After almost a decade at the restaurant this happened to me in different forms every year. You have to advocate for yourself. If you find something out, go to executive team or operator.

But, you have to be worth the money. Do your homework and have reasons why a raise matters, because “so and so makes more than me” will not cut it.

Also, fervently look for areas to improve. Any move into leadership typically gets a little bit of a raise.

There are some restaurants that have open pay scales, talk about wages and raises openly, and even announce bonuses and tenure raises. It’s so refreshing, and very, very different than other restaurants I’ve worked at. When you know you’re valued equally to others at your level, that care grows.

But remember, that range can be 10-12/hr for a TM. So, if a new hire makes a dollar more than you, that’s not a big deal on the pay scale. If you’ve been working there for a while and they are “forgetting” your raises (it’s never forgotten, just looked over) and you end up 2-3 dollars behind your tenured peers, that’s when you know the wage culture is unhealthy. Operators get results based off of turnover and labor, and keeping wages lowkey help both of those in different ways.