restaurant jobs

What will it take to pay restaurant workers a living wage? Tipping or no tipping?  Legislative or management changes? Questions abound about how to get the industry where it needs to go to ensure a sustainable career for hospitality workers. On this episode, Kiki speaks with Saru Jayaraman, one of the industry’s leading worker advocates as President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. Saru takes listeners through the historic background and current battle for restaurant wages. 

Get to know the organizations and resources mentioned in this episode:

One Fair Wage

Food Labor Research Center

High Road Restaurants

To learn more about RWCF’s work and donate to the cause, visit www.restaurantworkerscf.org.

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Andrew recently sat down with the accomplished chef and restaurateur Alex Raij, who owns and operates a number of the most personal, specific, and successfully realized Spanish restaurants (La Vara, Saint Julivert Fisherie, El Quinto Pino, Txikito) in New York City, all in collaboration with her husband Eder Montero. Alex opens up about the genesis of her restaurant concepts, her food-focused Minneapolis childhood, and dream projects that linger in her imagination.

And in The Line-Up, our weekly news and commentary segment, Jodi Liano, founder and owner of San Francisco Cooking School, checks in from California to share some insights on what's different, and what remains the same, for culinary students in a late-COVID landscape. What's drawing them to cooking programs, what are their ambitions, and how many of them found the inspiration and courage to take the cooking school plunge because of the pandemic?

We also welcome a new sponsor to the Andrew Talks to Chefs family this week. To kick off the partnership, we welcome Brad Metzer, founder of Brad Metzger Restaurant Solutions (BMRS), to the pod as he offers the first of what will be a weekly selection of positions that his firm is looking to fill. (Andrew Talks to Chefs listeners are encouraged to reach out to BMRS at the special, dedicated email address created just for you at ATC@restaurant-solutions.com.)

Andrew Talks to Chefs is sponsored in part by meez; please check out this revolutionary new interactive recipe database and tool for professional chefs and cooks.

Please consider supporting Andrew Talks to Chefs via our Patreon page–we have just eliminated tiered contributor levels and invite one and all to support us at a minimum of just $2 per month. 

Andrew Talks to Chefs is a fully independent podcast and no longer affiliated with our former host network; please visit and bookmark our official website for all show updates, blog posts, personal and virtual appearances, and related information.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Andrew is a writer by trade. If you'd like to support him, there's no better way than by purchasing his most recent book, The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food (October 2023), about all the key people (in the restaurant, on farms, in delivery trucks, etc.) whose stories and work come together in a single restaurant dish.

We'd love if you followed us on Instagram. 

Please also follow Andrew's real-time journal of the travel, research, writing, and production of/for his next book The Opening (working title), which will track four restaurants in different parts of the U.S. from inception to launch.

For Andrew's writing, dining, and personal adventures, follow along at his personal feed.

Thank you for listening—please don't hesitate to reach out with any feedback and/or suggestions!

For four decades Jesse Cool has owned and operated the beloved Menlo Park restaurant Flea Street Cafe, and been a devoted proponent of organic cooking and dining. She joins Andrew to discuss her road from Pennsylvania to California, the ups and downs of running a restaurant over such a long timespan, and her dislike of the word chef, among myriad other subjects. (Listen to Jesse's earlier appearance on the pod.)

And a trio of experts from Brad Metzger Restaurant Solutions, a Southern California-based recruiting firm, share their observations about the emerging post-pandemic hospitality jobs market, from traditional pursuits to new and evolving options.

Please consider supporting Andrew Talks to Chefs via our Patreon page–we have just eliminated tiered contributor levels and invite one and all to support us at a minimum of just $2 per month. 

Andrew Talks to Chefs is a fully independent podcast and no longer affiliated with our former host network; please visit and bookmark our official website for all show updates, blog posts, personal and virtual appearances, and related information.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Andrew is a writer by trade. If you'd like to support him, there's no better way than by purchasing his most recent book, The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food (October 2023), about all the key people (in the restaurant, on farms, in delivery trucks, etc.) whose stories and work come together in a single restaurant dish.

We'd love if you followed us on Instagram. 

Please also follow Andrew's real-time journal of the travel, research, writing, and production of/for his next book The Opening (working title), which will track four restaurants in different parts of the U.S. from inception to launch.

For Andrew's writing, dining, and personal adventures, follow along at his personal feed.

Thank you for listening—please don't hesitate to reach out with any feedback and/or suggestions!