Behind the Kitchen Door Video Program

Panelists

David Siegel, executive vice president of the Minnesota Restaurant Association, which supports and promotes the restaurant industry in Minnesota and serves as the industry voice for its members;

David Glass, owner of Black Bear Crossings, a restaurant and catering operation at Como Lakeside Pavilion that celebrates American Indian identity and provides a forum for multicultural sharing.

Nancy Goldman, president of UniteHere! Local 17, which represents restaurant, food service and hotel workers in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington.

The program was hosted by freelance journalist Dinah Swain Schuster and produced by the Department of Human Rights in collaboration with Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN). Check SPNN’s web site for the latest airtimes.

INtroduction

Introductory comments -- Dinah Schuster:Today, we're going to be looking behind the kitchen door at Minnesota's restaurant industry, and asking, is there equal opportunity? We know, according to the latest census figures, that if you go out to a restaurant in Minnesota, in most cases, you're more likely to see people of color in certain jobs than others. Why is this? That, we don't know, and there could be a lot of reasons.

So we've brought together a panel of people with various roles in the restaurant industry... to talk about what the situation is. Why are people of color more likely to be working in some jobs than others? What are some restaurants doing to promote opportunity for everyone? And what more might need to be done?

But before we meet our panel ... a little background. A couple of years ago in 2005, a study was done in New York City -- a survey of more than 500 restaurant workers, and 35 of their employers. The study found that in New York, immigrants and people of color were routinely hired for lower-paying jobs in what the study called "the back of the house," jobs like dishwasher, or cleaner, in which they would be mainly out of site. Then there were the jobs in "the front house" -- jobs like bartender, waiter or waitress, host. The overwhelming majority of those jobs went to nonHispanic whites.

The reasons cited in the study were complex -- and had something to do with who applied for certain kinds of job. Yet sometimes, even when a person of color did apply for a job like waiter, they were told to go back to the kitchen, where a job as a dishwasher was the best they could expect to do.

So what's the situation in Minnesota? There hasn't been a comparable study done here. But we do have some census data.

Let's take Hennepin County. If you go to a restaurant in Hennepin County and order a drink, what are the odds that your bartender will be an African American? One out of ten? No, more like one out of a hundred -- according to the latest census data, about 1.4% of bartenders in Hennepin County are black, and even fewer, 1.3%, are Hispanic. More than 90% of bartenders in Hennepin County are nonHispanic whites.

But Hennepin County would appear to have a lot more black bartenders than Ramsey County -- where according to the census, only one-half of one percent -- one out of 200 -- are black.

What about waiters and waitresses? In Hennepin County, about 85% of people in that occupation are white; in Ramsey County, there are even fewer black waiters; in terms of percentage -- 87% are white.

Yet there are a lot more people of color out-of-sight, in the back of the house -- most dishwashers in Hennepin County, for example, are not nonHispanic whites; 37% of dishwashers are Hispanic, with blacks and Asians also filling some of those jobs.

Behind the statistics are people... struggling to make a living.... looking for their piece of the pie, the slice of the American dream, women, men... recent immigrants, and people who have been here for a while.

If their gender, their age, or the country they might have come from is the reason they're turned down for a job, that's usually illegal. Those characteristics, along with race, religion, disability and others, are protected under the Minnesota Human Rights Act. We'll talk about what's considered discrimination a little later.

We aren't saying in this program that anyone is doing anything wrong, or that anyone is engaged in discrimination. But disparities do exist. What are the reasons? And what needs to happen to ensure everyone has the opportunity to contribute to our society to best of their ability?

That's what we're here to talk about today.

Panel Discussion Part I

Schuster: Nancy, if you can tell me, do you believe that people of color are more likely to be in some jobs than others, for example, behind the kitchen door instead of in front?

Goldman: Yes, I think they are more likely to be found in the back.

Schuster: And why do you think that is?

Goldman: I think there are a lot of different reasons for it. Some of it has to do with people's command of the English language and their comfortableness in approaching guests, like a restaurant server. I think some of it has to do with people's own insecurities about being in the front of the house. They also find that there's possible reasons that they wouldn't want to have people of color out in the front of the house. Although, I don't know if I can directly say that I know that that's true.

Schuster: But certainly as a restaurant goer you might notice that there seems to be more. Would you say that's true in Minnesota? Do we find that there are more people of color working in the kitchen than say the waiter or host?

