kitchen manager

restaurant general manager

directeur de restaurant

assistant general manager

line cook

Fresh Kitchen + Juice Bar

Fresh used to be a great company who cared for their employees. They offered decent wages and tips were good. They had consistent training and maintained employee standards through ongoing feedback and performance reviews. It was busy but the staff was a family of hardworking people who looked out for one another. With the expansion of apps usage, the workload has increased beyond the restaurant's capacity. Staff has never been paid for this increase in workload and stress. Servers and hosts do not get raises, regardless of experience with the company or their performance. Cooks and bartenders have low caps on the raises they can receive. Dishwashers are poorly staffed. Post-minimum wage increase, the company decided to "redistribute tips" through tip-pooling, rather than actually raising wage caps and paying staff appropriately. Upper management have been hostile, expressing that front of house makes too much money. Tips are tracked and disbursed through third-party weekly e-transfers so that employees are vulnerable to clawbacks during their tax returns. 

Upper management/ owners don't care about their employees. The area kitchen manager is considered a misogynist by many of his staff and has maintained unqualified male employees who can't do their jobs, which has created a toxic work culture back of house. As such, there is high turnover and quickly falling standards in terms of food and wait times. Across all departments the staff has become incredibly inconsistent... with stronger staff having to pick up the slack of others. There is no incentive for great staff to stay. Every once in a while the company might offer $20 Fresh gift card to an employee they appreciate, which isn't helpful with the cost of living in Toronto. 

They have too many tables. Fresh has (and still may be) violating their liquor license occupancy maximums in order to make more money at the expense of the comfort and safety of staff and guests. The space is too tight too be accessible. No breaks for hosts or servers. Increasing staff surveillance. Their harassment policy is lax. They have had issues with racial microaggressions, cissexism and sexism. 

They have had bedbugs in the restaurant without ensuring that all staff were informed of the bedbugs. They have had issues with black mould at at least one location.

This company has a huge problem holding onto their staff, myself included. In the year I worked there, all of BOH - including its management - turned over twice. Fresh is great if you want a summer job cooking vegan food with friendly coworkers, but if you’re a good cook, give up hope of working there long term.

In my experience as an on-the-floor manager I felt really unsupported by head office/the upper management, which was super unresponsive to our feedback. There was little effort made to retain quality staff - what happened at my location with the massive turnover was happening simultaneous at at least three other locations, where most of management also turned over the course of the summer. Our location was constantly understaffed, and our policies meant we ended up prioritizing take-out over dine-in (thus depriving our servers of tips and incurring customer complaints). We would then be scolded for long wait times, despite being denied the resources to fix the problem. Upper management would spring menu changes and events/sales at last minute leaving managers to have to try and call in extra labour, or work on their days off/overtime. We were also constantly micromanaged to avoid food cost, even though the constant departure of trained staff was much more of a problem for day-to-day operations. The area manager is basically a fix it man, sent to whatever location happens to have been completely abandoned by staff that season - it shows you how little interest they have in fixing their problems that they have an upper management person who does just that. Their benefits also suck; the ones available to everyone are a joke, and getting on the health insurance plan is impossible because HR refuses to speak to staff directly, thus dragging out the process for months.

Fresh taught me a lot about being a line cook and I’ll be forever grateful to the welcome and instructive environment my coworkers created, but as soon as you become senior staff/offered a promotion, get out of dodge.

Where to start...

As a line cook my immediate coworkers and managers were pretty great to work with but it was clear the company was in decline over the year or so I worked there.

Owners and upper management seem to have no regard for lower level employees though we were the ones who worked hard to keep the restaurant running. My manager was fired out of the blue and the takeover was a disaster from the get go. New managers were brought in including a new recruit who didn’t even have experience as a line cook and couldn’t complete tasks that even the newer employees could. The area manager (a very misogynistic white male) did a terrible job and micromanaged the staff to death. 

In order to keep paying line cooks minimum wage, tip outs were adjusted so servers lost out on monies earned. They would rather take money from their own employees than to just pay a living wage themselves. 

The irony of Fresh is the culture and values they project to customers is in complete contrast to what is happening behind the scenes. They would have you believe they are a fair employer who compensate fairly for hard work and treat employees with respect but that is not the case at all.

I haven’t seen all locations but the ones I did work in had terrible conditions. Pest problems, water damage, questionable food safety practices, general safety hazards were all observed and never dealt with. They’re quick to try and expand the business but don’t seem to want to fix any issues in their older locations. 

With the addition of food delivery apps we were expected to prepare a much larger amount of orders with no additional staff or space to do so. When this failed, staff were reprimanded. They expect miracles but do nothing to facilitate. Staff were increasingly stressed and for good reason.

What started out as a decent experience quickly turned into a terrible one.

The worst restaurant to work at absolute garbage!!!
Terrible pay for the intense work that we did we were not paid fairly.
If you like being treated like an animal being overworked and getting awful pay come work here. What is just as worse is the tipping system its awful. Tips change from week to week and kitchen staff are paid poor tips as a way for the restaurants to not give them a fair decent wage. Tips will change week to week and its barley enough what is worse is that the MANAGERS keep most of the tips for themselves and give the scraps to the employees. Managers are awful impatient and rude people who dont care about their employees they will exploit you and work you like an animal and will treat you like an animal. 
The benefits are F@#$ING useless, free spin classes and free Yoga... 
forget about medical benefits, vacation or sick days.
Everyone here is stressed and angry i dont know how a company like fresh can operate 6 locations yet be so horrible and unstable.
Good luck trying to work your way up at this company because bending backwards runs deep in this company's roots, you will not be able to be promoted unless you give up your dignity and honor and sell yourself to upper management like a how dog submits to its owner. And besides who would want to invest their previous time, hard work and to endure unbearable stress to work for such a garbage company with awful managers and a greedy CEO.
The only things that was positive about this working at fresh was the amazing co workers that i worked with while i was there, they were small gems found in a HUGE pile of dung.

