The way we work at Blin Queen

Should I have previous horeca experience?

Previous horeca experience is not a must. We are ready to teach you everything we know.

A restaurant job is not for everyone, but if you are naturally friendly with people, can multitask, if you can manage your stress levels efficiently during busy shifts and you're ready to help a team when needed — it will work out.

Is this a hard job?

Yes. For people that have never worked in a restaurant before it may turn out really tiring both physically and emotionally. You need to move a lot, running all around the floor with the plates, trying to multitask and still be nice to your colleagues and guests.

Working in the kitchen might look even harder: you may have 5 tables waiting for their food at the same time, so you need to be really careful in how you plan your workflow, optimise it so the preparation of food doesn't take too long, and when you are finished with the tables continue with the prep of ingredients or just maintain the general cleanliness in the kitchen.

That said — you get a lot of energy back when you get sincere happiness and gratitude from the happy guests!

Is there career growth?

Every level is earned — through qualifications and tests, time with us, and taking on more responsibility — and each one pays more. This is today's ladder:

Rates follow the same CAO table as the starting rate, so they move up with it; vacation compensation (about 20%) comes on top of every one. Location-manager terms are agreed individually, and beyond the ladder there are salaried management roles.

Lack of development and career growth is a major problem in most restaurants. Being a small business (for now :) we naturally are limited when it comes to career growth, but even in these conditions we want to provide the possibilities for everyone to develop themselves while working at Blin Queen. You would always start as a trainee, but with the right mix of talent and ambition you will be able to earn qualifications and pass tests to develop your hard and soft skills further, eventually becoming responsible for one or more strategic initiatives on the company level — if you have an interest for it!

Tests and education?

Yes, we are constantly developing our own knowledge base (think about it as a private wikipedia), where we have theoretical materials both for the kitchen and front team as well as some tests and quizzes to check your qualification.

What kind of contract should we sign?

We always start with a «zero hours» ('nul uren') contract, where the hours per month are not fixed and you can take a different number of hours every month (that said, our approach to schedule management is fixed — so your shifts won't change every week, there's more information about it below). After a first year of work, we discuss the next type of contract that will be suitable for a perspective role and next steps at Blin Queen. This can vary from a min-max contract, where we have guaranteed minimum hours, to a full time contract.

What is the schedule?

Irrelevant to a contract type, we try to plan the schedule in a way that we agree on specific shifts that a team member 'owns' and they don't change every week. This agreement is fixed until a new agreement is reached and mutually accepted by both you and us. So for example, we agree that you work on Tuesday evening and Saturday morning. You know those are your shifts, and you can plan your life accordingly. On the other hand, if you have some other plans on a specific week and you can't work during the shift that is reserved for you, it will be your responsibility to agree with someone in the team for a rotation.

We stand for equality in the team, that's why we try to plan the schedule in the way that:

• every employee has both morning and evening shifts,
• every employee regularly works on either Saturday or Sunday, so every team member has one working day and one day off during the weekend,
• if someone gets sick, we help each other, and that's where it could happen that a second weekend day can become a working day — but with all the team helping, it happens quite rarely.

Working hours

These are the shifts we actually run right now, taken straight from our live schedule (rounded to the nearest quarter hour) — so this list stays true as the schedule changes.

Kitchen shifts can be longer, because the kitchen team is smaller. Weekend shifts are more fragmented than weekdays.

What hourly rate should I expect?

We pay in compliance with the Dutch Horeca rates table, so our starting rate is 14,99 euro per hour (second half of 2026). This rate is indexed by KHN (Koninklijke Horeca Nederland) and becomes a bit higher every half a year — you can check the current minimum wage on the KHN website.

On top of the hourly rate you also get your vacation compensation, which we pay every month based on the number of hours worked. To make it easier to understand, just add about 20% on top of every worked hour: 14,99 + 20% = 17,99 euro. This is what you get per hour before you pay your income taxes and pension.

We pay the same starting rate if you're under 21 years old. But we also expect the same standards of performance!

What kind of taxes do I need to pay?

The largest tax you will see on your payslip is usually income tax. It's individual and depends on many factors, such as your family situation, age, whether you have real estate or savings, whether you pay a mortgage, and so on — so treat the numbers below as an indication and check your own situation with us.

In general, if you're only employed by us we will always apply the so-called 'loonheffingskorting', which is a discount on income tax when your monthly salary is roughly under 1800 EUR (even if you work part-time). In that case your income tax and pension deduction would be around 10%, which is much lower than the minimum income tax rate in the Netherlands. If, for instance, you work part-time and your salary is lower — say under 1000 euro — then with loonheffingskorting applied your income tax will be practically zero.

I'm a student, are there any limitations?

Yes. If you are a student coming from outside the EU, you are allowed to work up to 16 hours per week — every week, all year round, including June, July and August. There is no summer exception for us: the limit stays 16 hours in every single week, and we monitor everyone's weekly hours to keep it that way.

Before you can be officially employed with us, we would need to apply for a work permit for you. Usually getting an approval takes up to 5 weeks.

Languages?

Fluent English is a must for the front team; for the kitchen team Russian is sufficient.

We have team members from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and many other countries speaking their native languages at home, but we use Russian as a team language, because it's understood by a lot of people from Eastern European countries and in this sense it's useful for work-related communication.

We encourage your development of the Dutch language, as Blin Queen is integrated in the society here in the Netherlands. However, at this point knowledge of Dutch is not mandatory.

Politically sensitive topics

We discourage political discussions and arguments during work for obvious reasons, and we stand united by universal human values. Our general position on the war in Ukraine is the following: we are against the war, we condemn the unprovoked aggression from Russia. We also believe that both regimes in Belarus and Russia are dictatorships where human freedoms are oppressed, and therefore governments in these countries could not speak on behalf of the whole nations they claim to represent.

Are there any additional benefits?

We do our best to make the work of the team more rewarding:

• Your shift meal comes from our full menu — any dish on it, plus several non-alcoholic drinks. If your shift is longer than 8 hours you can have an additional meal. We do not have a fixed time for lunch, but we agree that we take turns letting each other go for lunch if the situation in the restaurant allows for it.
• We reimburse the commute costs for those living outside of Amsterdam. Most of the time this means a train to Amsterdam. We do it because we feel that we should offer equal terms to people living outside of Amsterdam and in Amsterdam.
• Tips, equally shared between the team on the shift and paid out once a month.
• Individual educational and recreational budget based on overall business performance and number of working hours, after you complete your training.
• 20% discount for the whole menu when you come to Blin Queen alone or with your friends or family outside of your working hours. The same applies to your friends or family coming to Blin Queen when you're on the shift. This discount is not applicable on weekends and public holidays.
• Team buildings. We always try to learn something new together, so this could be anything from a weekend trip or floristic workshop to a team contest for the best fluffy pancake recipe!