A review by documentno_is
Abolish Restaurants: A Worker's Critique of the Food Service Industry by Prole

challenging informative fast-paced

3.0

Critiques 

 

I think the tone of this pamphlet is rather bitter, and the assumption that nobody would want to make food for the masses by choice equally cynical. As a restaurant worker myself, I loved most moments of being a line cook and would have chosen to continue doing it forever if my labor or time was valued or if it provided any sort of standard of living with labor protections. So I disagree with the stance that restaurants should not exist, and food halls and smaller food service establishments have existed under worker-owned systems historically as well. Some of us love to cook, and just want to be treated fairly while doing so. I do, however, agree that it is impossible to operate a restaurant fairly or ethically in our current system (every tip included restaurant I know of has closed…) Still further I can agree that the idea of “restaurant” as presented in this pamphlet is a harmful and inescapable product of capitalism and exploitation. 

 

Positives 

 

I think this pamphlet does a very thorough and good job at organizing the issues with for profit food production and restaurants. A brief historical account of their inception leads into descriptions of the problems with restaurants as a whole. I think for people who have never worked in restaurants 

 

An aside: Is there literally any aspect of modern labor that wasn’t made worse by the industrial revolution?