Let's start things off by saying, if I could give Kinka as a whole 0 stars, I absolutely would. There are MANY fundamental and ethical issues presiding over Kinka as a company.
1. Tips
Unlike most other restaurants, Kinka has a shared tip pool for both Kitch and Front of house staff. And grades the amount of tips given based on seniority and importance. So if you're just starting off at any Kinka restaurant, you receive the least amount of tips possible. Jabistro is the worst offender of this.
Instead of paying kitchen staff a fair wage and not having to receive tips, Kinka, in a effort to save $money$, forces them to compete for those tips.
Kinka also HATES paying withdrawal fees, so Kinka had the wonderful idea of telling it's General Managers to withdraw tips from their OWN BANK ACCOUNTS, in order to subsidize daily tips. A friend of mine who had to go through this, broke down in front of me because of the charges she incurred AND the lack of ANY compensation Kinka provided for her.
2. Visa Hostage
If #1 honestly wasn't enough for you, then how about #2. A large amount of Kinka's full-time staff are imported from Japan at the promise of a "better life and good pay", offering them a visa to work in Canada, so generous. However, this comes with strings attached; not only are their employees paid absolute garbage(hence tip issue), but also have their visas threatened if they don't comply to every single thing they want from you.
But Kinka is smart. They're required you to log in and out of POS systems in a timely manner to give the appearance of working a set amount of hours. So, when the Ministry of labour comes to investigate, there are no reprecussions.
Predecessors of mine have tried to get the Ministry of labour involved and failed to do so based on a "lack of evidence".
#3. Wage theft
This goes with the previous point, but garnished over-time due to "40hr" work week. This is the primary reason why the Ministry of labour gets involved.
Kinka LOVES to save money where it can, so in true capitalistic fashion, it pays a salary for a 40hr work week while James Kim, the CEO gets to buy a lovely beach home for $7.5 million in Barbados. This isn't new ladies and gentlemen, it happens everywhere.
#4. Creative Castration (extreme micromanagement)
Now, if none of that was enough, then maybe this will. Kinka no longer trusts it's managers to act autonimously. So, any drinks or food that chefs and bartenders alike want to add to a menu, it must be approved and edited by their marketing department. The Marketing department. They clearly have nothing better to do than put up pictures on social media and say "yum!" I've faced this issue before, and it is incredibly infuriating. You want to be able to have some creative output or SOME sort of voice, but Kinka doesn't allow it. It shushes you from the shadows and threatens your employment status instead.
Kinka's reverred vice president, also has a big hand in this. He's the mastermind behind the total micromanagement, and when applying for any sort of management position, you don't get an interview with a General manager at a location, but rather have to travel to the head office and interview with him. The vice president. The vice president and CEO alike have their hands in everything, doing jobs that they've hired people to do, but don't trust them with it, so they end up doing it, all the while applying pressure to a level equivalent of a company in Japan.
#5. Mass produced ingredients
This isn't an issue with Jabistro, however, Kinton Ramen, one of their chain of ramen restaurants, isn't quite what they seem. While restaurants like Santouka, Isshin and Sansotei make their soup stocks and ingredients from scratch. Kinton has employed the "Ramen as fast food" motto. Kinka currently has a large facility that creates all the soup stock and ingredients as packed goods and distributes them across Kinton Ramen locations. And you might say to me, "well, fast food restaurants are all like that". Yes, but Kinton Ramen doesn't advertise itself as fast food. It advertises itself as an, authetic, casual Japanese eatery. So congratulations! You spent $22 on a lie by eating here.
#6. Cover up schemes
The last thing to address is their crafty cover up schemes. When things go wrong or people speak out and go public, what do they do? Well, like Glassdoor, they employ their hostages to write fake reviews on sites like this. Instead of fixing and changing issues, they prefer to cover it up.
What's worse is that they choose to turn a blind eye to wage theft and tip theft.
Jabistro, Kinton Ramen, Kinka Izakaya all have their fair share of managers skimming as much tips from the rest of the restaurant by declaring more working hours than they actually worked. This issue has been so problematic at Jabistro over the last 8 years that they choose to "punish" their managers by lowering them to a server position or jut no even doing anything at all.
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