Copenhagen’s exclusive restaurants receive strong criticism in the Financial Times
It writes the Financial Times in a larger report on the conditions in some of Denmark’s most exclusive restaurants.
No other Nordic city can boast as many stars in the annual Michelin award as Copenhagen, and people from all over the world travel to the Danish capital to tease their taste buds. But according to the international financial newspaper, there is another side to the Danish gourmet city that rarely emerges.
The newspaper has interviewed a number of chefs, waiters, apprentices, restaurant owners and food journalists who talk about an unsustainable working environment. Most will be anonymous, among other things for fear of being blacklisted in the industry, the newspaper writes. Several say they have been pushed up against the wall, beaten and kicked by friends. According to a young chef, he was refused to go to the doctor when he got boiling coffee over his hand after one of the other chefs pushed a revolving door on him.
– My skin fell off, says the chef, Per-Emil Madsen, to FT.
Free work
Another tells of cook apprentices who were located within the rainy weather to pick out ends, even though there was actually room for the type of work being done.
– What makes people do something like that, ask the source.
One of the explanations for the poor working environment, which is highlighted by the newspaper, is the high proportion of unpaid labor in the restaurant industry. Apprentices and trainees from smaller places travel to Copenhagen to have an internship for three months without pay at the city’s best restaurants. Several of the restaurants must have become completely dependent on free labor: When each dish requires so many resources and efforts, it will not be sustainable if all the work is to be paid.
– I do not think you can achieve these results without utilization, says Madsen, the young chef who was injured, to the newspaper.
Bad advertising
CEO Jannick Nytoft of the Danish industry organization for the restaurant and hotel industry, Horesta, does not hide the article in the Financial Times puts the industry in Denmark in a bad light.
– There is no doubt that the Danish gastro scene is largely made up of foreign tourists who plan to visit Copenhagen. This will of course go in and affect someone, he says to the Danish newspaper Børsen.
According to Nytoft, the restaurant industry is missing 34,000 hands this summer, and if they do not treat people well, they will create problems for themselves.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We want you to share our stuff using a link that leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content may only be done with written permission or as permitted by law. For further terms see here.