On Pluto TV, I stumbled across an episode of “Kitchen Nightmares,” the British version. I didn’t catch the date it was filmed, but Ramsay didn’t look all that much different from now.
Anyway. At least four times during the episode when Ramsay was talking to the restaurant’s owner he stressed that the head chef was being paid 26,000 pounds a year, in tones that made it clear he thought it was a ridiculous amount to be paying a chef, or at least, this one. The restaurant looked to be a large one, upscale, not some dinner or casual eatery. There were three subsidiary chefs/cooks in the kitchen.
Would that really be an extravagant wage for that kind of job?
£26k a year is a very low wage for a skilled professional who would also be in charge of a team of people. Seems to me if he was remarking on how extraordinary it is he would be pointing out how ridiculously low it was.
No, it came across clearly as more like “You’re paying top dollar and getting crap for it”, which might be true about the particular chef, but the amount just struck me as way, way low. Not that I’ve ever worked in the industry or anything, but just as the salary for the position.
Or was the pound worth double what the dollar was back then or something?
That’s… about the ballpark I’ve seen head chef jobs advertised around here, in Cornwall. It does vary a fair bit within the UK, but you could find decent eateries in much of the country where the head chef is getting about that currently. It shouldn’t be a ridiculous sum, unless the chef was crap, and, given that it was in ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, there’s clearly some problems going on, and I suspect it’s more of a ‘this guy is being paid head chef wages and he’s basically being the assistant’, but with more angry swearing.
I will point out that the median salary in my county- Cornwall- was £25,000 and the mean was £27,000 in 2019, and that has risen in recent years. I’ve often been slightly boggled by the salaries some Americans on the board mention, because my professional friends over here aren’t getting anything like the same.
Shoot. You mean it isn’t 2030? Trump isn’t ancient history, we haven’t had a Covid vaccine for nearly a decade?
You might be right about it being a regional thing. I’m in a suburb of Boston, one of the pricier cities in the US. I remember about ten years back a college friend who had been living in rural Iowa telling me, all thrilled, with how they’d gotten !!!$40,000!!! for their three bedroom house. And me trying to congratulate her sincerely while simultaneously thinking, You can’t buy a burned out ruin for that around here. Location is powerful, and my internalized scale may be way off whack.
In Surrey in 2003 that would have been a fairly low salary for a head chef at a nice restaurant. It’s an expensive area. If they were giving him accommodation as well, or something like that, then it could be high.
The catering sector in the UK does not have a reputation for paying well (unless you happen to be Gordon Ramsey or similar, of course). Have a look at these job ads, which I just googled up.
Yow. Some of those are for around 30K, and working right in London? I don’t know much about London, but I do know it’s one of the most expensive cost of living areas.
(Okay, I bet the chef can budget zip for food, still.)
I don’t think I’ll put that on my list for second careers.
It’s worth bearing in mind that 30k is still 12k higher than minimum wage, and that was one of the lower wages for head chef rather than sous chef on that page.
Surrey is as expensive as London, though, or even more expensive than some areas of London (and you’d probably need a car), which is why I’m fairly sure 23k was a low wage for that job in 2003, for a place that’s supposedly “nice.” At any rate, it certainly wasn’t an unusually high wage.
I worked in kitchens in the US for about 10 years. It is historically a low paying job. For every famous chef, there are hundreds of people toiling away and barely able to make rent.
I don’t think the restaurant trade is one to aim for if you want to make any kind of decent living. I have a friend who owns his own restaurant here in Bristol, and barely scrapes £20k a year. It’s a small restaurant but certainly not a particularly cheap one.
He reckons the only places that make money are pizza restaurants and carveries (places that serve pre-cooked, help-your-self roast dinners) - cheap food, only need low skilled chefs, high table turnover, lots of take away.
I had a friend who stayed in the trade, he is the head chef of a very successful all from scratch restaurant. It isnt famous or anything, but It is a very popular place in the DC area and my friend is on food assistance because his salary is so low.
It is 2030 and that’s Lord Trump to you. Covid never existed and you don’t look like you’ve had your mandatory finger shortening procedure. Come with me, loser.
