Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Building a Kitchen Team Ep.49

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Building a Kitchen Team Ep.49 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. This is the chef's.
• 0:02
  PS a podcast. I'm your host Andhra Doterra.
• 0:04
  On today's episode, we're going to talk about building your
• 0:06
  kitchen team. Stay tuned.
• 0:20
  Before we get into today's episode, I want to give you a
• 0:23
  quick update. I am doing a dinner on June
• 0:27
  26th, in Dallas Texas, at Jose restaurant with Anastasia
• 0:31
  Quinones, We're going to have chefs, Philip Speer, and Rick
• 0:36
  Lopez both, Austin chefs. Both fantastic Cooks Phillips
• 0:41
  from Commodore. One of the best restaurants in
• 0:43
  Austin. And Rick is from La condesa,
• 0:46
  James Beard, nominated restaurants.
• 0:47
  A ton of accolades between the two of them, of course, Chef, AQ
• 0:52
  anastacio. She's James Beard nominated as
• 0:54
  well. She's, you know, I'd say right
• 0:56
  now, she's probably the queen of Dallas, maybe the princess,
• 0:59
  depending on who you ask. And then my Myself obviously the
• 1:05
  best retired Chef in the business.
• 1:08
  Well I don't say that. That's what everyone says about
• 1:11
  me. Anyway, I'll be doing that
• 1:14
  dinner on June 26th. If you're in Dallas and you want
• 1:18
  to try some good food, it's going to be focused around,
• 1:20
  Mexican Cuisine, you want to make sure that you're there.
• 1:24
  I might do a little meet and greet meet the chefs talk to us.
• 1:28
  Shoot the shit. If you all want to do that, if
• 1:30
  you're in Dallas. And you want to do a chef's PS.
• 1:35
  A-- meet the chef meat and greet.
• 1:36
  Let me know. I love having these
• 1:39
  conversations with shop, so I get a lot of DMS all day.
• 1:42
  And by the way, if you haven't been involved in the cigar
• 1:45
  Sunday q&as that, I do, I want to make sure that you do that.
• 1:49
  I look forward to those. I look forward to smoking my
• 1:52
  cigar. I look forward to getting the
• 1:53
  questions last week. They were really good, but for
• 1:56
  those of you that aren't aware, maybe you don't follow me on
• 1:58
  Instagram if you do, and you want to do a Q&A with me on
• 2:02
  Sundays. Go to the chef's, PS a page on
• 2:06
  Instagram on Sundays. I'll do a Q&A, you can ask your
• 2:10
  questions. I try to get to all the
• 2:11
  questions that I can. Some of them I'm not going to
• 2:14
  respond to because they're not questions.
• 2:15
  They're just statement. So I'm not going to respond to a
• 2:17
  statement, but if you have genuine questions about the
• 2:19
  industry about me about chefs, PSA things that are troubling,
• 2:24
  you feel free to ask. I'm there for that.
• 2:27
  Other updates. The bad sooo good.
• 2:30
  Chef book is out. Make sure you go get it.
• 2:33
  I've received a lot of really good feedback from other chefs
• 2:37
  that enjoyed it. Actually my chef, my mentor sent
• 2:40
  me a note this morning and said how much he enjoyed it.
• 2:42
  It reminded him of the conversations that we had one.
• 2:46
  When I was a dummy, I'm still a dummy sometimes.
• 2:49
  Anyway, it was nice too. It was nice to get the comment
• 2:53
  from him. The dedication.
• 2:55
  At the beginning of the book is dedicated to 22 of my chefs,
• 2:58
  Kirk Bachman Chef that runs the escoffier schools and Patrick
• 3:01
  Mitchell. He's a culinary competing world
• 3:03
  champion across the globe, part of the world.
• 3:07
  MasterChef Society been on Team USA.
• 3:10
  A couple of times been to the culinary Olympics.
