Apr 26, 2020
Serena Suh
The whole pandemic impacting our economy and the restaurant industry is a big, big event. But in the end, why is that so catastrophic is because of the ways that restaurant workers and the restaurant industry have not been given safety nets. And it's a bigger issue than the issue itself will not go away once the pandemic goes away. Right. And I think that this is a time when actually it's just an opportunity for us to see the underlying issue and immediate relief, such as advocacy, buying out and checking up on your friends.
Serena Suh
Although things are very important, but there are some long term things that we should pay attention to and get to know, especially if people who for whom restaurants are a big part of our social life and what we like to enjoy.
INTRO
On this episode of the Handle With Care podcast, COVID-19 edition, I am talking to Serena Suh. Serena lives and works in the restaurant industry in Chicago. Or at least she did until the coronavirus struck. Serena’s story and perspective is important: as a part of the restaurant industry, she gives voice to the stories of so many. Her story is also important because she is an advocate for meaningful, structural change on behalf of restaurant workers.
Before we begin, I want to thank our sponsor, FullStack PEO. How are you expressing care for your employees during this time of disruption? As health is top of mind, FullStack can helping, especially if you are a small business owner. FullStack PEO helps to manage your member benefits, releasing you to focus your attention on the other parts of running your business.
We are also sponsored by Handle with Care Consulting. Workplace Empathy has never been as important on as wide of a scale as it is now. Handle with Care Consulting offers trainings on compassion fatigue, how to create cultures of care, and communication coaching for downsizing.
Back to the podcast. Serena loves living in Chicago
Serena Suh
I love Chicago because it feels like a small town in a big city. So. In my experience, people smile at you. People ask you how you're doing. You can meet random people on public transportation, which I don't think is the case in a lot of other cities, architecturally beautiful.
Serena is also a photographer and a writer. My first contact with Serena was through a compelling piece she published in Medium , which I read on Facebook. I will include a link to the article in the show notes. Serena is also making a documentary film about restaurant workers in Chicago. She is an eloquent advocate for those affected by restaurant closures and, after reading her post, I knew I wanted her to share with you, the Handlw with Care listening audience.
Serena Suh
And there are some, you know, collective struggles, and I think as someone who studied philosophy and anthropology, I can kind of see those. A bit clearer and clearer, maybe or maybe my attention just goes to some of the social or like social like inconsistencies or maybe, maybe some injustices that I see.
Serena Suh
So I would love to see like reform in the industry or something I'm really passionate about. Especially regarding. Providing employee rights, some kind of standard of living for people.
After graduating from college, Serena went to work for a perfume compounder. But she, ultimately, wanted to move in a direction that was in line with her dreams
- Serena Suh
Being a chef was a dream since I was 10 years old. So I just ended up cold emailing a bunch of shops in Chicago and eventually one took me and I was like cooking at a restaurant in Chicago for about half a year before I joined a restaurant group. And I've been there since. OK. Yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
What is especially in the news cycle and at all of us are looking and seeing our neighborhood restaurants close for someone who has not worked like as a line chef?
- Liesel Mertes
What, what is the what is the daily ness of that like? And is it what would eat? No, we're talking economics a lot.
- Liesel Mertes
Is it hard to get by as a line chef? Are you living like day to day?
- Serena Suh
Yeah, definitely. So like Cook, it's it's really interesting. They're. It is a skills job, so you get better with time and you do get gain more expertise on like, how do you do your job?.
- Serena Suh
Well, and you learn a lot on the job. But. That doesn't really have to do anything with your pay. There's already a standard determine pay and it's basically sub minimum wage. So even if you go to like a Michelin star restaurant, most line cooks are getting just one or two dollars over minimum wage in the city of Chicago.
- Serena Suh
I think the average hourly pay of line cooks is $14 an hour. And that varies with each restaurant group. Like am I allowed to mention specific restaurant groups? Sure. So, for example, Hog Salt is a big restaurant group in Chicago. They're paying their employees around $18 an hour on average. But that really depends on each restaurant group. Each restaurant in and with their capacities are. So mineshafts definitely are living paycheck to paycheck. For my experience. I don't know anyone who's living comfortably.