Goldman: Oh, yes, definitely there is, but I think it particularly relates to when you look at chain restaurants because when a restaurant is open that is, let's say it's a Mexican restaurant, you're going to find people of color in both the front and back of the house. You probably wouldn't find that many Caucasian people there. It would depend. But if you look at a good deal of restaurants, I don't think you hardly ever see a lot of people of color serving in those; you find bus boys of color.

Schuster: Do you think that's true, David? Is that what you find as well?

Glass: I can only speak from my observation. I know in my restaurant, my last two managers were American Indian and for my counter help, and servers are American Indian and/or other community of color minority individuals. But as I go out to the restaurant world and dine, my experience has been that you don't see very many American Indian or people of color as waiters or hosts in front of the house -- they're mostly in the back of the house.

Schuster: I think many of us anecdotally experience that. We find people of color behind the kitchen door and maybe more in Mexican and possibly a wider nonHispanic group in the front as waiters and servers. Is this a discussion that's ever been broached at the hotel or restaurant association level?

Siegel: We just started really working with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights... to kind of engage in this conversation and we just did a big trade show down at the convention center for the restaurant industry and the lodging industry, and we invited the Department of Human Rights to have a booth there... And we've begun to also talk with the folks, Commissioner Korbel and some others about using the information, the data that they have, and the practices that they have, to begin to educate restaurateurs around the state about what opportunities are there to reach out to people of color and make sure that we're providing them an opportunity that they need.

Glass: Can I just add a caveat to that answer? If you want to see folks in the front of the house of color or American Indian, then you need to go to their restaurants. That's where you'll see them -- by minority-owned people who own the restaurants and/or at properties that the American Indian tribal communities own. At the many different restaurants associated with the hotels and casinos you'll find predominantly that the front of the house is American Indian or community of color, but otherwise, no.

Siegel: I want to piggyback on what David is saying. What the research and the National Restaurant Association shows, and I think that this is something the industry should be proud of, is that three out of five restaurants across the country are owned by women or minorities. So 60% of all restaurants in the country are owned by women or minorities. And I would challenge you to find many other industries in the country. I doubt 60% of the law firms in the country are owned by women and minorities, for example. And then of those 60% that are minority-owned, and this really get's to what you're talking about, in those cases many, many instances, everyone working in that establishment is part of the family and they're in management positions. They may not be defined as an employee per say, because they're part of the family, but they're in leadership and management positions.

But of those 60%, 25% are owned by women, 15% are owned by Asians, 8% are owned by Hispanics, 4% are owned by African Americans, and the remainder is other people of color. There's about another 7 or 8% that fits in there. But I think that's something -- that a unique industry provides an amazing opportunity for an immigrant person, for example, to come into this country and be tremendously successful, be a restaurant owner within a fairly short period of time.

Schuster: How do those statistics translate to Minnesota? Is that true here as well?

Siegel: I don't know. I would guess that they're fairly constant across the country, but it was done by the National Restaurant Association so that I really can't say specifically to Minnesota.

Schuster: If you could get back to us on that. That would be an interesting thing to know.

Siegel: Yes, I thought it was important to note that this is an industry that has a significant number of women and minority owners across the country.

Glass: There's probably some truth to that. In many of those, as you could guess, that many of those food establishments are community-based so that you have your Asian communities, you have your Hispanic-Latino communities, you have American Indian communities, you have your African American communities and so in those communities there's a lot of mom-and-pop type operations. But when we start talking about the food and beverage industry as a bigger picture, when we start talking chain operations that really employ a lot of folks nationally, then we see the disparity rear its ugly head in terms of who we are as individuals and what kind of opportunities that are afforded us.

Schuster: How much money can be made at what levels? Certainly a smaller establishment selling less expensive food is not going to make quite as much money as a larger steakhouse.

Glass: Right, and the amount of time and effort and hours put into a mom-and-pop type operation verses Denny's or McDonald's or any, the Hiltons, I'm just naming names, but a lot of effort, I can tell you as a restaurant owner, it's a commitment; it's your life from the time that you wake up, even before you want to wake up, and you want to be in bed, you're at the restaurant, trying to make a go so it's a 24/7. It becomes your life and you don't do anything else in the first three or four years.

Schuster: I wonder what the statistics are here in Minnesota, however. The population is about 90% white so I wonder if that would translate. I can't imagine that two-thirds...

