I was planning to donate the couple bucks I had left over from the year to the charity called “San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance”, I was doing a background check on CharityNavigator and they gave the charity full ratings so it seemed good.
Then I stumbled upon the salary section. What the fuck? I earn <20k a year and was planning to contribute to someone’s million dollar salary? WHAT.
While most work is hard, and I dunno how bespoke this gig is, there’s a massive difference between a generic fry “cook” and a restaurant line cook/chef.
Most fry cooks, like a Macdonald’s, are a finely tuned production line where most of the food is pre-prepped and premade (most of the “cooking” is done in a factory). The “cooks” in those roles usually just assemble the pre made components, and in the case of fast food, have finely tunes tools to serve their generic menu.
A restaurant cook/chef requires significantly more attention to detail, skill, flexibility, and knowledge because most of the food is made from scratch, using raw ingredients, which is why there are culinary schools. Real restaurants can’t succeed with a kitchen full of deep fryers and teenagers pushing buttons. Naturally, the expectation is that they should be paid more because it requires more skill, knowledge, effort, and dedication.
We’re already making the (existing) distinction between cook/chef though.
There’s no apparent need for a “cook”/cook/chef distinction.
As a chef with 22 years of experience hiring cooks, there is absolutely a distinction. I would have said fast food worker instead of “cook” because the quotes make it feel condescending, but I also do not count experience in fast food as relevant experience when reviewing resumes for a line or prep cook position.
We’re also misusing the word chef a lot in this conversation. Everyone working the line in a kitchen is not a chef. They are cooks. The chefs are the kitchen leadership. There is typically one executive chef and one or two sous chefs below them. I’m simplifying things a bit but that’s the most common structure you’ll find in non-chain/corpo kitchens.