Sweet Deal

By Erin in Food on Mar 27, 2006 6:32PM

It pays to know your pastry here in Chicago.

In an article in today's Sun-Times, pastry chefs in Chicago are bringing in $13 an hour, the highest of any of the cities surveyed by Starchefs.com, the site responsible for a 2005 Salary Survey of the foodservice industry's professions. The Sun-Times article quotes mk's Kate Neumann as saying that Chicago is a "great town to work in pastry." This is all fine and good but Chicagoist wonders what about pastry in Chicago that has our pastry chefs bringing in almost $3K more than most of their peers in other major cities. Anyone out there have a guess?

The survey also mentions that our city's restaurant managers are getting the short end of the pay stick, bringing in $37,500 a year when the national average is $49,634. That's almost incomprehensible to Chicagoist as these members of the restaurant staff have to wear so many hats, and work such horrible, horrible hours, that it defies logic. We're guessing that a manager at Custom House is seeing a bigger paycheck, and perhaps the sheer number of restaurants in the area brought our numbers down, but still. Crazy talk.