Gourmet Plateau eatery slammed for advertising minimum wage cooking job

Montreal -

A Five Guys in downtown is offering $15 an hour plus a bonus to flip burgers. Not to be outdone, a McDonald’s in Blainville is offering $17.50 plus a signing bonus for lineworkers on the night shift.

So when Au Pied de Cochon – about as famous a high-end restaurant as exists in Montreal – advertised a position as a cook starting at $13.50 an hour, the reaction on social media was severe.

“Certainly a good reason, and not the only one, of a labour shortage in restaurants,” one commenter wrote. “What’s up le pied? #wack.”

Billy Gogas, who runs the Restaurant Lafayette casse-croute in the Village, reacted by saying “This guy wants people to work for $13.50 an hour? Yeah good luck!”

David Ferguson is a restaurant industry veteran who runs the high-end Restaurant Gus, a cozy bistro in the Plateau. He told CTV News that many people started leaving the industry years ago, and that the pandemic just accelerated and exposed a wage structure that wasn’t keeping up.

On the help-wanted ad, he said: “It’s not just that one restaurant is doing it. It’s that it’s a bad image for all of us. It makes it look like we’re not serious about taking care of our staff.”

Martin Picard, Au Pied de Cochon’s owner, pointed out to French media outlets that the listing wage was a starting point, it wasn’t necessarily the actual starting salary.

“It was the starting offer but after they chose which employees they will have, there will be a discussion and they will be offering wages higher than the minimum wage,” said Martin Vezina, a spokesperson for the Quebec Restaurant Association.

Another point some in the restaurant industry make is that at some restaurants employ a tipping system for the kitchen by pooling tips on something known as the points system. But that’s up to the restaurant and its staff to implement and it isn’t done in a universal way.

Most tend to agree that in the short term, the cost of a restaurant meal is going to go up as wages adjust to the new normal. But in the long term, the labour shortage could mean that owning and operating a high-end restaurant in Montreal is no longer something that many budding restaurant workers dream of.

“I think a lot of people have to start processing the idea that, if we have an extreme shortage of cooks now,” Ferguson said.

“And that means five years from now we're going to have an extreme shortage of chefs.”