Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Opening a Restaurant Part 2 Ep. 44

Transcript

Opening a Restaurant Part 2 Ep. 44 · Chef's PSA Podcast

0:00
Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
0:02
podcast. I'm your host Entre natera.
0:05
On today's episode. We are doing part two of opening
0:09
your restaurant, so stay tuned. Before we get started, let me
0:25
give you an update on how things have been going.
0:28
We just got back from San Francisco and I was over there,
0:31
speaking on a panel conference for hotel asset managers.
0:35
So for people that don't know what that is.
0:37
An asset manager is basically, the person that's the liaison
0:40
between a hotel owner and, like, a hotel GM or whatever.
0:46
There's The Operators. I was on a panel to discuss food
0:50
and beverage trends. Where they're going how to deal
0:54
with there chefs. What's Innovative, what's new?
0:58
What's going on in AI? Anyway.
1:00
I was, there was fun. I had.
1:01
And I was like, 24 hours in San Francisco.
1:04
Had to find somewhere to eat. I ate really good pizza.
1:07
I want to say that the name of the place was Empire pizzas
1:09
Sicilian style, pizza was excellent actually.
1:12
And for people that don't know Sicilian Styles like that, you
1:15
know, thicker crust was, like, a pan pizza square, or rectangle.
1:20
In this case, many of those excellent.
1:21
So shout out to those guys, That whatever they're doing, it's
1:25
really fucking good. So I also ate another place
1:27
called dela, Rosa Pizza. I couldn't tell you where in San
1:30
Francisco's downtown anyway stumbled upon it.
1:32
Someone's that go there. I don't know how I got there.
1:36
I didn't have GPS. I just stumbled in ate some
1:38
pizzas also, excellent. I kind of say Empire was better
1:41
anyway. Nonetheless, the food in San
1:44
Francisco? Is good.
1:44
I forget how good the food is there.
1:47
I think they just have a better frame of reference there of what
1:50
good food is, right? So I think San Francisco even
1:55
though they the city did get a little bit snubbed by many
1:58
awards recently. I still think it's one of the
2:00
strongest Food cities in the country of the United States.
2:05
Maybe even one could make an argument that it is the
2:08
strongest. You know, obviously the argument
2:11
goes New York San Francisco. Anyway we digress.
2:15
What else have I been up to? I started writing the new book
2:18
that I'm working on I just currently titled bad sooo good
2:23
Chef so bad Sue comma good chef. And the way that I decided to
2:28
write the book is it's a conversation between a sous
2:31
chef. And his current Chef as the Sous
2:34
chefs, getting ready to leave to go to another restaurant.
2:37
And he's nervous about not being a good sous-chef.
2:39
He's afraid either bad sous chef so it's a conversation between
2:42
the two and really what inspired this conversation.
2:44
Is a lot of the weekly cigar Sunday's that I do where we sit
2:48
down and we go back and forth and I get a lot of questions.
2:50
I noticed a lot of the questions are repetitive and it's hard for
2:53
me to give a long format answer in an Instagram real or not a
3:01
real and A short story. Sorry, which is only a minute.
3:05
And sometimes I'm like, I got to answer.
3:06
I'm looking at the little timer kind of like shit.
3:09
I gotta hurry up. And a lot of times I don't I
3:12
mean I'm putting thought into the answers but I want to put
3:14
more thought into the answer and there's a different gear that I
3:18
go into when I'm writing versus when I'm speaking.
3:21
You know, my podcast gear is different from my Instagram gear
3:23
which is different from my being in the kitchen gear, which is
3:26
different from my riding gear. And I feel like when I'm writing
3:31
because I'm able to go back and reread what I say and edit I'm
3:35
able to put the most amount of thought into what I'm writing
3:38
versus different things. So anyway, that book is coming
3:41
out, I'm excited about it and for people that have been asking
3:44
because a lot of people ask me, how do you crank Out book so
3:47
fast. So I'm going to share my secret
3:48
with you when I'm writing books and this has nothing to do with
3:51
opening a restaurant. This is just anecdotal, but when
3:54
I'm writing books, what I do is II got a bunch of sticky notes
3:59
and I just put them on a big whiteboard as a, okay?