• 3:12
  Anyway, those are my chefs that I admire, and I wanted to make
• 3:16
  sure that I dedicated the book to them.
• 3:19
  Shout out to those guys. Also a few episodes back.
• 3:23
  I did a two-part series on opening a restaurant, so part
• 3:27
  one was the critical path and part 2, was what to expect after
• 3:30
  your open and strategies. I had mentioned to during that
• 3:35
  episode that I might turn that whole episode into a critical
• 3:40
  path that I could give away. So the critical path is done.
• 3:43
  So I'm announcing it right now. I'll put it out, sometime next
• 3:45
  week. It took me a minute to create
• 3:48
  the Critical path to go back and listen to the episodes and then
• 3:51
  add more and transcribe put links.
• 3:53
  Make it look pretty but I'll have that up.
• 3:56
  I'm not going to sell it for free.
• 3:58
  For those people that are interested in opening up a
• 3:59
  restaurant. Don't hold me accountable to it
• 4:01
  because obviously the information is only as good as
• 4:05
  the person using it, so I'll have opening a restaurant
• 4:10
  critical path available next week.
• 4:12
  For those of you that are interested in, you want to learn
• 4:14
  how to open up a restaurant that will be available for free.
• 4:16
  I'll put on my website. Speaking of my website, I'm
• 4:18
  trying to update my website. I'm in the process of redoing my
• 4:21
  website and it's taking a little bit longer than I thought you
• 4:25
  know I'm not I'm not a website designer but I'm not going to
• 4:28
  pay someone to do it because if I do it I'll learn how to design
• 4:31
  websites. I designed it the first time I
• 4:32
  figured I could do it again but better only problem is is my
• 4:36
  skills haven't gotten better and In designing websites.
• 4:39
  So it's taking a little bit of time, but there will be a
• 4:41
  revised chefs PSA website coming soon.
• 4:44
  It's going to look much cleaner. That's what I've been up to.
• 4:47
  One more thing before we get into today's episode, I get
• 4:51
  asked a lot of questions so I've been asked to get into AI a
• 4:54
  little bit more and how I use it and how it could benefit a lot
• 4:57
  of chefs. And I've also been asked
• 4:59
  specifically if I could explain my morning routine.
• 5:02
  Now I probably could do a whole podcast on my morning routine
• 5:05
  but I don't think that it's completely in line with chefs
• 5:09
  PSA because it's more unique to me and not everything that I do
• 5:12
  has anything to do with being a chef.
• 5:15
  And so I'm going to do to spin off episodes specifically on my
• 5:20
  morning routine and also expanding upon how I use AI, but
• 5:25
  I will have those as bonus episodes and I will put those on
• 5:29
  my YouTube channel exclusively. So, by the way, I'm on YouTube.
• 5:33
  So you might be watching this on Spotify or you may be watching
• 5:37
  this on YouTube, but if you are watching on YouTube, make sure
• 5:40
  you thumbs up, subscribe, whatever the fuck they tell you
• 5:43
  to do on YouTube. So that Thing that make sure you
• 5:46
  do that and if you're not and you're listen on Spotify, go
• 5:49
  subscribe to my YouTube page. I don't think you can leave five
• 5:53
  stars on YouTube. You should leave five stars on
• 5:55
  the podcast but leave the thumbs up on YouTube.
• 5:58
  Anyway, we digress So, building a team in the kitchen.
• 6:05
  Probably one of the most important things that you're
• 6:07
  going to do, as a chef is going to be building your team.
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  And when you're building a team, you know, depending on what type
• 6:14
  of kitchen, you're running, you're probably going to get all
• 6:18
  ranges of skill sets. So people that are well versed,
• 6:21
  may be ready to take your job as the chef and people that are
• 6:24
  entry level may be right out of culinary school or it is their
• 6:26
  first job in the kitchen. There's nothing wrong with that,
• 6:31
  but having a diverse kitchen is probably one of the best things
• 6:36
  that you could do. As a chef, you want to make sure
• 6:37
  that you're getting people from different backgrounds and
• 6:39
  different restaurants and different.
