with us.

Sometimes I wish that the economics of food service made sense. I don't think I'd mind the long hours and hard work.

Every single-person-owned diner/restraunt I've been too(and at one point, the area I was in had alot and they were all good) pretty much run on margins and prayers and potential free-labor from family members.

It's both sad and frustrating for someone who always enjoys those sorts of places.

In actually Michelin starred restaurants, it is not uncommon for servers to make $150k+ inc tips in NYC, which is probably more than, say, the average New York Times journalist. In France it is not uncommon to make 3x the (much lower) average wage, which is why you see perfectly respectable people in their fifties do the job.

I waited tables and tended bar for years.

I'm thinking more about the restaurant ownership side of things. Unless you own the property, your landlord is going to jack up your rent every year so you're just barely not broke. I know a handful of people who have left the industry for exactly that reason. I might be able to make the economics work with a food truck, but that's about it.

Bartenders too can clear large amounts of money in tips in hip, expensive nightclubs. Tips for service as a percentage is rather non-sensical.

I'm sure some snobs would argue that the service in a Michelin starred restaurant is worth paying 10 times than that in a local diner, but as a thought experiment what would happen if you were to exchange the wait staff in both but keep the same food? You'd probably have a massively more popular "Michelin starred restaurant with diner staff" (probably barely less popular than it was with its original staff) than "local diner with Michelin starred wait staff", which tells me that the service is a lot less consequential than the food.

True but they tend to be attractive young people. Waiters are more diverse in terms of age.

The waiter at the starred restaurant which I most recently patronized was a dead ringer for Jason Momoa.

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