4:01
We're going to write about this. So I list out all the things
4:03
that I want to write about every day.
4:04
Just put a sticky note on front of the computer.
4:06
I make sure I sit down and write even though sometimes I don't
4:09
want to and that's actually most days.
4:11
I don't want to. I just it's more about the habit
4:14
of getting into it and some days I write shit like I'm looking at
4:16
this, like the fuck is this? This is terrible.
4:19
But anyway, nonetheless, I forced myself to sit down and
4:21
write The next thing I do is you know before I used to have an
4:25
editor and now you know I used to have a lot of problems with
4:29
my editors in the first couple of books I noticed it was not
4:31
catch all the typos or grammar whatever.
4:34
And so now obviously open my eyes, much more efficient.
4:37
So I'll cut what I write paste it in Ai and ask you to edit for
4:42
me which probably was what these people were doing.
4:45
Anyway, I think my editor was using an AI software but now
4:49
it's like I'm in control of that.
4:52
I use AI software to edit my word.
4:55
So anyway, that's how I write. And then when it comes to
4:57
typing, because a lot of people say, oh, don't you get tired of
4:59
typing? No, I don't.
5:01
And the reason I don't is, sometimes I type, but not always
5:03
a lot of times. I use the dictate button, that's
5:06
on Microsoft Word. So I could just speak into the
5:07
microphone. And obviously I'm used to doing
5:09
that with podcast, so that's my writing secret.
5:14
But anyway, wanted to share that with you for people that are
5:16
maybe interested in writing your own books.
5:20
That's how I do it. Okay.
5:23
Anyway, we digress. Now, let's get into opening your
5:27
restaurant, and I should say that this is, this probably
5:31
should have been a series more than just, the last episode in
5:34
this one. So you should go back and listen
5:37
to episode 21 restaurant mental exercises.
5:40
That one really should have been the first one in this whole
5:42
series because that episode takes you through the process
5:45
of, have you thought of everything that needs to go into
5:47
your concept? Did you think about the play?
5:49
Where did you think about the uniforms that episode just kind
5:52
of walks you through the process of everything that you would
5:54
need to go through? Through mentally to design and
5:57
visualize your restaurant. The other two episodes that you
6:00
should go back and listen to is number 19, how to create your
6:03
kitchen culture. So I'm going to gloss over that
6:05
in this episode but basically an episode 19 it's how to get
6:10
everyone to work on the same standard.
6:13
I won't get too much into that in this episode because I
6:16
already covered it in episode 19.
6:17
So that should also be a part of this series.
6:20
And then also go back and listen to episode 23 on marketing
6:24
yourself as a chef because Obviously, without marketing,
6:29
you know, you run the risk of getting lost in the noise.
6:31
So marketing is a differentiator, those three
6:34
episodes along with the last one which is part one should go with
6:38
this one, which is part two, but the main focus of this
6:42
particular episode is going to be what happens.
6:45
Now that you're in the building. Usually what happens is all the
6:49
equipment starts arriving. You got to put away all the
6:50
boxes. You got to wash all the small
6:52
Wares and normally the The week before opening and about, we're
6:58
actually probably like the month depending on how soon you get
7:00
access to the building about a month before opening, and about
7:03
the next two months after that are probably going to be the
7:06
most difficult period, unless you're closing the restaurant.
7:09
Like so the opening and the closing is really the most
7:11
difficult Parts. Opening sucks, closing sucks.
7:14
But let's just talk about opening for a second.
7:16
The first three months of operation.
7:18
So one month prior to opening and two months post opening are
7:22
going to be the most difficult. Let's assume you're in the
7:23
building. You have to set your chin up,
7:25
you have to organize it. You got to wash all the small
7:29
Wares, you should have already created training, manuals for
7:32
your staff culinary, team and service team, and that will
7:35
usually be some sort of, you know, depend on what you call
7:38
it, the recipe book, The use record, the pickup chart, the
7:44
menu syllabus, everyone calls it, something different, but
7:46
nonetheless, you should have some sort of documented.