• 6:40
  Different cooking Styles, especially if you're running a
• 6:44
  larger kitchen, the last job that I had where I had to hire a
• 6:49
  ton of people I wanted to hire peoples.
• 6:54
  That had a very high-end background.
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  So it's looking for people that have like a Michelin star
• 6:58
  restaurant pedigree, or were coming from restaurants that
• 7:01
  were on the world's 50 best and things like that.
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  And so, as I was finding people, I noticed that they were all
• 7:07
  coming from different backgrounds, that they were all
• 7:09
  superstars, in the organizations, in which they
• 7:11
  were working. now, sometimes this could be a problem because
• 7:14
  when you bring a lot of A lot of a player's, a lot of people want
• 7:20
  to be Superman, they want to be Batman, they want to be the
• 7:22
  superhero star of the show. And so, Me trying to get all
• 7:28
  these. Highly skilled chefs to come
• 7:31
  together and work with each other as equals, and Piers was
• 7:36
  something that you had to have a little bit of finesse.
• 7:41
  To manage all of them, you know, I felt like I felt like I was
• 7:44
  Riza from the Wu-Tang Clan having all these very highly,
• 7:47
  talented individuals, all trying to work together towards a
• 7:50
  common goal and one of the things that I would say to them
• 7:54
  is look, when we join this team, it's one voice, One mission, we
• 7:58
  all have different backgrounds, we're all going to create one
• 8:00
  culture, and it doesn't matter that you did it this way at this
• 8:03
  restaurant, or that way at this other restaurant.
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  When we all come together, it has to be the way that we're
• 8:07
  doing it here. So we all have to agree on it.
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  And we need to make the best decisions for the operation.
• 8:14
  Because a lot of times when you're bringing in different
• 8:15
  individuals from different backgrounds, they're very
• 8:18
  strong, and very passionate. Say, this is how we did it.
• 8:20
  This place this, how we did at the other place, this is the
• 8:23
  best way to do things. And so what I would do is I
• 8:26
  would hear them out and it's okay.
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  I like the idea of this here and I like the idea of this here but
• 8:31
  this is how we're going to do it here and once we establish that
• 8:33
  as the standard it would become non-negotiable.
• 8:35
  But back to the analogy of trying to create a team of
• 8:37
  superheroes. What I would say to them is I
• 8:39
  don't need Batman on the team. I don't need Superman.
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  I need the Justice League. I need all of you to come
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  together. You know, Wu-Tang example form,
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  like Voltron And that's really what I needed is.
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  I needed everyone from different perspectives to be looking at
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  the same problem and coming up with unique solutions to solve
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  it and they were able to because they all had different
• 9:00
  backgrounds and when you work with people that have different
• 9:03
  backgrounds from different restaurants in different
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  cultures, And if you're open to the idea of hearing them out and
• 9:10
  say, that's a good idea, but maybe it doesn't work here, but
• 9:12
  maybe a part of it does. Now, I have a chef's PSA.
• 9:16
  That sometimes sometimes I get a lot of shit for a lot of people
• 9:19
  understand it, but when you don't understand it, there's
• 9:23
  some nuance and what I'm trying to say and that is no one cares,
• 9:26
  how you did it at your last job, that's mostly true, but it's not
• 9:30
  always true. And let me explain what I mean
• 9:32
  by that. When it's your first day on the
• 9:35
  job, there's a there's this insecure feeling that you have
• 9:39
  that you gotta you gotta prove your worth.
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  And as I say often in the kitchen, the only currency that
• 9:44
  really matters is your ability to cook.
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  That's the currency that you bring and so when you come from
• 9:49
  another restaurant, you're bringing that currency with you
• 9:52
  and you immediately want to show your value.