- Liesel Mertes
So I imagine this is a particular blow to people who already were hanging on with a pretty thin margin.
- Serena Suh
Definitely, definitely. They're, from my experience.
- Serena Suh
When I was working as a line cook and wanting to become a chef. Part of why I. It was because I had too many too much student loans and I just couldn't. I just couldn't live paying student loans and paying rent and finding time even for like a coffee or finding an extra and got me over a cup of coffee a week.
- Serena Suh
I just didn't see a future for myself in one if I continued on that route. I think it's similar for other cuts as well. A lot of folks I know have graduated from or universities and decided to pursue cooking or they want the culinary school. So we're all kind of in the same boat as a lot of other Americans. We all have a student that we all have bills to pay. So having no income definitely takes a toll on everyone in the industry.
- Liesel Mertes
I want to hear more about that. Give me a little background you mentioned. This has been a dream since I was 10. For you, for other people who with these four year degrees of this culinary school background, what did you just love about being in the restaurant business? Tell me some of the joy for me. This is just great moments.
- Serena Suh
Well, what I love about…this is a everyone and I don't want to romanticize or idealize the situation because there are some people who are in the industry because they have no other choice or no skills. But I think that in the best form, people and cooks and chefs that I've known really just love the art of hospitality and bringing people joy in the day to day. And I think there's something so humbling about that, that not my chefs have, have a lot of pride and like big egos, they're kind of known for that.
- Serena Suh
But I think at the end of the day, they really do love feeding people and kind of wowing people and showing people a little bit of magic in their day to day. So, for instance, I have a story to tell. Yes, but.
- Serena Suh
So, for instance, when I was working at the restaurant, it's a Michelin star restaurant. So we had it kind of felt like being in the military where every second mattered. And you were going against the clock constantly.
- Serena Suh
And. You don't get time to like rest or time for yourself and you're always stressed.
- Serena Suh
But during service, I could kind of interact with the guests sometimes because you would have to have a couple of minutes during service, especially on a slow day. And it was an open kitchen so I could turn around and talk to guests at the bar. And at the time, we had an orange give me a green almond sorbet, which is essentially a sorbet that was molded into like a like a circle and then had shaved green almonds on top with sugar twirls and saffron coated sugar.
- Serena Suh
And it turned around. I asked one of the guests, like. How he like the desert and turns out that he was he grew up in Lebanon and green almonds are native or indigenous to the Mediterranean area. You saying like, wow, this like totally brought me back to my childhood because when I was younger, I used to eat green almonds off the trees with like salt with my grandparents and my parents. And this was just like a totally different way to experience green almonds.
- Serena Suh
I thought this is like very meaningful to me. And I truly think that it's moments like that that chefs, like, love to elevate and recreate and bring to people. And I find it very. They just run. Yeah, just for a human perspective, I like respect people in hospitality so much because of that. But like without a lot of payoff. But they're willing to give so much of their time and their bodies and their creativity to others and to bringing those embody moments of connection.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. And what I hear in a really beautiful way. So, okay, we've had this. These reverberations throughout so many areas of society. Can you tell me? Like what? What did it look like?
I’d like to jump in and say that I recorded this a few weeks ago, but the story and impact is still so important, even if the timeline has shifted.
- Serena Suh
Yeah. There's a huge number of people being affected. I mean, in the United States alone, there's fifteen point six million. I think it's the number that I thought today. People be employed in the restaurant industry and they're all being affected right now. So our company is just one of many, many like restaurant food in the United States and in Chicago and not even restaurant groups, but independent venues being affected. So, yeah. Quickly, just a couple days later, I started getting a bit worried.
- Serena Suh
I started contacting my managers and asking like, hey, can I. Should I accept, expect a layoff so that I can know and be prepared.