7:50
Packet that you could give to your staff that has a photograph
7:52
of the recipe that has the ingredients of the recipe, that
7:56
has the allergen. So is there a Liam, as your
7:58
Dairy, whatever the case may be, to make sure that they know that
8:02
this dish has this and it's a big explain that to the guest.
8:04
Is there a narrative or some sort of story that goes with the
8:07
dish? So you can say, oh yeah, these
8:08
truffles were forged over here or, you know, we found these
8:12
deer in the woods for, you know, the salad that we're making
8:15
inspired by Rene redzepi, all those things, definitely,
8:19
Important. You want to make sure that you
8:20
have some sort of narrative marking on the table, so does it
8:23
get a fork? Does it get a knife?
8:25
Is there any special touch points?
8:27
All that should be in your menu syllabus right?
8:30
So you can give that to your service team.
8:31
You give that to your culinary teams play, know what they're
8:33
doing, they should have recipes and so on, and so forth.
8:35
Hopefully you've done all that before opening and you're not
8:38
doing that right before. Then you're going to go into
8:42
training and in my opinion you should do some sort of slideshow
8:47
presentation menu training without them tasting first.
8:50
Get everyone familiar with the stories, get them familiar with
8:53
you, make sure that they're taking good notes.
8:55
Let them see the photos of the food.
8:57
I'll do all that on day one because what I've notice, if you
9:00
let them taste right away, a lot of times, people just focus on
9:04
eating and not really paying attention to what they're
9:06
tasting. So I spend a good portion of the
9:09
day, educating them on what they Culture is what the standards
9:12
are with the food's going to look like, go through all the
9:14
non-negotiables of the restaurant.
9:17
And then the next a focus on the tasting.
9:19
I let the cooks prepare as many of the dishes as possible
9:22
because they are going to be the ones that are prepared.
9:25
Then you get into what's known as Mach service or friends and
9:29
family. Whatever the case may be call it
9:31
whatever you want, but that is basically training for you and
9:36
your staff and there's a couple of different ways to do that.
9:39
But sometimes it's like you invite friends and family.
9:42
Sometimes it's just staff. Sometimes you you know, you
9:46
invite people, you give them 50% off.
9:47
Sometimes it's all calm. That depends on you.
9:50
And you know what your budget is and what you want to do, if you
9:53
can I mean the more training your staff has the better,
9:56
there's a cost associated with that it gets more expensive, the
9:59
more you train but obviously the more you train, the better you
10:01
will be when you open your doors.
10:04
There's different ways that you could do that.
10:06
So let's just say you're using your staff only, you could have
10:09
an, a team and A B team. So, for example, The A Team goes
10:13
and eats and the B-Team cooks and serves and then they flip so
10:17
18b team or it could be, you know, the friends of the people
10:20
that work there or it could be people that you invite Etc, what
10:24
you really want to do is you want to make sure that you're
10:26
getting feedback from the people that are eating and you also
10:29
want to make sure that your stress testing the operation.
10:32
So you want to push the Human the service team to their limit
10:37
because you want to find out what the breaking point is
10:39
before you open. You don't want to find that out
10:42
after you. Open, you gradually, increase
10:45
the cover. So, again, let's just say you're
10:46
doing this for three days on day one, maybe you're doing 50
10:48
covers on day to maybe you're doing 100 covers.
10:51
And then on day 3, maybe you're going and depending on what the
10:53
two previous days are, maybe you're going up to 150, I'd
10:56
rather fail and pre mock service then in actual service.
11:01
So, if you find out, hey, we push to 150, but Our sweet spot
11:05
is 100, that when you open up, you say, okay?
