The 20% Solution?(Editorial)

Restaurants & Institutions, October, 2006 by Dailey, Patricia B.

By Patricia B. Dailey, Editor-in-Chief

By the National Restaurant Association's math, 42% of the United States adult population at some point has worked in the restaurant industry. Busser, fry cook, shift supervisor, chef, owner, server--the opportunities are vast and often experientially and financially rewarding.

I am among the has-beens, having signed up to wait on tables the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college. Base pay was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.20 an hour, so the economics made sense only with tips factored in. And when they were included, ladies and gentleman, I made off like a happy bandit, the hourly rate having escalated so it was way past minimum wage--usually better than quadruple the rate. At shift's...