- Serena Suh
And even at the time, even three days before I got laid off, my manager was like, probably fine, I'll keep you updated. So it really was. Each day had a new kind of waterfall of events that none of us was prepared for. And then on Sunday, I think on the 15th.
- Serena Suh
You got an email from our ownership saying this is the last thing that we want to do with very heavy, heavy hearts that we're going to furlough everyone in the company except just a few. And they're doing everything that they can right now. But.
- Serena Suh
So was just in a matter of five days where it went from there working from home and then, OK, everyone pays getting cut. Everyone's hours are getting cut and then everyone's being furloughed. So no one's getting paid.
- Liesel Mertes
What a tumultuous couple of days. I imagine that that was just a roller coaster of uncertainty. How has it felt in the aftermath? What are the things that are keeping you up at night?
- Serena Suh
Yeah. Well, I think. I think definitely. For me personally, I'm less worried about myself, in the sense that I think I personally have a decent, a really awesome community that I can rely on. But. There are some people with like families, you know, a lot of people that I knew was in contact with in the restaurant group.
- Serena Suh
I believe over half of the night could even be. A majority of the employees in the restaurant industry are over 35, so it means that it's not just like a transition or transition job for a lot of people. It's a career. It's their main means of income. So people with families work in the service industry. And it's not just like a recent college grad trying to pay rent. You know, it's people with medical bills and tuition and rent and all that stuff in content.
- Serena Suh
So I really worry for those people, especially families, couples who work in the restaurant industry because they can't imagine. Losing both of both incomes in a matter of days and then having to worry about how you're going to support your family.
- Serena Suh
And I also worry for people without. Skills to work other jobs. For instance, people who've always been in the culinary industry since they're like McSteamy, wonderful energy or maybe didn't go to court is going to know how to do anything else like those.
- Serena Suh
Those people need help, like transitioning into different industries that they need. And I don't know if that's an option that that's an available resource right now. Oh, yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
I hear the ripple effects into people's lives. And I think what you said is particularly a learning for me, because sometimes we can think, oh, yeah, you know, people they work in restaurants when they graduated from college or when they're getting their master's degree. But to put numbers to it and give a more realistic face to the people who are being affected.
- Liesel Mertes
When you talk about your support system on a personal level, what has been particularly meaningful to you over the last two weeks as people have supported you and reached out in the midst of physical distancing?
- Serena Suh
Definitely. All I think two things try me saying like, hey, I I've been seeing the news and what's going on in the restaurant industry. I'm so sorry. Please let me know. I can be here for you. That is enough for me. And I suddenly got. It kind of felt like I was standing in front of like an audience. And then I saw my friends and like I was able to put faces on to like who I could rely on at this time.
- Serena Suh
So that was awesome. I've had friends straight up. Just send money. Money. And I didn't ask for it. I did a. I didn't tell anyone that I was financially struggling, but. People who were not this are not being affected by this and who knew that I was in the restaurant industry and I was expressing that like people in the industry is struggling, survive and then decided to act on it like that has been. Really, really touching.
- Serena Suh
And I think that. Action is like the best way to help people right now. And to show that you're there for them, whether that's. Calling your representatives, they're a bunch of small business relief bills that are kind of on the line right now. You think that Illinois is due for one today?
- Liesel Mertes
And yet, Serena, a little bit more because you've, you've thought on a personal level, but you've also published, we’ll link the article with this and done some thinking about on a structural level how to allocate support and in the midst of people sitting at home wondering what they should do.
- Liesel Mertes
Let me give you a segue. Tell us more about some of the structural things that are going on.
- Serena Suh
Yes. So as soon as the governor announced that all small businesses were going to be closed, at least for regular service, a bunch of chefs, chef owners in Chicago got together and kind of basically wrote a public letter to the governor asking for support in the form of a payroll tax. Give me to make sure that I got. What they send. Word for word. I doubt. So a large group of independent chefs in Chicago got together and they've asked for immediate support of emergency unemployment benefits to all hourly and salaried workers and to eliminate all payroll tax and to call for rent and loan abatements for workers impacted in the restaurant industry as well as restaurants themselves.