11:07
We're going to start at 100 until we're confident enough to
11:10
go back to 150 because you do only get one chance to open
11:15
correctly and everyone is going to come out to the new
11:17
restaurant. Everyone wants to go to the new
11:19
restaurant and try the food and judge them and get on social
11:21
media. And say, there were there at
11:23
that hot new restaurant, not understanding that.
11:26
Hey, we're still like operating with training wheels, were still
11:29
trying to figure this shit out there.
11:32
People don't care. Like, they don't understand
11:33
that. They're gonna judge, You hardly,
11:34
I do didn't have enough salt, or didn't have this like, okay,
11:37
it's pre. It's like week one or
11:39
pre-opening or mock service. So keep that in mind.
11:42
Another thing to keep in mind, when you're doing mock service
11:45
and pre-opening, Is that you need to make sure you have very
11:49
specific guidelines on how you want people to order.
11:52
If you just give people a menu and a free-for-all, they could
11:55
order whatever they want, they won't order like your typical
11:58
diners because people ordered differently when they have to
12:01
pay it versus when it's calm. I know I've been in Pre openings
12:05
where it's like, okay, you can order whatever you want, we're
12:07
taking care of the whole thing and people were like, you know,
12:09
Lobster and shellfish, plateaus and big old steaks.
12:13
And it's like, that's not how you would really order.
12:15
If you were paying for yourself, like let's get a tin of caviar
12:18
for each of us. Let's order everything on the
12:20
menu if you want to stress. Test the kitchen.
12:22
Yes, but it's not a true test of what they're actually going to
12:28
go through. So you want to make sure that if
12:31
you can, what I would do is like I'd have menu one menu to menu
12:34
three and I would black out certain things on the menu and
12:37
say, okay, if you got menu 1, these are the only things you
12:38
could order. You also might want to say,
12:41
you're only allowed to order, you know, like a normal person.
12:44
You might you guys you know for every two people you get to
12:46
share two appetizers or one app to whatever the case may be.
12:49
Three appetizers, yet one entree, one side and half a
12:53
desert per person. So there's two people.
12:54
You get one dessert and you got a shirt because if not people
12:57
start ordering crazy, right? And the reality is most
13:00
restaurants, don't operate like that.
13:02
So you want to kind of manage it a little bit so that you get a
13:07
true stress test of what opening night is going to look like.
13:11
Now, when you go into the opening phase, I think one of
13:17
the things that but I do is I always staff one and a half
13:23
times what my normal staffing needs would be.
13:25
So let's just say, let's just say, I need 10 Cooks in the
13:29
kitchen, I'm going to hire 15 because I know about five people
13:31
are going to quit because it's too hard Long, Day's long hours,
13:38
everyone's working crazy. People are on their feet all
13:42
day. It's chaotic it's stressful.
13:44
No knows what they're doing people crack.
13:47
And they say, you know what, I'm not coming back tomorrow, people
13:49
are going to quit on you with no notice.
13:51
They're just not going to come back.
13:52
You're not going to see them again.
13:53
They're going to be a ghost. People are going to break down
13:55
in the walk in and start crying because it's hectic and you
13:59
know, tempers are high and all this is going on.
14:02
So you have to understand that chaos of opening is going to
14:05
break a lot of people. So when you're hiring you need a
14:09
higher more not like At one and a half is usually what I go.
14:12
But I mean, if you have the ability to go to 21, do that
14:16
because you're going to lose people after about two months or
14:19
so, it starts to settle into. Turnover should turn down
14:23
significantly but plan on losing a lot of your staff in the
14:27
initial phases of the opening process.
14:30
Keep that in mind over staff from a service team standpoint,
14:34
you'll normally get, you know, best of the best for some
14:36
reason. Service teams always want to
14:39
work at the hot new restaurant. Probably Cuz they make the most
14:41
amount of tips to initially. And then like, if you go to a
14:43
restaurant, when it first opens up and it's the hot new
14:46
restaurant, they got like the best servers in the city and
14:48
then you go back to that same hot restaurant like a year
14:52
later. It's like the worst servers in
14:54
the city like what the fuck happened?