Siegel: Two out of five restaurants in Minnesota are owned by women and minorities... The other statistic that was interesting in their research was that 9 out of 10 salaried individuals in the industry started as hourly employees. There's obviously a tremendous opportunity to advance in this industry.

I don't think the industry get's credit for the career path. It's a unique industry. It's got a place for folks who are new immigrants to this country to kind of get culture and learn, and we do a lot of English teaching and things like that. It has a place for folks who might be mentally or physically challenged. It has a place for people who are in transition between jobs and this is what they do until they find the other thing that they want to do, and then there's really a career path in this industry that doesn't get recognized and acknowledged very well.

Schuster: You said you have English-teaching opportunities. For whom because obviously that's the major obstacle to moving to a job where you have to deal with the clientele? It would be for many new immigrants to this country. To whom do you offer these classes?

Siegel: We do training through the restaurant association to owners and managers trying to help them understand whatever population they're hiring or working with and then by the same token, we have several folks who are members of our association who provide training to the restaurants and the employees to do English language training to try to teach. It has to come from both sides; it has to be able to coach and train the owner, and you also have to coach and train the employee so that they each have the opportunity.

Schuster: You need to get to that stage of being a manager. This is obviously the huge hurdle. I know you represent a number of workers and unions. Are there opportunities through the unions to take English language classes?

Goldman: We have set up opportunities to particular hotels to have English classes available. The biggest stumbling block in that whole thing is getting them to do it on paid time, getting the hotels, the employers, to agree to do it on the property, on paid time. People just cannot fit in stuff. It seems that people working, particularly people who don't speak English, working in the hotels are either working in the housekeeping department or in the kitchen or in some other area and they're probably working more than one job and they have families and they have a lot of other things going on and to expect them to go on their own to take English classes is just unrealistic.

Schuster: Often there are two or three jobs involved, especially if they're newer immigrants.

Schuster: In general is there a higher need for incoming workers at the lower-paying jobs?

Siegel: I think there is and I think that that's going to continue to grow. It's also going to grow at the management level. In the next 10 years we're going to have a need for about an 11% increase in management opportunities in the hospitality industry across the country. Again, I can't tell you specifically but I've seen some Minnesota Department of Labor data that this industry is projected to grow pretty dramatically in Minnesota in the next 10 years. We need line employees, we also need management employees, which to me says this is a wonderful opportunity for those 9 out of 10 who are coming from line positions into salary positions, from whatever background they are, whatever race, color, people of color, whatever, religion, it doesn't matter, to really move into management positions in the restaurant industry.

Schuster: It seems like it would be just from a purely economic standpoint, something that the restaurant owners would want to start considering because that is a really wonderful pool, a large and growing steady pool of workers. I wonder whose responsibility is it to look at it. Who is going to take the economic opportunity, grab a hold of it and create these classes for this growing influx of people?

Siegel: What the National Restaurant Association did is went out and found a product that we can offer to the members of the association. It's called "daily dose" and it's on work time and it's very short. It's about 10 minutes every day just gathering the team together. And you can do a fair amount of English training in just a short period of time with consistency over several months. It's hard to do it for free because the folks who provide this service, folks we contract with to provide training, obviously we have to charge for the classes, but the "daily dose" is an example of the kind of product that is pretty easy to use. It's a lot of graphic-focus and it teaches words and it teaches language to the employee base and as they get more accumulated, and as they gain those language skills, I think the opportunities are there for them.

It's interesting; you don't have to have a certificate to become a restaurateur or to become a restaurant manager. It's one of the few industries today where you can get into this thing without a formal education, and if you're hard working and you're really dedicated you can advance in this industry pretty rapidly. That's not the case with engineering or being a doctor or a lawyer. There are so many other industries (where) the barriers of entry are so much greater.

Schuster: I think in theory that's true and assuming we have some statistics to back it up, but I think the study put out by New York, and we don't have a similar study yet in Minnesota, but they seem to identify quite a few number of obstacles.

Siegel: And the study that they did I think was pretty limited; it really wasn't scientifically valid. I think they interviewed several people and they sort of drew conclusions from that.

