Food service and retail are unique beasts for that, really. There's no barrier to entry, so your skill base varies wildly, and because you have to be anticipatory (since, on a given day, you may be dead or you could be swamped) you either need hyper-competent staff (unlikely, given the returns involved) or overstaff, thus inflating your labor costs. The solution that came about was salaried, overworked management and interchangable grunts. This breeds insane turnover which in turn lowers competence and inflates the cost of labor even more, but at the same time given your minimum staffing requirements raising wages to attract more competent workers would be devestating in the short term while everything balanced out.
Realistically there's still room for improvement, but good luck convincing a penny-pincher of that one (which, since most of your food service is either small business or franchise, is what your owners tend to be.)
Though honestly I was more thinking business sector with salary work, where you can much more accurately predict work load and thus the need for overtime should be anticipated and compensated, but isn't because everyone's too wrapped up in the system to protest and get their fair share.