14:55
Where all the good servers goes like?
14:56
Oh yeah, it's it's the nature of the Beast.
14:59
They come in and they go out right?
15:01
Then go to the next hot new restaurants something, you know,
15:03
it's, I tangent, but it's very relevant to this conversation.
15:08
I came across this website called Kitchen Confidential.
15:11
Prudential's and what it is. It's like rate your employer at
15:15
Glassdoor kind of thing, right? For culinary industry.
15:18
It's like I worked here. I got paid.
15:21
This is what the environment was like.
15:24
And when you're opening up a restaurant, I think when you
15:27
have apps like this is the way of the future, right?
15:29
Social media and all that. Creates much more transparency
15:34
in this industry. So I think if you are opening up
15:37
a restaurant, you need to be aware that your kitchen culture
15:41
and your restaurant work culture needs to be positive from day
15:45
one. Because if not, you're gonna
15:47
have a very hard time recruiting and I only see things like that.
15:52
Becoming more and more prevalent in this industry and all
15:55
Industries. Really, but specifically in The
15:56
Culinary world because that's what we're talking about.
15:58
I do expect that you are going to see things like that.
16:00
So if you open up a restaurant and then you have 10 negative
16:02
review saying, you know, the owners of jerk chefs a jerk,
16:06
right the Sous chefs a jerk. No one like working there they
16:09
were mean to me, blah blah blah. They don't pay well Don't go
16:13
work there. It's gonna hurt your future
16:15
business, right? It's gonna hurt your reputation
16:17
in your community to get staff. So you want to make sure that
16:19
from day one, you are building that good workplace culture,
16:22
knowing that it's going to be intense and stressful and
16:25
chaotic. Keep that in mind.
16:27
Now, the other thing that and get this is just my opinion.
16:30
But if I'm opening up a restaurant, I want to be the top
16:34
pane place in the city, right, because when you pay the most,
16:38
you don't got to argue and negotiate with people.
16:41
Like you're paying the most To get the best of the best cooks
16:44
in shops to come work for you, knowing that you're going to
16:46
have turnover, eventually, it kind of settles down and then
16:48
you go back to one to one. But initially, I think you want
16:52
to be paying the most and you know, eventually that changes
16:56
when things open up and someone else is going to come on and
16:58
they're going to be the highest-paid Kitchen in the
17:01
city. But I think initially for me, I
17:03
always want to be the most expensive restaurant.
17:06
And I also wanted to be paying the most, because here's
17:09
something. And this is just my opinion.
17:11
But this is also been My strategy people don't ever say.
17:16
Let's go order. The second most bottle of
17:18
champagne when someone wants to flex, they say, give me the most
17:21
expensive thing. Give me the most expensive,
17:22
whatever on the Mayo, on the most expensive steak.
17:24
I want the most expensive caviar.
17:27
When people want to flex, you need to allow them the ability
17:29
to flex. So I always thought I'm going to
17:33
do, you want to flex and show off your money?
17:34
I will be more than glad to take it.
17:36
So, let's be the most expensive. I don't want to be known as the
17:38
second most expensive. No one ever says.
17:40
Let's go to the second. Most expensive restaurant.
17:43
Especially if they want to flex, right?
17:45
So, that would be my strategy there, the other strategy, and
17:48
maybe that's not your model, maybe your, you know, maybe your
17:53
Maybe you're a casual spot so that doesn't matter.
17:55
But let's assume maybe for this conversation, your high-end
17:58
behind him. Casual forget what I said.
18:03
The other thing is people never say, let's go work at the place
18:06
that pays second, like, they all want to work at the place that
18:09
pays the most no one wants to work at the place that is
18:13
silver, metal. Second best, if you are at the
18:17
top, you are the Apex. Everyone's going to want to come
18:20
work for you. It's a no-brainer.
18:23
You will have fewer staffing issues.
18:25
If you open up and you say let's just do it right from the
18:27
beginning. Let's pay the most right?
18:29
And it's good for everyone, it's trust me.
