Last Saturday, I poured wine, greeted regulars and strangers and bused tables at Contento, the restaurant I co-owned in East Harlem, for the last time. After more than three years of service, during which The New York Times ranked us twice among the 100 Best Restaurants in New York City and the Michelin Guide gave me its sommelier award, I had to say goodbye to my talented staff and lifelong dream of owning a restaurant. The combination of inflation, rising crime that required us to pay for security guards and declining profits simply proved insurmountable.
I’m crushed that we had to close Contento. I have to admit I’m also relieved. Running a restaurant in 2024 meant taking no salary while working a full-time hospitality job elsewhere in order to afford private health insurance. This is the cruel math of owning a small business and being disabled in America.
My story is one small part of an ongoing struggle for restaurant workers and culinary culture across New York City and the country. If you’re wondering why you so rarely see a disabled person like myself on a wheelchair on the floor of your favorite restaurant, why menu prices seem so high or why service feels uneven nearly five years after the pandemic began, the American health care system deserves much of the blame. If that sounds melodramatic, ask your favorite server.
It has always been difficult to sustain a career in hospitality, but brief rumblings of progress during the early days of the pandemic brought us some hope. In 2020, when the true value of essential workers and the inequities they faced finally pierced the public consciousness, it seemed like we were on the brink of major change.
A glittering cast of chefs from across the country banded together to create the Independent Restaurant Coalition, an organization that began to lobby for financial and legislative protections for restaurant workers. In May 2020, chefs, chain restaurant executives and other culinary professionals went to the White House to campaign for federal assistance for restaurants. I hoped that the silver lining of that horrific global crisis was an opportunity to create a more sustainable restaurant industry, with the kind of jobs that people can keep without worrying about the worst.
Those positions largely still don’t exist. Restaurants have reopened their doors and reservations at top tables are as tough to get as ever, but make no mistake: The restaurant business is failing the people who love and need it.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 40 percent of full-time hospitality workers have had access to health coverage in 2024, compared to the 87 percent of full-time private sector jobs that offer it. As a result, many of the 17 million Americans who work in restaurants and hospitality are most likely skipping annual checkups or pap smears or praying their cough goes away on its own. They can’t afford to take a sick day.
People who work in food preparation and service have some of the lowest wages in the country, whether they’re operating a frying basket at a fast-food chain or prepping haute cuisine at a fine dining institution. In an industry where 10 percent profit margins are a gold standard of success, most restaurants can’t afford to offer standardized pay or consistent hours — the former is one of surveyed employees’ top reasons for leaving restaurant jobs — let alone benefits that give our work force a chance to live with dignity.
If people have other options, why wouldn’t they leave for jobs that better support their physical and mental health? Or that allow them to stay home when sick or grieving or without child care?
The few restaurant jobs that provide benefits and more stable working conditions require compromises of their own. Corporations with 50 or more employees, such as Starbucks, are required to offer full-time employees health care benefits. They’re able to do so and remain profitable partially because their size gives them leverage to negotiate with financial institutions and health care providers.
It’s a complicated bargain for workers, though. If a chef at a larger restaurant receives a job offer that would jump-start her career, but it doesn’t include health care and she has a pre-existing condition or plans to start a family, she may have to turn it down. Her professional potential is dictated by what benefits she can afford to lose.
Meanwhile, the most talented baristas at Starbucks or dedicated corporate chefs at Marriott don’t usually win James Beard Awards or get included in best-of lists. For ambitious chefs and hospitality professionals, it becomes a trade-off: Either you can afford a root canal, or you can have a creatively fulfilling career.
I get why independent restaurant owners can’t afford to do the right thing by all their employees, especially those with long-term medical needs or disabilities. I’ve used a wheelchair since 2003, when I was paralyzed in a car accident, and cannot pay for it without private insurance. My chair costs about $13,000 out of pocket, some $6,000 of which later gets reimbursed by my provider. In a comically dark turn, my insurer doesn’t cover the wheels.
This is all a terrible way to treat people, and I feel it deeply from both sides of the equation — as an owner who couldn’t provide health coverage for our staff and as a worker who still has to struggle for it on my own.
I believe that the restaurant industry is a place of second chances. It’s where undocumented people can find work and where formerly incarcerated people who have paid their debts to society can often get hired. We’re failing them because the industry is failing everyone. And then there are people like myself who are passionately drawn to this work.
I learned about hospitality from the very best. My father was a French immigrant who became a career waiter in some of New York City’s top restaurants. His job supported my family, thanks largely to his membership in a union that worked with fine dining institutions of 20th-century Manhattan such as Le Cirque. In 2023, however, less than 1.5 percent of food service workers were unionized, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s nearly impossible for an independent restaurant owner to afford to pay union subsidies and hire workers like my father amid unpredictable rent hikes, planned utility taxes and alarmingly high industrywide staff turnover rates.
As a result, our culinary culture suffers, too. Unlike tradition-bound corners of Italy or France, American restaurants are defined by their openness to new ideas. How can we cultivate innovation if we can’t properly hire, compensate or retain staff? Who knows how many clever menu concepts or hospitality innovations we’ve lost because people can’t afford to keep their restaurant jobs? Or because those on wheelchairs like mine quite literally can’t get in the door?
During our last six months at Contento, as we crunched numbers to try to keep the lights on, I had to make gut-wrenching decisions. When reservations were sparse, we had to let people go. Against my values as a business owner, we would tell the second bartender to clock out early or rely on one dishwasher instead of two. This affects how people live. My staff aren’t nameless, faceless statistics. They’re people I hired, mentored, valued and admired. I’d met their roommates and their children. They supported me and mourned with me when my dad died earlier this year.
It’s been nearly five years since the pandemic upended every facet of people’s lives, but there’s still time for restaurant industry power players to harness the momentum of those early months. They could use their influence to lobby for subsidies like the tens of billions of dollars that airline executives secured as part of the CARES Act in 2020, and use that cash injection to create a health care model for restaurant workers. With enough pressure, the federal government could distribute a national version of the $3 million fund that New York City provided to some 100 independent restaurants in 2020. A healthier, more stable work force would make the entire industry more sustainable.
The best restaurant workers give their all to each night of service. They bend over backward to make sure guests have birthdays, anniversaries and evenings that are truly special.
Our hope for ourselves is less grandiose. We just want the dignity of ordinary days.
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