Seattle’s Cook Shortage Could Affect Your Next Restaurant Tab

In the six weeks that Parker Butterworth spent as a line cook at stylish Capitol Hill restaurant Stateside, he lost count of how many crispy duck rolls—a signature dish—he made. But he was acutely aware of how little money he brought home.

The 30-year-old political consultant entered the culinary arts program at Seattle Central College (SCC) in 2014. “I needed to do something different with my brain, and with my body, too,” he says. He originally planned to take a couple of quarters of classes as a change of pace. But he loved being in the kitchen, and stayed through graduation. After stints of staging (restaurant parlance for a short-term, generally unpaid internship) at Bar Sajor and Salare, he ended up at Stateside. Within two months, he decided he’d had enough.

He’s not the only one to call it quits with the restaurant industry, and the shortage of kitchen workers—mostly line cooks and other kitchen workers, such as dishwashers—is a topic that comes up in nearly every conversation among chefs and restaurateurs. Why is it that Seattle restaurants can’t seem to staff their kitchens? Where are the people who want to work in a restaurant kitchen? And once hired, why aren’t they staying around?

Most in the industry agree that the problem is multifaceted. While some—like Butterworth—leave because they can’t get their budgets to work, wages are just one factor in the staffing shortage. It’s also the result of a booming industry. There are 500 more restaurants in Seattle today compared to 10 years ago. Local restaurant jobs have grown two and a half times faster than other types of jobs, according to information compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is hovering at around 3 percent.

These factors are combined with wages and housing issues. The restaurant-industry average wage for cooks here is $13 an hour (which will increase in the coming years as Seattle works its way up to the $15 minimum wage in 2021), according to the Employment Security Department, while housing prices are skyrocketing. Added to that are more nuanced issues: the rise of the celebrity chef, which has glamorized what is a notoriously challenging vocation known for long hours, a competitive environment and a culture that seems more focused on instant gratification than on hard work. Read more…

Seattle’s Cook Shortage Could Affect Your Next Restaurant Tab