Working for free is common in the restaurant industry, particularly among more fine-dining restaurants. Part of that I think is the history of kitchens as a guild. There is so much to learn as a cook, that an apprenticeship—even in the past, when cooking from scratch was an everyday occurrence—was necessary. I, personally, would be much less developed as a cook if I had never had mentors.
Of course this also continues exploitative practices. Especially in certain circumstances. At one restaurant I worked at, I would sometimes work five and a half hours for free each day.
When I “staged” at other restaurants—meaning I would intern for a short period, usually a single day—I would work for free. Some of those days were exceedingly long, from nine in the morning to one-thirty or so in the morning. But I was fed staff meal. And those experiences were absolutely worth it. You can learn so much in such circumstances. It gives you an opportunity to see if you would like working there, and for the chef to see how well you might fit there.
Another reason for expecting cooks to work for free is the slim profit margin of even successful restaurants. Two of the most famous restaurants in the world, El Bulli, in Spain, and Noma, in Denmark, though both have been awarded Pellegrino’s #1 restaurant in the world award multiple times, could not remain open. They would not have been able to operate at all if they had actually paid everyone to work there. El Bulli, for example, had 30 interns at all times…and paid not a single one of them.
This is even more pronounced in places like Japan, where cooks at higher-end restaurants are essentially indentured servants for about a decade. Often at Kaiseki restaurants in Japan the cooks live in bunks in a building attached to the restaurant. They work exceedingly long hours. The last thing they do during the workday is deep-clean the kitchen. The first thing they do every morning is sharpen their knives. The only days they have off are those days the restaurant is closed.
I had a friend who worked at one of the most renowned restaurants in Japan. The chef there would invite his friends over after the restaurant closed. But it was unacceptable that the cooks should go home before the chef. So they would have to wait around till the chef and his friends got done drinking, at whatever time that might have been, three AM or not…and then clean up after them.
From a chef’s perspective, though, this is why cooks from such places are so disciplined and so skilled.
Such internships, unfortunately, favor people coming into the industry with independent wealth. Usually an unpaid internship lasts about three months. But there are places where the cook may have to wait six months before they start getting paid for their work. I know one restaurant that expects cooks to work for a year before being offered a paid position. This restaurant is located in Napa—not a cheap place to live, for anyone.
A restaurant I worked at briefly in Los Gatos had an intern that lived in the Santa Cruz mountains, in a tent, for the six months of his internship. Because he could not afford to do it any other way. The chefs at the restaurant were quite proud of this fact. I was only able to work there because my mother happened to live in Santa Cruz. I would drive home over the 17 sometimes at two AM, absolutely exhausted. The highway there is quite windy. The mist from the nearby ocean would hide the sharp turns. Semi-trucks barreling down the mountain would suddenly appear behind or ahead of me. I had taken that road the other way seventeen hours earlier. I was not sleeping well already because I was nervous about working there. I was always afraid I was going to crash.
The restaurant industry has changed dramatically. Particularly in the last couple decades. The last restaurant I worked at has begun paying their interns a nominal fee at the start of their internship. Still, $700 is not half enough to even rent a room in the Bay Area anymore. Many cooks, in addition to their normal college debts, also have debts from culinary school. So those with more resources continue to have more opportunities.
I wonder, writing this, if there are any similarities in other industries, which industries might that be, and how and what changes are occurring to hopefully make things better for people working in them.