15 February 8 - 14, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents O n multiple days during the last four years, Clayton thought he’d reached a break- ing point. There was the time at CBD Provisions, an upscale restaurant in The Joule hotel, when his small mistakes in food prep were met with lacerating criti- cism from his coworkers. One seemed to have made it his mission to belittle Clayton at every opportunity, often getting in his face and demanding to know why he was still working there. Then there was the craze of “Barbenheimer,” when Clayton, then working at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Denton, suffered several breakdowns while he and his teammates tried to get out 400 orders in two hours. Most painfully, there was the 2021 death by suicide of his friend and fellow kitchen staffer. It was the third suicide among his friends since the pandemic began. “He was a very kindhearted soul, which is unusual to meet in the kitchen,” Clayton says. In his experience “the men who end up thriving are not the best people.” Clayton — not his real name — started working in restaurants in 2019. He has bused tables, worked on the line in kitchens and bounced between several restaurants in Denton and Dallas. He asked the Observer to use a pseudonym so he could speak freely about his experiences without fearing re- percussions from employers. After leaving Alamo Drafthouse in July, Clayton returned a month later out of necessity. “Staying through Barbie and Oppen- heimer broke my brain ... broke me inside,” he says. “You gotta draw a line somewhere, but some people can’t draw the line.” Clayton says he has trouble sleeping and is often angry for no perceptible reason. The restaurant business has taken a sizable toll on his mental and physical health, just as it did for Lauren Belmore, who worked in the industry for eight years. “I went to theater school, and restaurants are basically drama,” Belmore says. “It’s ba- sically theater, which was very attractive to me. Big personalities, high tension.” She worked her way up to manager and then head chef in a career that included stints at Spiral Diner in Denton, Snooze on Oak Lawn, Zoli’s Pizza in Addison and Odd- fellows in Oak Cliff. “You forget what life is like outside of it at some point,” she says. “If you’re a kitchen manager, the kitchen is your life. Your hob- bies go away, and I developed a really un- healthy relationship with my phone.” Like Clayton, she faced multiple days that, in hindsight, should have been the breaking point: the day she finally said “enough is enough” and, like so many of her peers, left the industry for good. She takes pride in never walking out on a shift, though, even if, as a chef, she rehired people who did that very thing to her. “If you have a good guy, they can do any- thing and you’ll take ‘em back,” she says. “I let guys ride the clock all the time. I had a brunch guy who was late, and when I called him, he said, ‘I’m in Royse City.’ If you’re in Royse City at 6:30 a.m., I know you’re either doing rails or shooting up. He was two hours late, but he still whipped out a great brunch.” Belmore would later break free from the world in which she seemed stuck, but not before years of contending with the themes that have come to define kitchen work: tox- icity, untenable hours and a complete lack of work-life balance. Those themes are a core part of the critically acclaimed, restaurant- centered television show The Bear, which Belmore has yet to watch in full but certainly finds relevant. And the show, through the le- gions of memes it has inspired, has raised awareness about the precarious position restaurants occupy. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employer demand and em- ployee supply were in sync from 2000 through early 2020. Then March 2020 brought mass layoffs from which the indus- try has yet to recover. According to a Na- tional Restaurant Association report, staffing in the restaurant industry was 3.6% below pre-pandemic levels at the start of 2023, or 450,000 positions. And 80% of res- taurant operators report they are having a hard time filling open jobs. Yet the food service industry workforce was projected to grow by more than 500,000 jobs in 2023, surpassing pre-pan- demic levels and putting more strain on an already overworked industry. Betsey Stevenson, a professor of econom- ics at the University of Michigan, summa- rized the industry’s problem for The Washington Post: Other industries offered better pay and more flexibility. “Their workers have left to go some- where else,” she says. Meanwhile, there’s evidence this short- age is having an effect on customer opinion. In a survey from the software provider HungerRush, nearly one-third of respon- dents say their experience has worsened because of overstressed staff, while 57% say they are not confident their order will be taken correctly. Interviews with chefs, owners and staff- ers like Clayton and Belmore indicate these problems are linked. Until the industry shakes its reputation for toxicity, employee and customer experience will suffer. Smaller, independent restaurants will struggle the most as they’re hard-pressed to find a consistent flow of qualified candi- dates. It’s incumbent upon overwhelmed chefs and managers to help people strug- gling with the burnout that’s become syn- onymous with the industry. “There’s a shortage of people interested in coming into the industry, and that’s a big reason I hold everyone close to my chest,” says Janice Provost, the chef and proprietor of Parigi on Oak Lawn Avenue. “It’s easier to keep an employee than it is to hire a new employee.” Plus, those who do enter the industry have different priorities than their prede- cessors. “The new generation wants a life; they don’t want the 100-hour work weeks,” says veteran restaurant chef Sharon Van Meter. “Our industry is in a cycle that has to be bro- ken. We’re dying for staffing.” Illustration by Bryan Kelly In the Kitchen X and X Over the Line As restaurants flourish in Dallas, many working in kitchens are trying to escape the toxic culuture. BY TYLER HICKS >> p16 | CITY OF ATE | t Dish
