Pandemic devastates middle class of restaurant industry
In September when he was hired as a cook at Chicago’s Fulton Market Kitchen, Jeff Danaher asked the chef about his plans for the winter.
“He was like, ‘I’m open four days a week, and I’m trying to go to seven,’ ” recalled Danaher, who had been out of work for months. “It was a huge relief.”
But five weeks later, indoor dining in the city came to a halt. Danaher, who made nearly $50,000 per year before the pandemic and had his pick of positions in recent years, was jobless again.
“After about the second or third week into COVID,” he said, “I got scared for my job security in a way that I never had before in 10 years of cooking.”
In sheer economic terms, few workers have stood more directly in the path of the pandemic than the roughly 10 million people employed by restaurants at the start of the year. The industry shed close to half those jobs in March and April, and was still down almost 1.5 million as of October.
The winter will likely bring another round of pain: In recent weeks, reservations have dropped substantially in coldweather states like Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, according to data from OpenTable.
The crisis has forced many of the industry’s working poor to choose between financial ruin and harrowing work conditions. But more so than many other professions, the pandemic has also devastated the industry’s middle class: the thousands of cooks, chefs and servers whocan make $35,000 to $85,000 per year in food hubs like Chicago.
For Danaher, 29, the trouble started in early March, when he left his job as a sous-chef at a higher-end casual restaurant in Chicago over concerns about drug use and harassment among the wait staff.
Soon after, the state suspended on-site dining.
Danaher tried to file for unemployment, but the website was overloaded and the phone lines were jammed.
By mid-April, Danaher was inquiring at pizza joints and even a Dunkin’, but got no takers.
Around the same time, the industry was staggering back to life.
By July, the enhanced unemployment benefits, which Danaher started receiving only in May, were about to expire, and his finances were looking grim.
He came down with COVID the next month, though his symptoms were mild.