Economy, opportunity thinning restaurants' supply of cooks

Sous chef Frank Hanes and line cook Maree Garcia work together in the kitchen, Friday December 20, 2013, at the Aziza Restaurant in San Francisco, Calif. Sous chef Frank Hanes and line cook Maree Garcia work together in the kitchen, Friday December 20, 2013, at the Aziza Restaurant in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Economy, opportunity thinning restaurants' supply of cooks 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Frank Hanes, a 25-year-old sous chef, moved to San Francisco from his native Vermont to pursue a career in cooking. He has been working at Aziza in the Richmond District for the last year, and both he and Aziza chef-owner Mourad Lahlou say it's been a match made in heaven.

But recently, Hanes gave Lahlou his notice. He's moving back to the other side of the country.

"I'm learning so much more here than I would on the East Coast. I've seen food I never even knew existed," Hanes said. "But my girlfriend and I have been looking for our own spot, and we couldn't even find a single-bedroom apartment."

As upscale restaurants continue to open at a dizzying pace - witness this year's premieres of the critically acclaimed Coqueta, Tosca Cafe, Fog City, Roka Akor and Saison - and diners continue to pack them, there's a spoiler lurking behind the boom: There are not enough people to cook the food.

"Most of the Franks are going to leave eventually," Lahlou said. "We're going to lose Frank - not just Aziza, but the Bay Area. He's so talented, and he's going to go somewhere else."

Salaries fall short

The Bay Area has no dearth of chefs - the leaders of the kitchens, the creators, the bosses. It's the engine behind the scenes - the hardworking, skilled cooks in the kitchen - that's in decline.

"To me, it's an epidemic. It's that bad," said David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor.

While the plight of fast-food workers has moved into the national spotlight, full-service Bay Area restaurants have their own labor challenges.

"It doesn't matter what level the restaurant is at, whether it's a little mom-and-pop place on the corner or a four-star, everyone is having a hard time getting cooks," said Staffan Terje of Perbacco.

San Francisco has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the country, yet according to a 2012 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, restaurant cooks in San Francisco make an average annual salary of $27,660, well below the average San Francisco salary of $62,680. This year, The Chronicle reported that the median monthly rent for San Francisco apartments listed on one website was $3,398, up 21 percent from 2012.

It's a dynamic that becomes even more troubling given that independent restaurants do not pay cooks very well, due in large part to their traditionally slim profit margins. The 2013-14 operations report by the National Restaurant Association showed that the median profit margin for restaurants with average checks of $25 and higher was a mere 4.5 percent.

"The city dynamic has become too expensive for a cook to survive," said Chris Cosentino of Incanto.

Cosentino, like many others, came to San Francisco in his early 20s as an ambitious and penniless cook. Decades ago, aspiring chefs only had two real options if they wanted to learn from the best: New York City and California. But now other parts of the country are undergoing food renaissances, so those cooks once who might have fed San Francisco are now staying in - or going back to - Charleston and Nashville, Seattle and Portland.

Those cities may, in fact, have the opposite problem.

"There are too many people moving to Portland to be cooks," said Gabriel Rucker, a Napa native who moved to Portland a decade ago and is now the award-winning chef/owner of LePigeon.

The Portland market, he said, "is flooded."

Yet, the richness of the American culinary landscape isn't the only thing wooing young cooks away from San Francisco restaurants.

Lure of tech companies

Many older chefs grumble that young cooks are increasingly less willing to dedicate the time and repetitions to learn the craft. Some say it's an attitude derived from the lure of television fame and glamour. Others attribute the impatience to financial debt incurred during culinary school.

Plus, restaurants are no longer the only source of employment.

Tech companies - or, more precisely, their on-site cafeterias - are a major new draw. The likes of Google, Oracle and Twitter can often offer more appealing routines than grueling restaurant work: better hours, better salaries, better benefits.

"That's where a lot of staff is going," Cosentino said. "Everybody is happy that they're our customers, but they're also the ones with gigantic cafeterias full of restaurants. We cannot compete with their wages or hours."

Even smaller startups like Munchery - a meal delivery service that recently hired Gitane chef Bridget Batson - are wooing folks away from restaurants.

There's other competition, too, in the form of food trucks and pop-up restaurants.

Young chefs like 29-year-old Anthony Yang now have more paths to success. Yang's resume lists fine dining places like Per Se in New York and Michael Mina in San Francisco. But this year, he left his sous chef job to start his own pop-up, named Ante Meridian.

The industry has diversified, Yang said.

"It's not what it was a few years ago, where you have to work your way up, working five to 10 years to outlast everyone and then you become the sous chef and someone else leaves and then you become the chef."

For Yang - and many like him - pop-ups are the first step toward a brick-and-mortar restaurant. Popular spots like Mission Chinese Food, Wise Sons and Radio Africa have followed this path.

Smart people needed

Many young cooks say entrepreneurial aspirations can trump low pay and late nights working in someone else's business.

"It's physically grueling, mentally challenging," said Amaryll Schwertner of Boulettes Larder and Bouli Bar. "So people opt out - especially smart people. And we need more smart people working for us."

Some of the smart people in the industry are conjuring up ideas to fix the broken system. One suggestion is a tip credit.

California law does not allow restaurants to share tips. It's up to the people who receive the tip - the servers - to distribute it among the cooks, dishwashers and the rest of the staff. That creates a situation where servers can make two to three times as much as their kitchen cohorts, despite similar base salaries.

A tip credit, which is in place in 42 states, would allow a restaurateur to allocate tips to count toward minimum-wage obligations for tipped employees, whose base salary would be lower. Restaurateurs say this system would allow them to pay the un-tipped cooks more, evening out the staff income.

Restaurateurs are also looking at offering more training so their current workers can take on more complicated cooking.

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association and City College of San Francisco have started a skills enhancement program, a three-month class that provides culinary training for restaurant employees. It's designed for hardworking but untrained staffers to receive formal tutelage.

The program is free to employers and employees - if the employee is a San Francisco resident and if, upon completion of the course, he or she gets a title change and pay raise.

Many in the industry say if the cook shortage doesn't change, diners might see fewer ambitious restaurants. While new places from big names like Michael Mina and Corey Lee are on the books for next year, other high-end spots could downshift.

Price increases

One is Fifth Floor, which is closing in January, to be replaced by a more casual concept. Bazirgan will remain the chef at the new restaurant, but the kitchen will require fewer cooks.

The other possible effect: higher prices at labor-intensive restaurants. San Francisco diners don't seem to mind paying premium prices for sustainable systems when it comes to produce, so many are asking, "Why not pay more for a sustainable labor system?"

In any event, restaurateurs say something has to give.

"It's a case of too many chiefs and not enough troops," Schwertner said. "Our industry is in a tricky spot."