Restaurant Legends

Unsustainable pricing prevents every single operator from being able to provide a living and equitable wage for their employees, top to bottom. Fear of competition and “the marketplace” keep prices unsustainably low. Conditions that support staff rather than abuse them need to improve. There needs to be a clear path of growth and achievement creating the serious career minded staff. Rather than staff that feel temporary or, “I’m only cooking or waiting tables until something better comes along.

If you back up far enough there was a time when most front of house staff were paid nothing, no wages at all and worked only for tips. During this nascent period of hospitality, the back of the house was expected to work positions that were only one step above indentured servant. Yes, they all, FOH and BOH were working in these conditions to learn the trade they would practice the rest of their lives. Yes, they were working mostly under teachers and mentors that helped mold a staff that cared about the guest.

Music:

Central Park Summer - Nicolas Jones

First Morning – Lalo Brickman

 

The drama and life lessons depicted in fiction on film of working in restaurants can look very realistic at times as in the John Favreau film "Chef" or it can be romatisized like it is in the Disney film "Ratatouille". Capturing the raw drama of restaurants happens artfully in the award winning documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi".

However there are three films that have some very authentic looking scenes ranging from the expansive  haute cuisine 3 star kitchens to the tight,every bit of space used in a casual bistro fighting for recognition. 

There are two themes that seem to exist more in restaurants than any other industry. The burn out of the Chef working in a high stakes environment and the conflict of traditional cooking and modern cooking. Both are discussed in this episode.

Films;

Boiling Point

Burnt

Le Chef

Music;

Blues in Five - Vendia

What is the best sign to tell if the restaurant industry has recovered from the devastating shutdowns and restrictions precipitated by the pandemic? Is it when the sales of your restaurant sales return to normal values? Is it when the dining room is filled on a Friday night?

Restaurant owners and managers are tearing their hair out trying to balance the skyrocketing cost of goods, labor and general operating costs. There are not simple answers, but there are answers none the less. Join Tobie in what may sound like a rant on restaurant conditions. But it’s filled with nuggets of information and ideas to help navigate the industry into the future.

 

Music:

Mantecadito – Lawd Ito

This Is The End Of The World – Coma Svensson

We’re now 27 months from the day the hospitality world stopped to help mitigate or at least help keep a worldwide pandemic in check.

 Some talked about this as an extinction level event. Which for some operators came true. But as an industry it survived and is beginning to show signs of  opportunities for those willing to take the risk of opening new stores.

 

There were many new words and phrases we learned, ghost kitchens, virtual restaurant, native delivery, meal kits, pay equity, no-tipping and a new normal etc.

What was the new normal we all talked about.. We all thought it was a chance to rebuild in a way that was vunerable to low margins and better at taking care of our employees.

In this mix was the discussion keeping the antiquated component of tips and how they are currently being used to subsidize compenstion. Are there answers? There are and all it takes is the determination to acknowledge the change.

Eater; Gratuity Still Not Included

Cornell Study; Restaurant Tipping and Service Quality: A Tenuous Relationship

Music;

Road of Fury -John Abbot

Ball and Chain Blues- Peter Crosby

I learned how the restauranteurs and hotelier I talked with represent some of the unknown faces of the war with Russia. I’ve talked with brave people who chose to stay where they were to give support to their neighbors, who lost everything and the military by keeping their restaurants and hotels open not only for a feeling of business as usual. But also to re-purpose their kitchens to feed their neighbors who have lost everything as well as front line workers and the military.   

First up is Andrij Leda, general manager of the first class Hotel Nobilis in Lviv, Ukraine. Lviv is a large city near the Polish border that US listeners might recognize as the home base for many journalists covering the fighting. But it was also the major conduit to Poland and the rest of Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Ukraine when the war started.

