Wage Equality

**A Note & Update from Homestead.**

Everyone at Homestead. is so grateful for the opportunity to once again welcome our community back to enjoy good food and drink.  While COVID has changed so much, you may notice that our menu prices have stayed relatively the same.  We are however adding a 5% ‘Wage Equality Fee’ to all checks moving forward.

This change in business practice has been brewing for us for many years, and now is the time to institute this change. This change to our model has been instituted to pay our back of house kitchen staff more fairly and in line with the rest of our team in the front of house, including servers and bartenders.

This industry-wide issue has been growing for years and without changes to our programming, this wage gap will only continue to grow and create further internal and team related issues. This service charge is our way of directly addressing this problem. 

“Why not just raise menu prices?” This question is often directed at restaurant owners whenever this conversation is had. The short answer is “Well, we are raising our prices, just in a different way than you may be used to seeing in the form of menu price increases.” 

The slightly longer, more detailed answer is that, menu price increases do not actually fix the issue at hand and can, in fact, exacerbate the wage discrepancy further. Servers and bartenders are attached to the ‘top line’ of the business financials, while cooks, dishwashers, and other back of house team members are attached to the ‘bottom line’ of the business. This is the difficult issue facing restaurant owners everywhere as there are two differently compensated teams working together and in tandem to bring you the experience of dining out. 

As a chef & business owner, I am tired of seeing incredibly talented, hardworking, and resilient individuals treated like less of a ‘priority’ than their service co-workers who can often make anywhere from 2-3.5x as much as them, often doing ‘less strenuous’ work and working less hours, for more money. 

These added fees will allow us to continue to support our incredible team while offering a more balanced and fair working environment. Without that, we could not continue to provide & serve this incredible community sustainably and progressively. Further, these fees are become more and more normalized in our industry and feel now is the best time to institute this change. 

It is also important to note that we hope this does not cast any dark light on our INCREDIBLE service team, we simply feel the strong need to better support our entire team, and not just the front facing department. 

If you have any questions about this fee or change in our business practice, please feel free to ask for me or for one of our dedicated managers.

Thank you so much for your loyal support and understanding.

In Solidarity,

Jeremy Werther (Chef/Owner) & The Homestead. team

To stay up to date with Homestead. operations, please follow our Instagram page - @eathomestead.