Glass: The fact of the matter remains that there's a lot of opportunities for folks to advance without a lot of specific kind of training or education, but I don't believe that those same kinds of opportunities are afforded communities of color, the American Indian people, as they are Caucasians in this community. Certainly I think if you went out and if we took the restaurant group that is owned and operated by people of color, American Indian people, and put them in one camp and then looked at all the other restaurants that were run by chains or other Caucasian groups and looked at their management group and their front of the house group, we're going to find that we're underrepresented in terms of those kinds of positions. The question begs itself, why? Why are we not welcome in those positions? Why isn't the recruiting done at the high school or college level, technical level? Say, "Come on in, these are the opportunities that are available for you." First, it's just working with the folks who are applying for entry-level positions working themselves up. I think the onus is on employers to do that, to reach out to the communities and say, "Hey, guess what? We want your presence here in our work community. These are the kind of opportunities that are available for you." That doesn't happen.

Siegel: I think that's true in just representing our association. We're going through that exercise now when we look at our board of directors.

Glass: Excuse me, Dave. How many people are employed by the restaurant association?

Siegel: Fifteen or fourteen.

Glass: And how many folks of color?

Siegel: One.

Glass: Ok, I mean even within your own organization.

Siegel: And I think that's immaterial to the discussion here because what we're talking about here is the industry at large... and what I was going to say is that if you look at our board of directors. You'll find the very same challenge. You'll find that it's a bunch of folks who are white guys in their 50s or something and so we are desperately trying to get people of color involved and active in our association. We're reaching out to the Hispanic community. We're now joint members with the Hispanic chamber of commerce, for example, and we're trying to reach out. We'd love to have those communities active and engaged in our association. We're trying to reach out to the Asian community and asking David Fong to serve on our board of directors or whomever we can find who is interested in doing that, and so we're beginning the process of trying to figure out how as an association we reach out into the community because we survive on membership, David, and if I'm a prospective member of the restaurant association and I look at the board of directors and I don't see myself reflected on that board, my inclination may not be to join the association. We have to reach out.

The second piece I would share with you and let you respond is that recognizing also the need to go out and try to recruit in the industry folks of all kinds. We've launched a foundation a year ago. It's called the Hospitality Minnesota Education Foundation; it's a 501C3, nonprofit, and the whole focus of the foundation is to introduce a high school curriculum across Minnesota. There are presently 25 schools teaching the curriculum -- its eleventh and twelfth grade. We'd love to have more schools offer this curriculum. It's a challenge in our state. You can't mandate a curriculum across the state. You have to go to every single school district and they have to decide to do it and they have to have faculty who are willing to teach it, but our role is to teach the faculty, coach, provide mentor ships, internships. We have 25 schools and we'd like to be at 50-60, and then ultimately we'd like those students to get out of the high school program, have an articulation agreement with secondary, postsecondary schools so that they could get credit when they walk in the door, and then have scholarships for those students. Then provide opportunities for those students when they get out of school. They're the future leaders of the industry so I'm very passionate about this foundation, and I'm really excited about it.

Glass: And I applaud you for that. That's a fantastic move. I want to back it up though just a bit and talk about how the representation on the Minnesota Restaurant Association and board is reflective of our communities. It's tough for any association, whether it's a restaurant association or a school board or any nonprofit that it portends to advocate for communities of poverty which are disproportionately represented by minority communities, the American Indian community. When you look at those boards and see all white folks, all white males, they don't represent my norms and values as an American Indian person nor do they represent any other, the Hmong, Latino, Hispanic, and African American, let's go down the list. So when you don't understand those values, those norms, it's hard to push issues that talk about being proactive in inviting people to participate and bringing them in a way that says, "Hey, we really want that to happen."

Goldman: For where I come from, I don't see promotion going on amongst people of color. I see them stuck in the back of the house and I do not see doors open. It's interesting for me to hear about your program, but I don't see that going on. I also don't come from that view of pushing people that I think management clearly needs to go. I think there is a good deal of restriction going on and while I spend more time in hotels, hotels have restaurants, and I don't see so much of this internal promotion going on. I see in our union, our union is probably 60% or more non Caucasian.

Siegel: The other piece I wanted to just make sure... I don't want to disparage the work that the folks behind the door do at all. I mean these are really, really important jobs. These folks are very, very skilled. I worry that sometimes when we have a discussion like this someone watching this is going to say, "Well, I'm not in a position of significance within the restaurant and you ask any restaurant owner and he or she will tell you that it is the people in the restaurant, their employees, they view them as a family, and they truly care about their employees, and they value the work that every employee does, and I really believe that. You can't be successful in this business if you don't. I just want to make sure that we recognize the folks behind the door.