• 9:53
  And say this is how we did it at the last job.
• 9:56
  The reason I advise against it is because no one wants to hear
• 9:58
  that shit on your first day. It's like why don't you learn
• 10:01
  how we do it here before you talk about the old job?
• 10:03
  It's like talking About your ex in front of the new boyfriend or
• 10:06
  girlfriend, like no one wants to hear that shit.
• 10:09
  Right? I don't want to hear that shit.
• 10:12
  I don't think a lot of other chefs want to hear that shit.
• 10:16
  I want you to learn the way that we do it here now.
• 10:19
  It doesn't mean that I might not ask you, how did you do it there
• 10:22
  and I'll start picking people's brains.
• 10:24
  No. That's more of the insecure
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  egocentric, Chef coming in and flexing about how they did it
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  the other place and everyone needs to learn from them.
• 10:33
  And I'm not saying it's always wrong, but I'm saying in my
• 10:36
  experience, the majority of the time, not all the time but in
• 10:39
  the majority of the time, those people are not doing it for the
• 10:42
  right reasons, they're not doing it because they actually care
• 10:46
  about improving the operation. They're doing it more as a flex.
• 10:50
  Now, what I'm talking about when you're building your team, you
• 10:53
  might need to pick people's brains.
• 10:55
  You might need to say. How did you do it at that?
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  Other place, what did you do at that restaurant?
• 10:59
  What was unique? What are some of those things
• 11:01
  that you could impart here to help us level up and become
• 11:04
  better? That's different because one way
• 11:09
  is seen, as a negative, is that you're being disruptive and
• 11:13
  you're being insecure, And the other way is seen as you're
• 11:17
  being collaborative and when you're building a team, you want
• 11:20
  people that you could collaborate with you all, don't
• 11:23
  need a thing to same. There's an expression.
• 11:25
  If two people on the same team think alike than one of them is
• 11:29
  useless, I don't want a team of Yes Men.
• 11:32
  I actually prefer people that disagree with me in a respectful
• 11:35
  way. Now there's, there's a way that
• 11:37
  you could disagree with someone that it's still respectful, but
• 11:39
  when I was the chef, I used to share an office with my
• 11:42
  executive Sous chefs. And I did that because sometimes
• 11:47
  I just sit back in the chair and, you know, as the ideas were
• 11:49
  rolling around, it's not. What do you think of this?
• 11:50
  What do you think of that? And I wanted to play off them
• 11:53
  every possible scenario because I wanted to know what I might be
• 11:57
  missing. I want to know what I might not
• 11:59
  be thinking about, in a certain case, maybe it had to do with
• 12:01
  food, maybe had to do with the problem that we are facing.
• 12:03
  And I would just throw out these things.
• 12:05
  And if they just agreed with everything that I said that, I
• 12:08
  would just sometimes be living in an echo chamber, and I
• 12:09
  wouldn't be getting anywhere. So when you're building your
• 12:13
  team, you want to make sure that you have people that you could
• 12:15
  bounce ideas off. That you could disagree with
• 12:17
  respectfully, that have a different perspective than you
• 12:20
  do. Because being in an echo,
• 12:22
  chamber can be dangerous. You want someone on your team
• 12:27
  that will tell you, when you're going to make a mistake, as the
• 12:30
  expression goes, don't ever let a good boss, make a bad
• 12:34
  decision. I needed people around me that
• 12:36
  were sometimes telling me, hey, I know you think this is a good
• 12:40
  idea but let me tell you why, or let me tell you what the team is
• 12:42
  saying behind your back because they don't want to tell you.
• 12:45
  I needed those people around me. Those people are worth their
• 12:48
  weight in gold. I know, I was never upset about
• 12:50
  that and I think if you're a chef, you need those people
• 12:52
  around you because they have your best interest in mind.
• 12:55
  Now, there's a certain level of discernment that you need as an
• 12:59
  individual to say. You know what?
