ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIAN ASTORGANO
It was four years ago this month that the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the U.S. and shut down a majority of workplaces and even entire industries. None were devastated more than food and drink businesses, whose revenue model depended on close, personal customer interactions in mostly indoor spaces.
The extraordinary efforts of restaurant and bar owners and staff to keep the lights on via creative pivots—takeout and delivery menus, pop-up outdoor seating, to-go drinks, ghost kitchens—have been well documented. And immensely appreciated. But the post-pandemic “normal” continues to buffet the famously fickle hospitality world, especially among rank-and-file employees.
It’s clear from media coverage and anecdotal evidence that a lot of servers, cooks, bartenders, and other front- and back-end workers did not return to the industry after being laid off or quitting during the pandemic. Many tell horror stories of low pay, long hours, lack of overtime compensation, wage theft, harassment, and poor treatment by customers, including a backlash against tipping.
Locally and nationally, restaurant employees are now unionizing like never before and filing more complaints with labor and equal opportunity officials while also pushing for legislation to eliminate the lower hourly minimum wage for tipped employees. (Under Ohio law, tipped workers are guaranteed a minimum wage of $5.25 per hour, while non-tipped employees are guaranteed the standard minimum wage of $10.45.) Some are even questioning the use of tips, period, as part of the American food service industry.
Restaurant owners say higher wages and labor shortages since the pandemic are making it harder than ever to stay in business when profit margins in the industry are parchment thin to begin with. Sixty percent of new restaurants fail within a year, while 80 percent don’t last five years, according to the National Restaurant Association. “A number of restaurants have increased wages to attract employees during our nation’s current labor shortage,” the association says on its advocacy page. “Yet, many are seeing that increased wages aren’t bringing back or recruiting new talent.”
Business owners won’t get much sympathy from their employees. “We’re overworked, and we’re underpaid by our employers because we take tips,” says Emily Spring, a veteran bartender and server who’s become an informal advocate for local restaurant workers, primarily in Over-the-Rhine. “And we’re completely dependent on the mood of the person on the other side of the bar or sitting at a restaurant table for our livelihood.”
Besides the stresses inherent in their jobs, bartenders and servers are also expected to “perform” their tasks in the larger sense of the word—gladly and efficiently with a smile and kind words for their customers, even if their own lives happen to be a wreck. “No matter what is going on at home, no matter what text message I receive during my shift about my mother who is sick, about a friend who has died, I’m still there,” says Spring. “And if I don’t perform, guests may not be satisfied and I’ll see fewer tips.”
A new study conducted by Richfield Research on behalf of casinos.us claims that, unfortunately, Cincinnati ranks as the second worst U.S. city for customer behavior toward servers. The top five rudest behaviors, according to restaurant workers, are customers snapping fingers, complaining about things the server can’t control, demanding special treatment, refusing to tip, and leaving a mess.
The pandemic shutdown, followed by the closure of many restaurants, showed employees in the industry how little financial security they had. Spring was one of those who lost her bartending job during that period. “I had friends who moved in with their parents, moved in with their friends, left the state because they had to go live with their parents or families or friends, or who just decided, Hey, I’m gonna take an Amazon warehouse job or work at a place that has to stay open because I live paycheck to paycheck and I can’t pay my rent right now,” she says. “That was reality for a lot of us, and it was scary.”
Hospitality employees are working to find their rightful place in the post-pandemic economy, and their efforts are helped in large part by a continuing labor shortage in the industry, experts say. More than that, Spring argues, “it’s just that folks are advocating for themselves now. They don’t want to make this kind of money any more. And they don’t want to close the bar at 2 a.m. and open the restaurant the next day.”
Bon Appetit magazine reported that 2022 was an “unprecedented” year for union organizing among restaurant workers, particularly at chain operations like Starbucks, Chipotle, and McDonald’s. The magazine tied the trend to the rising gap between executive pay and employee wages and a more positive view of unions among Americans in general.
But the article also pointed to another important factor, COVID-19. “At the pandemic’s worst, when thousands of Americans were dying per day, restaurant workers faced one of the highest mortality rates in any industry,” the story says. “Since 2020 many service workers have left the restaurant industry altogether, citing burnout and chronic understaffing as their reasons for finding work elsewhere.”
Spring has received training in labor rights and legal action from the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center (CIWC), a nonprofit advocacy group for workers and immigrants. The organization’s director, Brennan Grayson, says he receives a regular stream of complaints from those in the Cincinnati restaurant and bar industry.
While U.S. Department of Labor officials say they keep no demographic data on victims of restaurant violations, Grayson says the complaints among kitchen staff to CIWC are mostly from immigrants. “Salaried” dishwashers, for instance, may work 60-hour weeks without overtime pay, he says.
