then what is a wage?
you know: we don't read our own reviews. we bust our asses to make sure every single beer tastes good. and every single pizza is cooked perfectly imperfectly. and every single toast is a beautiful mess. and every loaf has a different but special rise. and we have oh-so-many problems. and we know what they are. and don't need a review to distract us.
now, we happen to know that most of our reviews are good. based on the average star rating. and based on word from a lot of our servers. but we try desperately not to read them. but... just the other day, we were poking around google, trying to figure out how to change our holiday hours. and there they were: bad reviews! on no! can we resist?!? did we?! we couldn't so we didn't.
all the (very few) bad reviews out of the many suggested that our prices were too high. and that tells me a couple things...
1) we're pricing things exactly right! if a small handful of people say our prices are too high. and 90% of the other reviews are glowing. then we're pricing things precisely right!
2) the people who wrote the reviews either don't care about food or beer or else lack empathy for the working class.
i'm supremely confident about #1 above. srsly. we charge $7-$9 for 13 ounces of beer. is that a lot? yes! it's more than your average bar. but we're not your average bar! we make beers and other beverages that you can't get anywhere else in the world. but even then: go to any bar and order their most special beers. and you'll pay at least that much. you should! special beers are risky. and expensive. and take lots and lots of time. and in order for a brewery to keep making them, they have to charge a little more money.
and we're a brewery! would you rather spend $5 or $6 for 13 oz of beer? sometimes i bet your ass you would! and sometimes we would! in fact, much of the time we eat elsewhere we do. but we aren't looking for that when we go to special breweries or special restaurants.
ok. so what the fuck does "special" mean? i use it to describe both our model and our product. i'll take the former first.
our latest rustic beer, *NEIGHBORHOOD* is a cheap example.
malts: for this and many other beers we source our malts from a maltster in lebanon, indiana, called sugar creek malt co. caleb, the small business owner who runs the malthouse, sources his grains from his own grain farm. and from other nearby small farmers. we've also been working with a farm in central illinois called janie's farm. harold there is looking for ways to send 3,000 pounds of wheat to caleb to malt for us. caleb pays someone to drive all the grain our way once a week. and he's got accounts as far afield as north carolina! so he's got a lot of folks to pay for similar deliveries. the malts taste good, though. thoughtful. different. and they're worth the money.
hops: for this beer we keep hops to a minimum. we use grungeist. it's green citrus-y. not quite lime-y or lime zesty. maybe key lime? anyway. it pairs perfectly with our yeast profile. and with the richer cereal malts we get from caleb. we et the hops from a farm local to the midwest. it's harder to source all your hops locally, as most are grown in the mountain west. but there's a great hop farm in michigan called hophead farms. their variety is killer for their size. and their hop quality is tops. and they're local. a chicago beer legend, nunzino pizza (that's his name), owns the farm. he's got quite a few employees working for him. farmers. accountants. marketing folks. a sales team. an HR team. a logistics team. and he needs all these people doing this hard work diligently in order to keep his business healthy.
yeast: we actually collected this yeast ourselves. which, if you read carefully above, took quite a long time to do. we collected shitloads of yeast, actually. bryan did. and most of it didn't work to ferment beer. but we kept trying and trying and finally cracked the nut, so to speak. and found a yeast that was reminiscent of belgian saison yeast. go figure. right out there in the wild. we contacted our friends at omega yeast for some help in propping it up and storing it. they agreed. there's at least 6 or 7 people working for omega. there's lance and mark, the owners. there's adi and nate and laura: yeast wranglers and brewers and lab scientists or biologists. or maybe in some cases all four. in on person! but they make special stuff. they aren't satisfied sitting on their laurels and selling a handful of boring but lucrative strains. and we're excited to be working with them for virtually every beer we make. and especially for this very special house-harvested yeast.
the beer then sits in tanks made with american steel by american manufacturers. and all the electronics that control them are designed and built by same. and is then poured by knowledgeable beer servers. who handle a variety of customers all day and night. and then it ends up in your glass. and you down it. and i've only scratched the surface of the people involved in that beer.
and then, the pizza: i won't go on about the pizza. cuz it's getting boring. and it's early for jokes. and i think i've run out. but you get the point. the dough takes 4 days to make. by at least two people. and then gets stretched and topped and cooked and finished by two to four people. and managed by two people. and, you know what pizza dough's made out of? grains. and you know where our grains are got from? farms. in the middle west. and distributed by good local companies with high ethical standards. same as our sauce. same as our cheese. same as our salad greens. and on and on and on.
so yes. we make special shit. and if you're two people and you order a margherita for $16 and a giant salad for $14 and two beers each for $8 and hung in a fun, lively space and had a nice conversation with each other and with your server and the music was perfect background music or maybe even foreground music and you begged to know what it was and where we got the candle holders and the wallpaper in the bathroom and you left with a fresh loaf of bread for $6 and you each shelled out $23 before tax and tip (cuz you're gonna split the bread), i'd call that a steal, actually.
you know how many humans you're paying in that $23? what kind of life do you expect those humans to have? what kind of life do you want them to have? could the grain farmers take less good care of their crop? yeah. could they buy shittier seeds? could the maltster pay his drivers less? yes. he could. but then would he keep them? or maybe he would! but should they be driving four towns over to get their toilet paper at a dollar store every three weeks? or should they be able to afford to go to walgreens once in awhile for the nicer, softer stuff. just like you. he who pays $23 for a beautiful meal and beer and complains.
and what about your cook and server? should neither be able to afford health insurance? what if all the abuse they withstand from high-maintenance customers drives them a little nuts. and they need a little mental health treatment? what if they simply have depression in their family? should they be able to afford treatment? or does the market not value their work enough so [shrugs shoulders]? thanks for your insight there, mr reagan. but there's a reason you're dead. (that is: that time passed. and we've learnt that those arguments are bunk. and that society erupts if you make them for long enough.)
and then let's get to other restaurants in town: piece charges a lot of money for their pizza. why, do you think? could it be that they're also ethical people? trying to balance the same things we are? and lula cafe and cafe marie-jeanne and dos urban cantina and parachute and mfk and etc. why do they charge what they charge? shit... i spend $10 on a fucking burrito bowl at chipotle. and they're cutting every last corner. and they have public, institutional shareholders. who demand they make a certain profit.
so if you're in the $20-$40 range for eating really good pizza and drinking really special beers and wines. count yourself lucky. in fact, we should be charging more money for this shit. we really should.
which brings me to my next point: tips. there's a movement afoot. led by the folks at honey butter fried chicken and cellar door provisions. and we're just becoming a small part of it. to ban the tipped minimum wage in chicago. (if you make tips, your minimum wage is much, much lower.) it's the right thing to do. it may have some scary implications for our industry and our neighborhoods. and i'll get further into those next week. i swear i'll write back next week. about our official OTHER PEOPLE release. (remember from.... earlier today? the beer we made w martha stoumen?) and anyway i'll write more about the ins and outs about that minimum wage issue.
if it passes, prices at restaurants will likely go up as labor costs will go up across the board. tipping, though, will be disincentivized. as it should be. and, as such, front-of-house workers would likely gain the dignity of working hard for consistent pay. and not have to have 47 bosses in one night, some of them abusive and unaccountable to anyone else in the world in a given table-moment.
next week we'll dig deeper. until then. as ever...
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