During a family and friends pre-opening night, Sonoma duck, Kosui pear and turnips are plated for service at Cyrus in Geyserville on Thursday Sept. 8, 2022. (Chad Surmick / The Press Democrat)
It’s almost unheard of: A restaurant prep chef earning at least $65,000.
But that’s what Cyrus partners Douglas Keane, Nick Peyton and Drew Glassell are promising, with the recent opening of their new restaurant in Geyserville.
And those prep chefs will be able to increase their salaries to $75,000, which is equivalent to what a “captain,” or top guest services manager, earns at the upscale destination.
The non-traditional approach to positions and salaries is the partners’ strategy to land workers during a crippling labor shortage and to combat a lack of living wages for restaurant staff.
“We have to do more with less,” Keane told The Press Democrat recently. “We want to pay people good money.”
According to the Indeed.com job site, the average pay for a prep cook in San Francisco is $19.12 per hour, or $44,604 per year, which is already 24% above the national average.
In Sonoma County, a prep cook earns a median salary of $31,720, according to the county’s Economic Development Board, while restaurant managers on average get a median pay of $60,840.
“For cooks, it’s a much higher pay rate, so that’s made it really easy to find help,” said Keane of the Bay Area’s famously challenged hiring landscape over the past few years. “We were all staffed except for three positions by mid-July.”...
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