Staff Meal - What is the norm?

[chinds85]

Where I work we are allowed a salad for every shift we work, and kitchen staff get fifty percent off menu prices if they want to order something of greater substance. Also the managers only give you "fake angry your-in-trouble-eyes" if they see you chewing on something on the line... but they know better than to make the cook spit it out. So in the end where I work you end up eating enough to say you had a meal.

Unless I was getting ungodly experience (or pay) I would never take a job at a restaurant that refused to feed its employees.

[shroomgirl]

Staff meals pay back hugely. I have a dishwasher that can roll fresh springrolls tighter and prettier than any I've seen. After a major event I'll bring in a pork shoulder and make carnitas and a pot of beans with epazote...the Mexicans go bonkers, apparently the French guys that share staff with me only give them very old scraps. Separate 6 packs raise my popularity rate several points.....amazing what a few bucks will return.

Waitstaff on a catering job get to eat whatever they want during the lulls....out of site. I send food home with them often.....they take care of me and I take care of them. Absolutely a two way street.

[OrganizedChaos]

I've seen it all! One Canadian franchise I worked for had a no-grazing policy, and the chef policed it very well. If you were caught shoving a frenchfry into your mouth, you were sent a bill for a full order of fries at menu price. How, then, am I to do quality control?? These were the same folks that rationed gloves like it was wartime.

My current employer has a fairly good policy. Simply put, if you work 6+ hours, BOH is entitled to a free meal from the following list: BLT, burger, kid's pasta, or salad. 8+ hours and you can get an entree (as long as you're not abusing it with 10 oz steaks every night). FOH gets 50% off. But they abuse it to the maxxx! One waitress in particular will order an "add chicken breast" then expect us to smother it and cheese it and accompany it with veg and starch (and not the leftovers, she says... they're yukky)

That, as far as I'm concerned, is B.S. And they'll give us such a hurt look if we don't comply! Like it's somehow our fault that they're too cheap to actually order what they're expecting us to cook for them. (guess they have to fund their Cancun vacations somehow!!!.... never been to Cancun myself)

One of my biggest staff-meal-pet-peeves is the waitresses that will always wait until we're starting to tear down the lines before they actually order their overly-complicated staff meals. I'll tell them the same thing every day. Figure out what you want and ring it in. Let me know it's your staff meal, and I'll hold it till the end of the night. Don't give me the impression that I'm done cooking, then suddenly spring 8 FOH meals on me after I've turned off the grill.

Phew! Venting's exhausting!

[DavidSL]

At my restaurant we basically let the staff eat whatever they want when on duty as long as the break doesn't interfere with customer service. When off duty, they and their family can eat at 50%. We don't have specific rules but ask them not to take extreme advantage of the policy and most don't.