Many other restaurant business podcasts promise a marketing solution or tips for entrepreneurs on managing restaurants. If that’s what you thought this was that podcast …keep scrolling. But if you stay you’ll get what makes Restaurant Legends so singular. But in the meantime, I thought it was time talk about who I am and how I make this podcast different from the rest. I grew up in a family that at various times was either in the food business or the beverage business. I was about 19 when I met John Snowden in the office of his kitchen. I was there under the assumption that I would be talking to him about taking classes in the cooking school he ran. The school was focused on French cooking. It was a time when Julia Child was turning the culinary world on its ear with her books and tv show and Dumas Pere L’Ecole de la Cuisine Francais was as close as I was going to get at that moment to learn about cooking and food. But John had another idea how my culinary education was going to happen. He leaned back in his chair, took a long drink from a large, frosted glass of what I found out later to be cognac on the rocks and said, “Do you know what an apprentice does?” Even though I had been around food and kitchens most of my life at that point. This was the real start to a journey that’s lasted 55 years and it’s still going. Fernand Point

"As far as cuisine is concerned, one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain in the end, just a little bit." – Fernand Point

A Few Other students of Point;

Paul Bocuse

Alain Chapel

Jean & Pierre Troigros

Louis Outhier

All were in the forefront of revolutionizing cooking with Nouvelle Cuisine

The Chicken Bowl Menu

Music:

Delta Blues - Unknown

Ferris Wheel – Quincas Moreira

Ball and Chain Blues – Peter Cross

When the restaurant shutdowns happened in 2020, many operators looked at it as an impending apocalypse for the industry. It was even referred to by several influential people in this business to be an “extinction level event”. From which, the industry may never recover.

 But being the glass half full kind of guy I am. I saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to rebuild an industry that needed a great big fixing in many areas. So I set up a special podcast episode with three smart operators in the Twin Cities. I wanted to see if my ideas were all wet or there were others out there were thinking the same way.

I wanted to know if we could fix the gross pay inequity that had always existed between back and front of house. Even prior to the shutdowns there was a growing need for qualified cooks. The hospitality industry in the Twin Cities had grown so quickly that the competition for cooks was driving the hourly rate for those positions to levels no one had ever seen before. But whether the back of house rate increased or not, the front of house take home rate was still two or three times greater than the crew in back. And there was a government mandated minimum wage increase on the horizon that would send some restaurants into a tailspin because the front of house payroll in Minnesota does not have a tip credit so the result of the wage increase would drive that disparity in salary even greater than it was before.

In June of 2020, a conversation with Mecca Bos, Chef and food writer, focused on the issues of racism in the restaurant industry

You know it happens every day in the restaurant business. A friend meets you after he’s just had a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and says, “you should open a grilled cheese restaurant!” And then you do

A through-put that worked was a discovery after opening. It's a term used primarily by those in the quick service or fast casual arenas. It neatly describes the time it takes for a guest to go “through the experience” from the time they enter the door or join a que in the drive thru until the order is in his/her hands. The quicker the through-put the more orders can be completed and therefore more revenues can be achieved. So understanding your through-put is a crucial step when creating and designing certain restaurant concepts.

What is it that makes a restaurant, any restaurant, stand out above the competition? Quite simply, it is making sure you can deliver on your basics…meaning the promises of good food and drinks, a comfortable atmosphere and service that makes the guest feel like they belong.

Scott Redler is a co-founder of the Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers chain and currently he’s also their CXO (that’s chief experience officer by the way, a rare label for a position responsible for how the guest perceives the experience.)

In case you may be somewhere without a Freddy’s, it’s a 400-unit chain and one of the major combatants in the fast casual burger wars going on right now with competitors like Culver’s, Shake Shack and several others.

Since we recorded this, i made it into one of the four “Freddy’s” units in the twin cities. And I gotta say the things you’ll hear from Scott about teaching the attention to some very important details like; steam coming out of the burger when you bite first bite into it… or having crisp very hot fries that hit the basket just seconds before it’s handed to you are exactly what I witnessed for myself. In fact, i watched the operation from a strategic table near the open kitchen for a while, looking for a moment or action that wasn’t “Freddy’s way” as you’ll hear Scott put it.  Scott set Freddy’s up for success by following the fundamentals of serving good food in a comfortable atmosphere with attentive service.