@ghosttie Restaurants generally don't have shareholders.

@ghosttie oh, but it does. it’s still insane, ofc, but in the context of this mad reality it does make sense.
Because hiring new staff temporarily is cheaper than keeping staff that might have legal rights at some point.

Product quality is completely irrelevant in the eye of the shareholder. It’s a metric they can’t even comprehend.

@ghosttie only after all of the meal? That'd be a big success, you'd be lucky if the main dish team and the dessert team even met each other

@ghosttie Hard to get old staff to engage in quite the same way after they've been flogged into burnout / realise that their position isn't precarious though.

@ghosttie it’s the same reason movie studios don’t keep a large fixed staff. Assembling the money, “development” (of the script) and planning production only needs a few people. Actual production of the content is the only part that needs lots of people and is where all the money goes. Plus now that a lot of the sub components are well understood it’s cheaper to subcontract to low bidders.

@ghosttie but what if you would need to pay the royalties!

@ghosttie There's actually a very analogous practice in restaurant industry. It's not after each meal, but it's after you build your reputation. New restaurants start off operating at a loss for a few years making excellent food to build a reputation, then ditch their staff and replace everything with premade food-service stuff that only needs minimal prep in the "restaurant" and ride on their reputation for a few years raking in pure profit until everyone figured out they're awful now.