No contest that relying on unpaid labour is awful. But "obscenely rich"? My overwhelming impression is that despite all this, no one really gets rich on running restaurants. Certainly not when you factor them going out of business all the time (or even falling out of fashion, that's basically death for a Michelin starred eatery).
Simple napkin-math from when I was at the restaurant. I.e. multiplying the amount of people at restaurant by the number of days in a year they were open, multiplied by how much one of those "tasting menus + wine pairing" cost (which almost everyone buys); would suggest that their revenue would be somewhere in the range of 20-30 million dollars in revenue a year. That restaurant is always full, I think we booked our table 6 months in advance.
Clearly they serve you expensive wine, and a lot of expensive produce goes into their food making. But I would guess that the main cost of running that place would be the cost of paying the employees; which they don't. That 3-star restaurant (and many others), are making their owners extremely rich.
The restaurant business is extremely competitive, and most businesses struggle, but some are making good money. I live in a small town in Norway (200.000 inhabitants), and even here there is a guy who runs a bunch of restaurants, with profits in excess of 3 million dollars annually.
If you want to make it big you need to treat it like a business, like Gordon Ramsay does. He owns 23 restaurants (maybe more) all over the world, his name is known by many, and the income from tv-shows would pay the bills by themselves; they also serve as advertisement for establishments with his name attached.
The few restaurant owners I know who make a good income here in Amsterdam tend to own more than 5 restaurants. Some have their own branding going on, some just take care of the business side of things. And even then I think it's a whole lot of work and stress for relatively little pay.
(Michelin-starred chefs defend unpaid internships) https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2017-05-01/michelin-ar...
A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced.
I witnessed myself, on many occasions, groups of kids coming in, filling in forms and being interviewed for these non-paid intern positions.
If I am wrong about these people not being paid it is because I was specifically told this, it isn't something I just assumed.
Kids applying to be interns in not the same thing than staff being unpaid and slave labor. That put clear limits on the duration of they work and that means they have no qualification. It's just a normal internship.
Three stars restaurant tend to have many interns because they have a lot of basic prep work to do and it's a good formative experience. That's fine. That's what internships are for. Usually interns are still paid a modest sum but the hospitality industry tends to operate on thin margins so they might be uncompensated. Where I kind of agree with you is that there is a general issue with abuse of staff in the industry so they are likely not treated as well as they should. Still I would not call that slave labor.
> A waiter in a restaurant I frequented regularly explained this to me as to how, despite working there for 3 years, he couldn't just go and work in the UK for a few months and come back because he could so easily be replaced.
Being replacable is not the same as being unpaid. Spain is part of the EU so the labor law of Spain has to adhere to the EU directives on labor. That means every employee is paid at least at the national minimum salary.
Spain has salaries? I thought that was largely a US concept.
For some reasons I thought these restaurants are actually not very profitable .
If someone wanted to make money with restaurants they'd probably be better off sticking to something that scales better.
Cruise ships are set up to exploit every loophole out the being a legal entity on international waters under flag of loophole county.
Everyone would be better of if that industry died already. Including environment.
Oh sweet summer child...
Some people are nice... and some people dont get their fair share especially when they are replaceable.
Where I'm from (Norway), and probably most seafaring nations in the west, this has been an issue for years - social dumping by using Asian labor.
It's a "luxurious experience" fueled by slave labor.
No. Perhaps you have found an example of this (which I doubt strongly), but this is not something that happens "often".
Also, I doubt the staff member are interns?
I once visited a 3 star restaurant in Spain (Arzak), where this was the case. If you look at the cost of eating there, and consider that most of the staff is unpaid, it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The business model is similar to cruise ships. You buy something very expensive produced by slave labor, that makes a few people obscenely rich, while all others suffer.