• 13:01
  They might they might not see what I'm trying to do, because I
• 13:03
  understand that perspective because I used to think that
• 13:06
  way, but I've evolved my thought process.
• 13:08
  But you should hear them out and they shouldn't feel
• 13:10
  uncomfortable coming to you. Now when you're building a team
• 13:14
  of cooks and you're pulling from a lot of restaurants, I caution
• 13:18
  you to pull everything from the same area because you'll just
• 13:21
  end up replicating that restaurant that you're pulling
• 13:24
  from. So, for example, let's say
• 13:27
  there's a restaurant that might be your competition and they
• 13:30
  close and then all their cooks are defecting and they're coming
• 13:33
  to work for you. Well, if they all come work for
• 13:36
  you, you might just end up replicating that other
• 13:38
  restaurant that close because that is the style and not only
• 13:40
  that be also bring the culture. You bring those habits with you,
• 13:44
  good and bad. So keep that in mind.
• 13:48
  I'm not against bringing on two or three people from One
• 13:50
  Restaurant, but when you bring multiples, that's not always the
• 13:53
  best thing. Because you're like, I said,
• 13:54
  you're bringing on those bad habits, or bring it on that
• 13:56
  culture, but sometimes you could be bringing on some of that
• 13:59
  dissension. So if there is a problem and you
• 14:01
  need to get rid of one person from that, from that click, you
• 14:05
  might be losing all three or four if they all came together.
• 14:08
  So that's always a little bit of a slippery slope when people
• 14:10
  bring When people come in groups, I know I've dealt with
• 14:14
  that situation before where I lose one.
• 14:16
  And as soon as you lose one, two and three are also gone.
• 14:19
  And I would prepare for that in my mind, like I would sit down
• 14:22
  in the office and I would talk to my one of my Sous chefs.
• 14:25
  Are my executive sous chef. I say, hey, we're going to lose
• 14:28
  this person. And when we lose this person,
• 14:29
  we're also going to lose this person and this person and this
• 14:32
  person. So are we really prepared for
• 14:33
  that? Have we really thought this
• 14:35
  through? And so that's that's the danger
• 14:37
  of bringing people in groups. So it's important that you
• 14:40
  notice that and that you're aware of that potential Pitfall.
• 14:44
  So I would caution you to bring everyone that's coming in a
• 14:47
  group and it's not always a bad thing.
• 14:49
  Sometimes it's a good thing, but if you could separate them, it's
• 14:51
  probably even better for you. You don't want, you don't want
• 14:54
  to be forming Clicks in silos in your kitchen because when you
• 14:57
  form Clicks in silos, that that really never ends.
• 15:00
  Well, that means that one group is excluded another group and
• 15:03
  then there's dissension and then there's favoritism.
• 15:06
  Mm. And when you start, when you
• 15:08
  start seeing that, it's important that you recognize it
• 15:10
  as the chef and you find out how to break up the group or you
• 15:13
  pull one person out and you move them to a different area of the
• 15:15
  kitchen different shift. If you have multiple kitchens,
• 15:18
  you put them in another kitchen. Whatever the case may be, when
• 15:20
  you recognize there's trouble brewing with clicks, that's when
• 15:23
  you got to break them up. Now, the last thing I'll say is
• 15:26
  I think it's important that you mix it up with a variety of
• 15:29
  people men, women different ethnicities, different
• 15:31
  backgrounds, because you're going to start to pick up on
• 15:34
  little skills that you might. Be completely unaware of a great
• 15:38
  place that you see that is like if you have a restaurant you
• 15:40
  have family meal and then people cook maybe food from their
• 15:43
  Hometown and then all of a sudden he's like wow that's a
• 15:46
  good idea. Why do we never think of that in
• 15:48
  my last job we had a lot of international students that were
• 15:52
  on J-1 visas. And every now and again, they
• 15:56
  would cook for family meal and I would see techniques and dishes
• 16:00
  that I've never seen before. I was like, hmm, I could take
• 16:02
  that idea. And I could use it over here and
• 16:04
  I would get inspired. Sometimes they just show me
• 16:06
  something. I'd like I'd never seen that
• 16:08
  before. How did you do that?