Front-of-house restaurant complaints are less likely to involve immigrants, but nonpayment for overtime is a common complaint among servers and bartenders as well, he says. “Then the other problem we run into are people’s tips being mishandled or taken by management and tipped workers, who are getting paid a lower minimum wage, being asked to do a lot of work that isn’t actually going to earn them tips. They don’t get the chance to earn that money because they’re doing operational duties.”
At his Maize and Americano restaurants, owner Angel Batista skirted paying overtime to employees by dividing their hours between the two locations. An employee filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor and in September 2022 was paid back wages of $550.
In 2021, nearly 50 employees at 50 West Brewing Company filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the owners, complaining that its restaurant forced them to share their tips with non-tipped employees in the early months of the pandemic the year before. The suit is pending in federal court in Cincinnati.
Jen Mendoza sued The Drinkery in Over-the-Rhine in 2016 because in both of her jobs—a bartender serving drinks and a manager booking bands—she was classified as an independent contractor and told she was on her own to collect tips. Such informal arrangements are common in the bar and restaurant industry, says Mendoza, especially in Over-the-Rhine because “it’s a hip kind of place” where young people want to work. The suit was settled for an undisclosed sum.
Another byproduct of the industry’s labor shortage has been an increase in illegal child labor practices. “The food service industry has the highest number of child labor violations out of any other economic sector,” says Scott Allen, a Department of Labor spokesman for the Midwest region. Child labor cases in restaurants both nationally and in Ohio have more than doubled since 2019 (nine in Ohio in 2019 compared to 26 in 2023).
Mio’s Pizza locations in Mariemont and Milford were two of the biggest offenders. In Cincinnati, 12 minors under the age of 16 were exposed to the risks of workplace burns and injuries by using manual grease fryers, operating gas ovens with an open flame, moving pizza in and out of broiler ovens, and using a mechanical dough puller. Sixteen minors were also assigned to hours in excess of federal limits. One of its restaurant managers was denied overtime payment while making a weekly salary of $584, or a little more than $30,000 a year.
At the Milford location, then operated by Black Cat Pizzeria, Inc., investigators found nine minors under age 16 performing the same hazardous cooking and baking operations, plus 20 minors working in violation of federal limits for work hours. A manager there, too, was owed overtime back wages. The violations occurred before the Milford location was sold to new owners in late 2022.
Even restaurant owners who treat their employees fairly, however, face pressure as well. Jose Salazar, six-time nominee for the James Beard Award as the region’s best chef, closed his highly regarded Salazar restaurant in Over-the-Rhine late last year (he also owns Mita’s and Goose & Elder) after saying the numbers weren’t working any longer. He pays staff members at least $15 an hour—well above the legal minimum for both tipped and non-tipped employees—plus pooled tips for servers and a portion of all employees’ health insurance coverage.
While operational costs in general have risen since the pandemic, the two biggest inflationary factors have been food and labor, each up about 20 percent, says Salazar. “And it’s not only the financial increases, it’s the smaller number of folks we have in our industry. We lost a lot during the pandemic.”
Inflation hit sales at pricey restaurants like Salazar especially hard during and after the pandemic when consumers began to balk at dining in close quarters but also at paying higher prices for the dining experience. The cost of the fine-dining extras “went up incrementally,” he says, “even some of the smaller things like the linens, employee parking passes, and health insurance.” Salazar notes there’s been some decrease in food costs in recent months, allowing him to lower prices at Goose & Elder.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMUEL GREENHILL
Attitudes among restaurant employees toward their jobs and work/life balance changed dramatically during and after the pandemic, says Jessica Baston, chef de cuisine at Coppin’s Restaurant in Covington. “With the three months of people being home during the shutdown, it made them realize that, you know, I don’t want to go back and give my entire life to this,” she says. “I needed that time to realize what was important to me.”
Sexual harassment and discrimination, long a part of the restaurant industry, are still present in the workplace, but offenders are also more likely to be fired or punished, thanks to increased awareness of and conversation around inappropriate behaviors. Baston left Maize and Americano after five years as a manager and sometimes chef because she says no one there was being “held accountable for their actions, whether it’s a chef that’s being handsy or verbally abusive or abusing alcohol or drugs.” She reports being much happier now at Coppin’s.
The uncertainties and financial insecurities of working in the restaurant industry are driving a growing national effort to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and raise the minimum wage for all workers. Called One Fair Wage, the nonprofit campaign started in the Boston area in 2016 and has chapters now in seven states, including Ohio. The goal is to change rules for tipped workers at the local, state, and federal level.
