Behind the Kitchen Door

Behind the Kitchen Door takes readers past the polished dining rooms of America's beloved restaurants into the kitchens where millions of workers—many immigrants and people of color—prepare and serve our food for as little as $2.13 an hour, without health benefits or paid sick days, while facing wage theft, injury, illness, racism, and sexual harassment. Drawing on the largest national survey of restaurant workers ever conducted and vivid, intimate profiles of individual workers, Saru Jayaraman, cofounder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, shows how the mistreatment of workers directly threatens the health and quality of the food on our plates. More than an exposé, the book is a call to action that empowers diners to become 'responsible consumers,' offering concrete steps—talking to workers and managers, supporting living wages and paid sick days, and picketing with their pocketbooks—to transform the second-largest private-sector industry in the United States.

What it argues

Behind the Kitchen Door

Key ideas it contributes

• Tipped Minimum Wage Policy — The legal wage floor governing tipped restaurant workers, frozen federally at $2.13 an hour, which permits employers to pay poverty-level base wages and forces workers to depend on tips and consumers to subsidize wages.
• Employer Labor Practices — The degree to which a restaurant employer engages in high-road versus low-road practices, including paying above minimum wage, providing benefits, transparent promotions, respectful treatment, and lawful wage payment versus wage theft, abuse, and discrimination.
• Paid Sick Days and Health Benefits — The availability to restaurant workers of paid sick leave, health insurance, and related benefits that enable them to stay home when ill and access medical care rather than working through illness and injury.
• Racial Segregation and Discrimination — The contextual condition by which restaurants sort workers by race and skin color into front-of-house versus back-of-house positions and restrict promotion opportunities for workers of color, functioning as a moderator of who accesses living-wage jobs.
• Gender Inequity and Sexual Harassment — The contextual condition by which women workers are funneled into lower-paying tipped, pastry, salad, and casual positions, paid less than men in the same roles, and subjected to sexual harassment, moderating their access to advancement and living wages.
• Consumer Advocacy Pressure — The extent to which diners speak up to workers and managers, support responsible restaurants, avoid exploitative ones, and advocate for policy change, functioning as an external lever pushing employers and legislators toward sustainable labor practices.
• Worker Economic Security — The degree to which a restaurant worker earns a living wage sufficient to afford rent, food, transportation, child care, and health care, versus living in poverty, relying on food stamps, or facing homelessness.
• Worker Health and Safety Status — The physical health and safety condition of restaurant workers, including exposure to illness, injuries such as cuts and burns, ability to recover, and the frequency of working while sick or injured.
• Worker Dignity, Respect, and Morale — The subjective sense of being treated with dignity and respect, feeling valued and secure, and taking pride in one's work versus feeling humiliated, abused, powerless, or resentful in the workplace.
• Worker Retention and Craft Investment — The behavioral pattern of workers staying at a restaurant over time, investing in and improving their craft, and being loyal and engaged versus high turnover from restaurant to restaurant.
• Food and Service Quality — The overall quality of the food and service delivered to diners, argued to improve when experienced, loyal workers who take pride in their craft prepare meals in a stable, respectful workplace.
• Consumer Health and Safety — The health and safety outcomes for diners, including risk of foodborne illness and food poisoning arising from workers handling food while sick or from unsafe food-handling practices in low-road restaurants.
• Worker Advancement to Living-Wage Jobs — The behavioral outcome of workers being promoted from lower-level, lower-paid positions to higher-paying living-wage roles, reflecting genuine opportunity and equity in the industry.