- Serena Suh
That lowers an immediate emergency action, steps that restaurant owners have asked for, at least in Illinois.
As an update, restaurants are now specifically lobbying Congress for legislation to provide relief to their industry, especially after the stop-and-go, limited launch of the PPP Act.
- Serena Suh
And I know there are similar movements in different states as well. There are some restaurant associations, such as in Illinois, the Illinois Restaurant Association, that's working to advocate to Congress to pass business relief bills. So in Illinois, specifically, they're calling for a 350 billion dollars for small business relief and hundred billion dollars for unemployment insurance. And so there's just like.
- Serena Suh
Immediate thing, kind of to put out the fire, essentially, because everyone kind of feels like they're burning right now. Small business owners have very intimate relationships with their employees. I think in good cases. And it really does put emotional and spiritual toll on people to have to let people go knowing that they don't have a safety net.
- Liesel Mertes
Are there other things that come to mind, whether that is ordering takeout or other measures that are helpful right now for people saying, I care. I don't know what to do?
- Serena Suh
For sure. I would say, yeah, if you know someone in the restaurant industry or in the service industry or to be honest. Any client facing industry, because with the virus being a kind of person to person having a person to person spread. Anyone who is in, whether it's hair, entertainment or tourism, all those industries are affected.
- Serena Suh
So if you have a close friend or acquaintance that, you know is stuck in that rut. I would say reaching out for emotional support or possibly the financial support and an understanding that it is difficult for people to ask for financial support in this time. I think that we all kind of. Have. A desire to be self-sustaining, so I think be empathetic to that is very important. And restaurants in particular. For restaurants who are offering carried out.
- Serena Suh
I think it's important to understand that it really is just. To make sure that they can stay open through all of this and that at the end of this pandemic that there will be something to come back to. It's not guaranteed that. That there will be that all restaurants will survive this essentially still carrying out, buying gift cards. Although things are extremely helpful and important, there are some restaurants that have even started GO-FUND Me’s for their employees.
– Serena Suh
The whole pandemic impacting our economy and the restaurant industry is a big, big event.
- Serena Suh
But in the end, why is that so catastrophic is because of the ways that restaurant workers and the restaurant industry have not been given safety nets. And it's a bigger issue than the issue itself will not go away once the pandemic goes away. Right. And I think that this is a time when actually it's just an opportunity for us to see the underlying issue and immediate relief, such as advocacy, buying out and checking up on your friends.
- Serena Suh
Although things are very important, but there are some long term things that we should pay attention to and get to know, especially if people who for whom restaurants are a big part of our social life and what we like to enjoy.
- Serena Suh
So I hope that. That there will be a new sense of awareness about these issues. And if the documentary does like flour into something I can, I would love to share. But if it doesn't, I think that's a big message. And the takeaway from this event.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
Here are three take-aways from my conversation with Serena:
- Serena said that “Action is the best way to help people right now.”Do you love your favorite local restaurant that has had to close? Do you have a friend that has been impacted by the lay-offs? Take time to call your representative and say that you care about specific legislation that provides funds and reform to the restaurant industry. I know that I have called my representatives multiple times over the last few weeks. After all, that is what they are there for in a representative democracy. And you can read more in Serena’s article, which I have linked in the show notes. Taking time to educate yourself about the inequities in the system is its own form of empathy and care.
- Reach out to those that have been affected.Serena said how much a call or a text meant.
- Send money.I appreciate that Serena was really up front about how helpful money has been. Don’t know how to spend your relief payment from the government? How about sending some of it to the waitress or chef you know that has been laid off?
Thanks again to our sponsors, Fullstack PEO and Handle with Care Consulting for your support. Together, lets put empathy to work.
OUTRO
Link to Medium Article:
https://medium.com/@serenajsuh/covid-19-outbreak-crisis-in-restaurants-46a5a4d6da08