Restaurant Salaries in SF

[Stone]

According to a blurb on the local news about the troubled restaurant industry in SF, the average waiter salary here is $63K; the average bartender salary is $95,000. That's not bad for pouring drinks.

[tommy]

those are pretty impressive numbers. 95 is well over the average household income of americans. do you know if the numbers were in any way augmented to take into account the non-reported income?

Edited June 29, 2003 by tommy (log)

[KatieLoeb]

Stone:

Those are rather impressive statistics, but let's not forget how crazy the cost of living in SF is. That obviously includes the cost of eating and drinking out.

That same salary in another large urban area like say, Atlanta or Las Vegas or Philadelphia goes a whole lot further.

It's a shame. I've often thought of moving to San Francisco because there is such a great restaurant and wine industry there. Lots of jobs compared to where I am now (Philly), but unfortunately I couldn't afford a studio apartment there for what I'd get for selling my three bedroom house here! Big bummer !

[Stone]

I'm looking for a house, and I never thought I'd say this, but you can't find anything decent for less than $800,000.

On the other hand, $95K is more than most people in the city make, especially now that the bubble has burst.

[Carolyn Tillie]

Yeah, it may be true that that is what they get -- but you gotta remember that it doesn't mean there are JOBS out there. And these waiters that get more than $60k -- are they working Denny's? I don't think so...

Like Stone said, a house is around $800k.

I decided to live an hour east of SF (just outside of Napa). Houses are more affordable, at $500k, but it took me nine months to get a job and I'm thrilled to be getting $15/hour (just over $31k/year).

[malachi]

I would want to see some facts and methodology to support those numbers.

[dfunghi]

I would guess there are a few servers / barkeeps making that kind of dough. Very few! To earn $60 k as a waiter you would have to avg. 20% (which is very high) tip on $300k a year in sales or approx $825 a day 365 days a year. Hourly wages are very low for servers so I would guess <$10k yearly, the rest is tips. Figuring most servers work 4 - 5 shifts a week that number goes through the roof. 250 shifts @$1200 in sales per shift. Per server ( 4 or 5 maybe). Again, it is possible. Not very likely. Very few if any restaurants gross those kind of sales numbers.

D

[melkor]

I would guess there are a few servers / barkeeps making that kind of dough. Very few! To earn $60 k as a waiter  you would have to avg. 20% (which is very high) tip on  $300k a year in sales or approx  $825 a day 365 days a year. Hourly wages are very low for servers so I would guess <$10k yearly, the rest is tips. Figuring most servers work 4 - 5 shifts a week that number goes through the roof. 250 shifts @$1200 in sales per shift. Per server ( 4 or 5 maybe). Again, it is possible. Not very likely. Very few if any restaurants gross those kind of sales numbers.

D

I think the average cost per plate for meals I've eaten in SF is somewhere around $75, at that rate you only need 16 covers a night to hit $1200.

[dfunghi]

Spending $75 is not hard to do in any big city. But even in SF $75 does not represent the avg. cost of dinner. Chapeaux on Clement has excellent 3 course french meals for around $30 and thats just one. As I said I am sure there are some servers and BK's making big money and they have jobs at busy (subjective term these days) places with high check charge. Other than those hundred or two I cant imagine it. Then when they say "the average waiter salary here is $63K; the average bartender salary is $95,000." No way. Maybe if it said the avg. waiter at SF's top 15 restaurants

D

[melkor]

Spending $75 is not  hard to do in any big city. But even in SF $75 does not represent the avg. cost of dinner. Chapeaux on Clement has excellent 3 course french meals for around $30 and thats just one. As I said I am sure there are some servers and BK's making big money and they have jobs at busy (subjective term these days) places with high check charge. Other than those hundred or two I cant imagine it. Then when they say "the average waiter salary here is $63K; the average bartender salary is $95,000." No way. Maybe if it said the avg. waiter at SF's top 15 restaurants

D

Ok so assume your figure of $30 a plate is close to the city average for reasonably formal dinning, that may be right if you average all the $20 meals at the cheesecake factory with the $200 meals at gary danko. Clearly at danko it is effortless to serve $1200 worth of food in a shift, and at the cheesecake factory where one server gets a dozen tables or more and those tables are turned over four or more times a night it seems highly unlikely that they would have trouble hitting $1200.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any idea what the avg waiter in SF takes home but $63,000 doesn't seem like it would be out of the question.

[dfunghi]

Guess we just disagree about this. I have not seen the piece being discussed, I would like to though.

I think my point should be there are perhaps tens of thousands of servers in SF when you count all the people that serve food for a living. Everything from tiny Salvadoran places up to the top tier of Danko and others. There is a staggering number of food business's in SF. Most are not what you would call "formal dinning", however they do employ servers. As to bartenders, there are lots and lots of bars, small dark bars. I would wonder if they have $1500 day gross. Not all of SF is as upscale or affluent as those who eat at Danko's or the like. It has a large blue collar ( getting smaller everyweek) population within it's 50 sq. miles. With many, many , restaurants where $30 or so buys dinner for a family. If we take ALL the servers salaries and avg. them it is no way near $45k let alone $65k. Unless this was an article about the SF society with six plus figure salary and where they eat. Disregarding the remaining 350,000 or so people and their servers. That may explain why the servers in the article do so well.

[melkor]

Guess we just disagree about this. I have not seen the piece being discussed, I would like to though.

I think my point should be there are perhaps tens of thousands of servers in SF when you count all the people that serve food for a living. Everything from tiny Salvadoran places up to the top tier of Danko and others. There is a staggering number of food business's in SF. Most are not what you would call "formal dinning", however they do employ servers. As to bartenders, there are lots and lots of bars, small dark bars. I would wonder if they have $1500 day gross. Not all of SF is as upscale or affluent as those who eat at Danko's or the like. It has a large blue collar ( getting smaller everyweek) population within it's 50 sq. miles. With many, many , restaurants where $30 or so buys dinner for a family. If we take ALL the servers salaries and avg. them it is no way near $45k let alone $65k. Unless this was an article about the SF society with six plus figure salary and where they eat. Disregarding the remaining 350,000 or so people and their servers. That may  explain why the servers in the article  do so well.

Clearly the article is referring to a subset of the service industry in the city, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Including the people behind the counter at the McDonalds for example would be silly. I suspect they conducted a survey by mail and the restaurants that responded were the on the upper end of the spectrum. I agree with you that if you take into account all the places in the city where you can eat for $7 that $63k is a ridiculous figure, but if you limit the sample set to P.F. Changs and up then I suspect those numbers are reasonably accurate.

[Stone]

The "piece" was actually a morning news spot on the troubles of the SF industry. They interviewed people at Hayes Valley Seafood Grille. At some point, the reporter mentioned the salary figures.

[melkor]

The "piece" was actually a morning news spot on the troubles of the SF industry.  They interviewed people at Hayes Valley Seafood Grille.  At some point, the reporter mentioned the salary figures.

Yet more proof that not having any idea what I'm talking about won't prevent me from taking sides.

[Rail Paul]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary of a bartender in San Francisco metro area is $11.03 per hour, or $22,940 per year. That's job classification 35-3011.

Waitresses make a bit less.

The info's about 3/4 of the way down the page. The mean and the median are pretty close, which suggests there are some, but not a lot of people who earn much more than the average.

BLS - SF metro