I worked at fresh in 2013, and my experience was so awful that it still haunts me to this day. I got let go two days before my three month probation was up, which was right before Christmas. Because I was still on probation they didn't have to provide any notice. Their reasoning for firing me was that they didn't have enough hours, which was a complete lie. They had just hired several more people to work my same shift right before letting me go. It was clearly because I was a parent and they wanted to replace me with someone without any boundaries in terms of scheduling (to be clear, I worked their regularly scheduled shifts. I just had to work a predictable schedule so I could commit to pick ups/drop offs, whereas other workers would take anything). The managers who fired me didn't even look me in the eye while doing it- they literally stared down at the floor the whole time. Completely cold and unprofessional! I have refused to ever be a customer at Fresh again after this, and tell all my friends the same. I know a bunch of other local people who have worked for Fresh and have also been treated as disposable like this, being let go immediately before their probation was up with no notice. I guess their business plan involves luring employees in with the promise of great benefits after their probation period, but then getting rid of them before they ever make it that far. Avoid this place!! 

Fresh used to be a wonderful place to work at- great people, lovely perks, good hours, great management, well-supported, organized, and it was busy and profitable while also being run super well. Now that the business has been bought by Recipe they've stripped all of the lowest paid employees of everything- everyone is cut right at the 3 hour mark and made to clock out, every single shift is understaffed, they've cut all the perks of the job, and now expect employees to compete for measly $25 gift card bonuses when they already have to work 3 times as hard as they used to because of being understaffed. The only good thing about working at Fresh is the people- the staff are lovely, amazing, supportive and a treat to work with. Otherwise, this place has become a cesspool of insulting corporate greed. At Fresh you are not treated as a human- you're just a disposable body they will take advantage of until you feel just disrespected enough to finally quit.

P.S. Fresh, please save your breath and don't respond with an email address to write to so I can "offer more feedback to help address solutions"- I gave you plenty of feedback when I worked for you and it's clear you don't care about solutions. You're not interested in hearing anyone out- you're only interested in virtue signaling and not looking like a bad company (which you are)


Minimum wage 14 per hour with taxes deducted your left with mere scraps, low hours + low pay + normal tax rate deduction = YOU barley able to make ends meet. "Full time hours" are roughly 20 - 30 hours per week you wont find stable hours here. Tip distribution is absolutely awful changes every week one week $40 the next week $70 always fluctuating.                        
If management does not like for any reason they will intentionally give you low tips. Managers are aggressive, bothersome and stuck up people who always like to micromanage and breath down your neck every 4 seconds, unrealistic perfectionists who always emphasizes about 'taking it to the next level" complete nonsense. If you work in the kitchen be prepared to be yelled at like your an animal by useless and lazy line cooks who don't know how to call for an item in a civilized manner. VERY stressful place to work at full of corruption, cutting corners, GREED, SELFISHNESS, BACKBITING, over all an unpleasant experience. Some degree of discrimination against non-Caucasian employees is also present, also with a high turnover rate nobody is happy there. You have to be on some serious LSD if you want to enjoy working here.

Most management is ok, but the lot of them really over stress their staff. 
From my personal experience, my managers spent most of their time watching us on cameras then doing actual work. When it comes to the actual work, everything comes pre made at the Central Kitchen, so you're basically reheating. The amount of stress that is put on normal employees is more than any restaurant I've worked at. Due to short staff and management sitting there all of the stress and work fell upon the minimum wage workers. As someone who's managed restaurants before, never would I have let my staff suffer that way.
This is a tough time for all workers but if your Fresh location has 2 cases of covid and most people can't apply for CSRB they'll just take 500$ from you pay because "you'll get the money from the government" I personally was unable as my application was still being processed from the first case we had earlier in there year. Making it hard to help support my family which was already suffering due to the pandemic 
Overall the amount of stress and lack of care for regular employees was the worst of it. 

The management at this company and specifically this location does not care about their staff, the manager is too focused on hiring her mystery best friends who are over 20 years younger than her, who she refuses to acknowledge how they met even tho it's oddly strange that a 40 year old has a 20 year old best friend. Management will be too focused on promoting friends and ensuring their friends get the highest paying shifts in regards to tips even without any actual experience and will never acknowledge any issues that occur with their friends in regards to work. It's truly a shame that this location has such terrible management because the environment can be very fun and the rest of the staff who actually cares about work made for a great environment, but I was unfortunately unable to see eye to eye with management regarding how they ran things. I also experienced a hatecrime at this location by a customer, and management not only welcomed the guest back to the restaurant but offered him free money to do so. 

Working at Fresh Restaurant has been a truly rewarding experience. The team's camaraderie fosters a positive and collaborative environment, creating a workplace where everyone feels valued. The management's commitment to employee growth is evident through continuous training programs and opportunities for advancement. What sets Fresh apart is not just the exceptional cuisine but also the genuine care for its staff. The work culture promotes a healthy work-life balance, making it a place where passion meets professionalism. The emphasis on open communication and mutual respect contributes to a thriving workplace, where each team member is an integral part of the Fresh family. Being an employee at Fresh Restaurant isn't just a job; it's a fulfilling journey of personal and professional development, surrounded by a supportive and inspiring team."

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Kitchen manager 11 salaries reported	$55,500 per year
Restaurant general manager 5 salaries reported	$65,000 per year
Directeur de restaurant 5 salaries reported	$27.20 per hour
Assistant general manager 6 salaries reported	$55,167 per year
Line cook 6 salaries reported	$17.60 per hour

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