(Photo: Gtres)
These days I have remembered a lot what they told me on a recent trip to Switzerland. It is a very expensive country compared to Spain, especially when it comes to sitting in a bar or a restaurant.
“A coffee costs 5 euros, but the waiters earn 3,000 euros a month”, they warned me to cushion the scare of the first coffee in the country.
And the truth is that it seemed to me an apparently fair agreement. At first glance, well, it would be necessary to see how much rents and others go there to know what can and cannot be done with that salary. But wow, in Spain coffees for more than two euros are not uncommon as soon as you get lost - at least in big cities and if we talk about specialty coffee - and it goes without saying that the salary of the person who serves it will be closer of the 1,000 than of the 3,000.
All this is due to the controversy over the price increase in the Diverxo de Dabiz Muñoz menu. He has taken the first step, so he has had to receive most of the sticks, but it is quite clear that it is something that is going to happen in many of the great restaurants in the country.
We will see if they dare with such a forceful increase, but it is a subject that, in a low voice, has been commented on in the gastronomic world for a long time: the great restaurants of the country are very cheap compared to European ones. Indeed, the salaries of some countries and others have nothing to do with it, but we cannot forget that a good part of these three-figure tasting menus are served to people who visit Spain from other countries.
In any case, Muñoz putting whatever price he wants on his menu is totally legal. He is at the top right now, so there is no reason to imagine that his restaurant will be deserted. In fact, who was willing to pay more than 300 euros up to now with drinks, surely he can stretch the budget further. Whether it is not a great effort or if it is the whim of his life.
Nor does it make sense to assess whether or not it is fair. Haute cuisine, beyond its cultural dimension and its role as ambassadors of the country, plays in a certain way in the league of luxury, and it is already known that other rules apply there. More expensive is a bag or a Porsche and nobody is scandalized. Wow, that little controversy and absurd headlines perpetrated by the media these days, a lot.
The problem comes, in any case, when the price of these menus is linked to the conditions of those who work in restaurants. Passing the bill for labor rights to consumers may make some sense, in the same way that a t-shirt made in Spain and with fair working conditions is logically sold more expensive than one that comes from Bangladesh.
What squeaks in the speech of some chefs is to make it clear that until now things have not been like that. And that if hours, labor legislation and conditions have been skipped it has not been a business and economic decision, but a consequence of the Spanish rat customers who do not want to pay more for their menus. And that some chefs, poor people, have had no choice but to tighten the nuts a little on the workers.
Does this mean that those who charge their menus at lower prices exploit their workers? At this point I think we all know that, luckily, it is not. Maybe they are exceptions, true. But taking for granted that people come to the hotel industry to suffer and work a thousand hours for a five-year contract, I don't know if it's something from the past, as is so often said. But what is clear is that it is illegal.
Stored in: Present