• 16:09
  I taste it. They explained to me.
• 16:10
  This is the story behind at this tradition.
• 16:13
  You'll learn a lot about food by trying other people's cuisines
• 16:17
  in their backgrounds and their ethnicities.
• 16:20
  So basically in a nutshell, you're designing a kitchen team.
• 16:22
  You want to make sure that you have a variety of skill sets.
• 16:27
  The more experienced cooks are helping the in experienced
• 16:29
  Cooks, get to that level, right? Because the more experienced
• 16:32
  Cooks, most likely are on the trajectory of their career path.
• 16:35
  Going on to become Sous, chefs are executive chefs or whatever
• 16:37
  the case may be. And then you have entry-level
• 16:39
  cooks that you're basically developing and mentoring to
• 16:43
  become the next future star. So the, the highly competent
• 16:47
  cooks are bringing up the newly. The newly hatched Cooks, so that
• 16:53
  everyone is on the same page. So you create a succession plan
• 16:57
  So remember this, you want the Justice League?
• 17:00
  You don't want individual superheroes, you want multiple
• 17:03
  backgrounds. Careful pulling from all the
• 17:07
  same restaurant have different levels of skills.
• 17:10
  Have different backgrounds, mix it up, share meals, you'll learn
• 17:14
  a lot about people when you share meals And make sure you
• 17:17
  have people on your team that are confident with you to tell
• 17:21
  you what you need to know when you're doing wrong.
• 17:24
  And that don't always agree with everything that you say because
• 17:27
  that's where you're going to get fresh and different
• 17:29
  perspectives. Anyway, That's how I build my
• 17:34
  kitchen team. Maybe that's not how you build
• 17:36
  your kitchen team. I should also mention one more
• 17:39
  thing, you know, I touched on this but I kind of left it
• 17:42
  hanging out there. As I said that I went to, after
• 17:44
  a certain level of cooks, I do think that's important, but I'm
• 17:46
  not saying that you exclude people.
• 17:48
  If they don't necessarily have that skill, but I'll give you an
• 17:50
  example. If you're opening up an Italian
• 17:53
  restaurant, you're going to go after cooks that have that sort
• 17:55
  of background, it doesn't mean that you're only going to hire
• 17:58
  Cooks. That have those requisite
• 18:01
  skills, you might hire people that have similar skills that
• 18:05
  would fit but you want some frame of reference of that type
• 18:10
  of Cuisine. So it doesn't mean that they're
• 18:13
  all coming from the same restaurant, you might be pulling
• 18:15
  from multiple Italian restaurants and then you might
• 18:17
  mix it in with someone. That's coming from a French
• 18:20
  restaurant background because they will be able to introduce
• 18:23
  things also that are different and unique to the team.
• 18:26
  They just might have a different perspective on how things are
• 18:28
  done a different Paradigm Shift, can sometimes be a good thing in
• 18:31
  a kitchen. Anyway.
• 18:35
  That's it for now. If you want to support the show,
• 18:38
  make sure you leave five stars nothing less than five stars.
• 18:43
  Anything less than 5 Stars, put that shit on someone else's
• 18:46
  podcast, not on this one. If you're watching thumbs up, if
• 18:49
  you want to support. Also there's a support, the show
• 18:53
  link on Spotify where you could donate to the show.
• 18:56
  I appreciate that. Go get the book bad, sooo good,
• 18:58
  chef kitchen, Art of War. Culinary leadership fundamentals
• 19:02
  and we will see you next week. Look out for those two short.
• 19:07
  YouTube episodes also coming soon.
• 19:09
  Tell your friends, hit the porno music.