When Neilly Robinson and David Viana opened the Spanish/Portuguese restaurant Lita in New Jersey three years ago, they wanted to tackle a huge issue in the restaurant industry:
The pay divide between front- and back-of-house workers.
“That’s what we started noodling with,” said Viana. “What different concepts could we try to approach this problem of not being able to spread the love of the money throughout the entire building in a more judicious way.”
The partners had watched others in the industry, like famed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, try things like eliminating tipping (a practice that Meyer later reversed). But that didn’t appear to solve the problem.
So Viana and partners came up with another idea: Why not only hire chefs—no servers at all. Those chefs could handle both front- and back-of-house duties on rotating shifts.
There were lots of reasons why it made sense in a 70-seat restaurant with an open kitchen, which was already like a stage.
Guests could get any questions about ingredients answered, for example. The chefs would learn more aspects of the ins and outs of restaurant operations. And they would get the immediate gratification of seeing guests enjoy the dishes they created (or maybe learn why a dish didn’t work).
Perhaps more importantly, tips are shared among all who are in the line of service and legally allowed (not supervisors and managers, of course) in a way where everyone benefits—because pretty much everyone is in the line of service.
The model went through various iterations. But now Lita has settled on a system that seems to be working.
Here’s how they do it:
The core staff at Lita work two-week pay periods. Eight chefs (two teams of four) rotate between the front and back of house. For one week, a team is assigned to the kitchen/back of house. That week, they earn $17 per hour, which is higher than the minimum wage. They do not share in tips.
The second week, however, that team moves to front of the house, where they earn the tipped minimum wage (Lita takes the tip credit), plus tips, which are pooled among that crew. As a result, that week they earn considerably more.
Tips vary, of course, but the annualized salary ends up being about $72,000, Robinson said. (And there are other benefits. Lita covers about half of healthcare costs, for example.)
It’s a system that also keeps egos in check.
“What we prioritize is that everyone is the same,” said Viana. “If you’re in the tip pool, there is no hierarchy. So whether you’re on garde manger, or on the grill, or saute, a captain or back leader, you get the same portion of the tip as everyone else.”
That was important, he said, because everyone working together as a team generates that tip.
“I want it to be democratic, in that we’re all necessary to get that tip,” he said.
For some, however, it requires a change in mindset, which is where partner Danny McGill, director of operations and hospitality, comes in.
McGill is credited with training the chefs for customer-facing service, which is not typically part of culinary education.
It takes a certain personality, and Lita now looks for people who want to learn all aspects of the business, who are curious and who believe that hospitality is a team effort, McGill said.
It is most decidedly not the brigade system behind restaurants like Noma.
“This is the anti-that,” said Viana.
“It isn’t for everybody,” he added. “If you’re still wanting to be that sort of rock-star persona chef, this kind of model brings it back to servitude, brings it back to taking care of people, brings it back to hospitality, and learning that what we do is feed the soul as well as the stomach.”
For the restaurant, labor costs run at roughly 40%, but Viana said another restaurant using this model could bring down costs. At Lita, there are some salaried workers among the team who don't share in tips, for example, including two sous chefs and a chef de cuisine, as well as bartenders, a maître d’, a sommelier and a captain on the weekends.
The model has, however, reduced turnover, which has a definite payoff.
Lita is the third restaurant concept by Good Trouble Hospitality, which recently won a $25,000 grant from the Independent Restaurant Coalition and Chase bank to educate others in the industry about this unique approach. The funding will also help support the restaurant team’s continuing education.
Viana said he would definitely do it again at another restaurant, though it would depend on the concept.
Fundamentally, he said, it allows people to earn a living wage.
“I’ve worked in restaurants where I felt like someone else was making money and I was barely getting by,” he said. “These people are learning, contributing, being hospitable and making a living doing it, paying their bills.
“I don’t know there’s a lot of restaurants in this world that can say that,” he added. “And I feel immensely proud of that.”
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