One Fair Wage laws have now passed in California, Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. Contrary to expectations, campaign supporters say tips in those areas have actually increased with the increase in minimum wages.
In Ohio, One Fair Wage has gathered 200,000 signatures for a voter referendum to be placed on the November 2024 ballot, Ohio campaign manager Mariah Ross says. The proposed state law calls for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026 and then indexing it to inflation. It would also end the sub-minimum wage in Ohio for tipped workers, including those who are under 20 years old.
The prospect of making good money in just a few days of stressful work is what draws many servers and bartenders to the hospitality industry, especially to pricier establishments. But even in the OTR sports bar where she works, Spring says she can make $50 an hour on a Saturday night “just serving up domestic beers.”
Still, tips depend on how busy an eatery or bar is and the willingness and ability of patrons to reward those who are serving them. Some in the food service industry would like to see tipping go the way of the historic bondage from which it came.
Tipping began in the Middle Ages in Europe when masters would hand a little pocket change to servants who performed their duties especially well. In the 18th century, the custom transitioned from masters and servants to customers and service industry workers. Wealthy Americans traveling in Europe after the Civil War brought the tradition back to America, where owners of restaurants and other hospitality businesses were more than happy to pay newly emancipated slaves with tips alone. In 1938, when the first federal minimum wage of 25 cents per hour was passed as part of FDR’s New Deal, restaurants were exempted, codifying the lower pay for workers in the industry.
Ross says eliminating the tipped minimum wage isn’t about social justice alone. “We’re not going to just be increasing human rights for over 3 million Ohioans,” says the One Fair Wage campaign manager. “We’re going to be adding almost $2 billion into the Ohio economy by increasing wages.”
The National Restaurant Association, the leading business organization for America’s food service outlets, disagrees. In a policy brief issued in April 2021, the group argued that the new $15 per hour minimum wage will hurt smaller businesses already reeling from the pandemic and labor shortages, leading to fewer jobs and more restaurants eliminating the tips that many workers have come to rely on.
Aside from the wage and tip debate, the restaurant industry in recent years has made moves toward curbing employee abuse. Starting last year, the prestigious James Beard Award for the nation’s top regional chefs now includes an ethics investigation of finalists. As a result, Alabama chef Timothy Hontzas of Johnny’s Restaurant, a finalist for the Best Chef: South category in 2023, was disqualified for allegedly berating employees and yelling at customers for not shutting the restaurant’s front door.
The awards’ ethics component was triggered in 2020 by an anonymous letter from staffers at the James Beard Foundation calling on senior leadership to address “pay disparity, inadequate benefits, long hours, and challenging working conditions” in the industry. The letter demanded that the foundation hire a human resources representative to “focus on community culture.”
Locally, some restaurants say they’re getting the message. Chris Todd, director of operations for Via Management Company—owners of Nicola’s, Via Vite, and Forno Osteria restaurants—says he’s seen dramatic changes in the industry over the past five years, especially since the pandemic. Gone are the days when an enraged chef could throw plates of food on the kitchen floor because servers weren’t keeping up with customer orders, behavior Todd says he witnessed in his days as a server 10 years ago. “That certainly was not the trajectory that we as an industry should have been on,” he says.
Work/life balance is also improving in the industry, he says. “People are scheduling more realistic hours and setting more realistic expectations with the amount of production that is expected from salaried and hourly employees,” says Todd. With the labor shortage creating other opportunities for restaurant workers, managers are “really concentrating a lot more on a company’s culture.”
More transparency in the pay process for tipped employees has been a management goal of his own restaurant group, Todd says. And with new software that allows managers to keep track of tips at the point of sale to avoid confusion or mishandling, payroll transparency is easier than ever. “Our current policy is that anyone who wants to see their tips or their daily pay is more than welcome to,” he says.
Restaurant owners and managers who break the law or abuse their employees can no longer expect their victims to be silent, Spring says. Thanks to advocacy groups like Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center and One Fair Wage, hospitality employees are learning about their rights.
Much of the local networking among bartenders and servers takes place during informal gatherings at OTR establishments, says Spring, most often in the early morning hours after work and during off days on Monday and Tuesday. The gripe and therapy sessions are also a way of providing mutual aid to one another, “both mental health-wise and with substance abuse and just being there for one another,” she says, adding that she recently arranged Narcan training for 26 bartenders.
Customers, too, can help, Spring says. “I want people to know and understand that, behind that server’s apron, behind that bar, behind that kitchen, we are human beings with real things going on in our lives,” she says. “Respect us, tip us, don’t yell at us. Just treat us with mutual respect, and everyone will be better for it.”
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