IT’S A DISHASTER!
Even celeb chef David Burke can’t find kitchen staff
One of the most thankless jobs has been made worse by the labor shortage — and even celebrity chefs are twisting themselves into knots to hire and retain dishwashers.
David Burke, the Food Network star behind 18 restaurants, including the David Burke Tavern in Manhattan, says he has been so desperate for dishwashers and other kitchen staff he recently asked his personal landscaper and former housekeeper to work in one of his restaurants.
After they agreed to don aprons in exchange for more money, the “Iron Chef America” contestant was finally well-staffed enough to open his Rumson, NJ, steakhouse and sushi bar Red Horse Tavern in March.
But it’s been a struggle. For every person Burke manages to hire, another one quits. And the constant churn makes everyone else’s jobs harder — creating a vicious cycle of staffing woes.
The landscaper-turned-dishwasher, Tony Edele, found himself clocking 90-hour weeks at first — working seven days a week, even on Mondays when the place is closed, to clean up, Burke said.
The hours were so grueling and tensions so high that Edele has walked off the job more than once, Burke said. “We give him a day to cool off and [he] comes back,” said Burke.
Burke and others say beefed-up pandemic unemployment benefits get some blame for the restaurant labor shortage. But working long hours in a sweaty kitchen, on weekends and holidays, for relatively low pay, has never been an easy sell.
“It’s not a glorious job and its steaming hot,” Burke said.
To hire dishwashers, Burke has also tried reaching out to maid services and day laborers — to no avail.
As soon as the day laborers learned they would be washing dishes, they said: “No, no kitchen work,” Burke said. A couple of maidservices companies provided staff initially, but the workers “just faded away,” he said.
Burke says the laborers think they can earn more money in landscaping, plus they don’t like the hours involved in kitchen work. They travel to jobs together or rely on public transportation, which can be spotty at night.
“They don’t like working at night and getting home at midnight,” Burke said.
Edele, a mechanical engineer who lost his job during the pandemic, told The Post he took the dishwasher gig to earn more — close to $20 an hour, factoring in overtime — and loyalty to Burke. “I know David and he couldn’t get anyone to do it,” Edele told The Post.
But it hasn’t been easy, Edele said. “Everyone categorizes dishwashing as a break-your-ass job, and it is,” Edele said. “It’s nonstop work, cleaning the floor and maintaining the entire kitchen. And if you take a 20-minute break there are twice as many dishes waiting for you when get back, so you take a break when it’s finally over at 10 p.m.”
And while Edele has managed to tough it out, many haven’t.
Burke’s ex-maid recently left to get married. And one of his sous chefs quit after a building-trades company offered to train him to work as a generator technician in Connecticut.
The sous chef, John O’Neil, explained his decision in an e-mail to The Post: “I had been in the restaurant business for over 20 years as it was just a passion of mine. As with everything in life, we need to change our paths in order to better our quality of life.”
Another challenge, said Burke — an award-winning toque who cut his teeth in the 1980s at the River Cafe in Brooklyn — is the blatant poaching of staff.
Three of Burke’s restaurants are in Jersey shore towns where he says, “I’m losing cooks to my competitors who are paying them in cash, off the books and up to $35 an hour.”
And while he’s managed to beef up staff somewhat in recent weeks — allowing Edele to lower his weekly hours to 50 from 90 — he’s still desperately scouting for staff.
“We are taking any able-bodied person we can get and training them,” Burke said. “I’ll take an Uber driver. We just need bodies.”