Schuster: Maybe we have not been clear enough in our discussion and we're all on the assumption that it's actually not the work, because it's clear that food is coming from somewhere and someone is cleaning and doing the work. It's important to even have your table bussed. I mean all these jobs are important, but what we're talking about is the economic disparity -- how much you get paid for these really critical jobs, and while I hope restaurant owners do treat you like a family, I think there's enough evidence that not everyone is like that and they might treat them like a family, but they're not giving them enough money. The question may be perhaps we should look at it through a different prism. Maybe we need to talk more about the wages in the kitchen vs. trying to pull everyone from the kitchen to the front, where I think there's an impression that you get paid more or can make quite a bit more, if you work in the front.

Goldman: There's quite a bit of economic difference between the positions in the kitchen as well, and opportunity. If you were working in the kitchen in a good restaurant or a good hotel situation and you're a cook or a higher paid cook, a higher-level cook, you're looking to build a career as a cook and go into that business either to open your own place or become a chef or something. There's a lot of disparity. There's skill level involved there and then there's jobs of lower skill and dishwashers which is usually where you find the most discriminated against group, for lack of a better way to say it, in those lower paid jobs.

Schuster: How does somebody advance?

Goldman: People in the back of the house aren't necessarily dying to come out in the front.

Schuster: Right, but how can you advance, because we don't see that as diners? I've worked in a restaurant myself so I know that there are different levels. How does one advance? And can a person of color or maybe another class of citizen, can they work up from busboy? How does one do it -- how do you get the chance to go become the chef or whatever?

Goldman: Certainly it can be done and it is done. There's not opportunity for this in every place and in some places there's literally no where to go out of your job, but in some situations there are people that have an opportunity to train and to move out of the dishwasher, maybe into the pantry section, then perhaps into the cooking, and move up within the kitchen. I have rarely found people that have come out from the kitchen and come out to work in the front of the house. I just don't find that.

Schuster: How do you move up? David, like in your restaurant, do people move up?

Glass: Ours is a different type of operation so we don't have bussers. Everything is disposable plates and the counter staff all of them participate in terms of helping to clean the front of the house, but in the back of the house, there's opportunities. We're seasonal so we're really kind of a whole different operation, but if you come in and you start working as a cook's assistant and you show that you have some skill level, we'll move you pretty fast into a full-time position in the summertime, temporary, full-time position in terms of that kind of work. Our baker today is an African American woman. She does a fantastic job. Before that there was an American Indian woman, another fantastic baker who since went over to a place on Selby Avenue. She started with us part time and became our full- time baker.

It's an interesting industry because the development of the skill set is quite portable and you find a lot of people in this industry take that skill set and move to another establishment and that may be what's required to move up, as Nancy's alluding to. You can't always do it. This is a small, family-owned operation. It's probably going to be a challenge to move up in that business because there's not going to be the opportunity, there's not a place to go up, but you can take that skill, it's a very portable skill. So if you develop skill as a cook, you can take that skill to any one of these restaurants and they're looking for good folks.

Schuster: I think if people just work right, I'd move them up positions of importance because it's good economically for me as an owner.

Goldman: I honestly think most employers do that. If they recognize that someone wants to learn something, they're catching on to something, they have bigger possibilities; I think that in most places if there is an opportunity, they do move them.

Schuster: Mr. Glass, you don't think so?

Glass: No, I think so. Here again, I operate a little differently. We came into with a community mindset. How do we give back to the community and that's how we started at first with a coffeehouse and today we also work with boot camp and the juvenile department for the state of Minnesota so we give folks coming out of boot camp an opportunity to go to work right away, and we also work with kids that are coming out of Red Wing. We have a relationship with the Department of Corrections so that we'll give those kids an opportunity to go to work. My sense is that I have a responsibility with the community, the larger community, to do that. It's given me some opportunities. I want to give back.

Schuster: As we've been talking about discrimination, I think now would be a good time to talk about the Minnesota Human Rights Act. A lot of people have questions about what's legal and what isn't under the Human Rights Act. Here are some of the questions we hear the most often with some answers from Steve Lapinsky, Enforcement Supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

The opinions expressed in these programs are those of the participants and not necessarily those of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights or of Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN).