Click here to read the Spanish version.
Chef José Andrés, who is currently running a huge social project with his NGO World Central Kitchen in Valencia, explained in a recent episode of his podcast ‘Longer Tables with José Andrés’ why restaurant prices had skyrocketed.
It is a post-pandemic trend that continues to rise in the current era. The chef explains: ‘Obviously, there are restaurants that will always be very expensive because they are the most creative, the most sophisticated. You need a lot of people and expensive ingredients. But then the vast majority of restaurants in the United States, from diners to sandwich shops to barbecue places to taco places to hot dog places, [it] seems like everything over the years has just gone up and up and up, especially after the pandemic’.
José Andrés continues to talk about this situation that is further dividing the global economic divide. And despite the fact that inflation is running through everything, the chef claims that prices are rising because of the fair remuneration of restaurant workers.
Labour is high, but ‘labour is high because you have to pay people well,’ he explains. ‘You have to pay people well so they can afford a house that is not two hours away from the restaurant, then they have to spend money on petrol or time on the train… and so you see why restaurant prices are expensive, because one thing starts off expensive, and it all filters down and makes the final price you get from the restaurant.’
In this sense, everything develops on the basis of a chain: as the cost of living is higher, workers’ salaries must rise in turn, and consequently, so do the dishes on restaurant menus.
