A Toronto restaurant publicly shared all of its employees’ salaries, from managers to team members, in an effort to increase pay transparency and break the stigma around openly discussing pay scales.
“Why do we punish people for talking about what helps secure their livelihoods?” Michel Falcon, CEO and Founder of Grilled Peruvian Cuisinehe told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday. “Why do we say that we are transparent, but not about [salary]?”
Falcon said the idea has been trickling down for years, but he hadn’t been able to do anything about it until he launched Brasa in 2021.
When he first pitched this idea to his staff 30 days ago, Falcon said he held his breath.
“I thought, ‘This could blow up in my face,’” he said. “Everybody got it, but there were two people who sent me a direct message on Slack and, in short, to paraphrase, they said, ‘I’m proud to work for this company.’”
On Monday, the local chain, which serves Peruvian-flavored bowls, salads and smoothies, publicly posted how much each worker at all restaurants earned.
Hourly employees at Brasa earn between $19 and $21, while salaried employees earn between $60,000 and $75,000 a year.
The company’s starting hourly wages are set above Ontario minimum wage standard of $15.50 per houraccording to the wage transparency document, although the lower end of the company’s current hourly range, $19 per hour, remains behind Toronto’s living wage rate of just over $23 per hour.
“There are companies that exploit the minimum wage, full stop,” said Falcón. “That’s nothing I ever want to do. I will close this business if I ever pay minimum wage, I will never start a company that pays minimum wage.”
Instead, Falcon pays its staff “start-up income” that is not dependent on collecting tips from customers and provides all of its employees, both part-time and full-time, with benefits from day one.
Falcon says the company includes length-of-employment data and lists employee accomplishments along with salaries in the document to help the public understand why some employees may have higher salaries than others and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. if they want to advance in the company.
“Someone will naturally look at their partner and think, ‘Why does Samantha earn more than me? I have been here longer, or we have arrived at the same time,’” Falcón said.
“So if someone walks into the document and sees that their partner is earning more than they are, well, we should paint a preemptive picture of ‘Why is that?’”
Under the name Falcon, a salary of $0 appears. In the document, the owner wrote that he is more focused on building a strong and lasting company than earning “a comfortable salary today.”
“Now, on the surface, a cynical person in my industry would say, ‘There’s no way I’m making money,’” he said. “Our net profits are higher than those of the industry. Now why is this? It’s because we hire good workers, and we don’t need them very much because their output is higher than someone making minimum wage with no benefits.”
Falcon says he is also providing education to his team members on how to successfully apply for a raise.
“This is how we secure our livelihood, and we’re not teaching people to ask for raises. It is a taboo subject, similar to salary transparency”.