18:31
We could have a whole conversation about Bout this.
18:33
But anyway, I always think pay the most have a good workplace
18:37
culture and that will solve a lot of the issues moving
18:40
forward. Anyway, things to think about,
18:43
And then finally when the doors open and things start to settle.
18:46
My advice is, don't start out with the most difficult menus
18:51
because things are not going to go.
18:52
Well, you're going to have to change things on the Fly.
18:55
Cooks are still learning. You can start introducing the
18:57
difficulty as time goes on. And you also have to understand
19:01
like is the city. Like, if is the city ready for
19:03
what you're trying to do, is it a proven concept or do you have
19:06
to prove it? Something that you need to think
19:09
about what I recommend is every day after service.
19:12
You sit down your culinary team. That's the leaders.
19:15
And you also sit down with the service team leaders and you
19:17
discuss every single point of failure that happened and you
19:21
discuss it and you find Solutions because if you're not
19:25
finding solutions to problems early on, they will become big
19:28
problems later on. So let's just say you have a
19:30
dish on the menu, there's dishes too many touch points and it's
19:33
too complicated in the cook and always crashes the line and
19:36
Everyone Falls behind Behind when they order that.
19:38
Oh shit. Dish.
19:39
Like they ordered pop. They order the oh shit dish.
19:42
The solvent like on day one. Don't let your ego get in the
19:45
way get rid of it. Put it on the menu later when
19:48
everyone gets better. If there's a dish that's
19:50
crashing, the kitchen on on opening week then get it out of
19:53
the way. Like unless it's like the number
19:55
one dish like your steak house and it is the, you know, the
19:59
steak then okay. Maybe that's a different story
20:00
but solve it quickly. Try and solve these problems as
20:03
quickly. Don't let your ego get too
20:05
attached attached to specific dishes or ways of operating if
20:10
things don't work right away. Unless you know that Hey, you
20:12
know what? It'll take time but this is
20:14
going to work in the long run. Maybe it's a good idea.
20:17
Those are all things that I think people need to consider
20:19
when opening a restaurant. Treat your team.
20:22
Well, stock up the fridges with coffee, Red Bull, water, snacks,
20:28
whatever the case may be, make sure people are nourished
20:30
hydrated and energized, ready to go awake and ready.
20:34
And then, you know, I talk about this in the culture episode, but
20:38
make sure that you establish boundaries from the jump.
20:41
So if people color outside of the lines, you correct them
20:44
right away and they know that this is the way it's going to be
20:46
last thing that I'll talk about on this podcast with regards to
20:49
open a restaurant. And the team is make sure you
20:52
have a solid stewarding DISH, Team and treat them well because
20:57
there's nothing worse than opening up a restaurant.
21:00
And you got dishes, stacked to the ceiling and the dishwasher
21:03
walks out. And now your cooks that are
21:05
exhausted and your servers that are exhausted, have to clean up
21:09
Stewart in area and they're like, okay, I'm definitely not
21:11
coming back. So consider all those things.
21:16
Anyway, let's wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed this series
21:19
on opening up a restaurant. If you feel free to comment on
21:23
here, I think there's a comment box.
21:24
If you're listening on Spotify, make sure you leave five stars
21:27
on this episode on all episodes right chefs.
21:30
PSA is only a five-star podcast, go back and listen to episodes,
21:33
21. 19, and 23. Those are the episodes that kind
21:37
of are included to help you open up a restaurant as well.
21:41
So, mental exercises, creating kitchen, culture and marketing,
21:44
all important, when it comes to open, Restaurant.
21:47
And then lastly, if you want to support the show, go to Chef
21:49
cbsla.com. You can get all the books.
21:51
All the merchandise, everything that we do, we have the two free
21:55
ebook. So culinary dictionary, and also
21:57
100 basic recipes. Go get culinary leadership.
22:00
Fundamentals. The book or kitchen Art of War.
22:03
If your are a strategist, anyway.
22:06
Thank you. All see you next week and hit
22:08
the porno music.