Employee Turnover, Ethics, Disclosure of the actual hours, Current Ad on Craigs list for Sous Chef

I currently work at Boston Cafe & Catering as executive chef and find many of these questions out of line and inaccurate. I can however answer each of these questions in order to clarify to any readers about the type of company Boston Cafe & Catering is.
My experience as Executive Chef of Boston Cafe and Catering has been a positive one in which I have developed a team of professionals treated as such we have top standards and more than thrill our clients on a daily basis with both corporate drop off and event catering. I have not worked as sous chef at Boston Cafe and catering and I don’t believe the poster has either because we have only had three sous chefs including our current sous chef in the last three years. I have been with the company for nine months. I know for a fact that we are not “using” employees, we hire at will employees, we pay them accordingly for their services in turn they work for us. I believe any company not exclusively Boston Cafe & Catering or the catering industry hires workers when it is busy and lays off workers or cuts workers hours when it is slow, I feel that the poster doesn’t understand business cash flow and appropriate payroll budgeting, its simply bad business to keep workers employed that there is no work for. I did attain my position with the aid of a recruiter I had no illusions of the hours that are required of a chef, it takes commitment and a desire or at least willingness to work hard and at times long hours. It is what it is, chefs typically work fifty hours or more a week. I can assure you that none of my workers are working for $11/ hour due to salary abuse, only in a few weeks in December are people truly working in excess of sixty hours, they are also given 100% paid personal health insurance and 50% contribution to family insurance along with two weeks paid vacation, which I think is a more than fair trade off for any employee for the rare (less than five times a year) that they would work in excess of 55 hours. It is however true that sometimes you have to work on a sixth day but this is hardly abnormal in our industry and it is rarely longer than a four hour shift. We have attempted in my tenure to hire delivery drivers but finding personnel has been more than difficult. We do have employees that tend to perform more deliveries and vice versa but all employees including the owner David, myself the exec chef and sales people are called upon to do deliveries again the business model necessitates this and we are more than upfront with prospective employees about delivery and kitchen duties. I have been paid for every hour I’ve worked also I’ve never heard of any grumbling from employees that they weren’t paid correctly I do have a good relationship with all of the employees that report to me, the sales staff, other managers and David the owner so I feel that I can attest for my peers in saying that these questions and insinuations are not legitimate. I’ve heard many horror stories about owners of restaurants or catering companies and the horrible things that they do to their employees, however David Briggs owner of Boston Cafe and Catering is not one of those owners yes he expects people to work hard but the employee is always compensated for their efforts. Yes he expects a healthy profit but isn’t that the intention of any company and isn’t it up to the employees from the dishwashers up to share that goal of company profitability so there job doesn’t disappear. Also if these insinuations were even a little bit true then why have so many employees at Boston Cafe and Catering been employed for more than two years, we have eight employees that have worked longer than two years, the industry average is six months. So for any readers out there know that we work in a positive productive atmosphere offer competitive wages and are going through a growth spurt. Thanks for reading,
Philip Proulx
Executive Chef
Boston Cafe & Catering