Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Chef's Dilemma: Balancing Passion and Profit Ep. 88

Transcript

The Chef's Dilemma: Balancing Passion and Profit Ep. 88 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello Chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, we're going
• 0:04
  to talk about, Don't forget, this is still a business.
• 0:07
  Stay tuned before we get started.
• 0:21
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  your five stars, do that. Now if you like what I do and
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  Dallas, TX and Anastasia Chef AQ shout out to you.
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  Sorry about the Happy Chef hats, the Jose hat.
• 1:32
  And as always, I appreciate all the support.
• 1:35
  It helps me bring you this podcast and keep giving you the
• 1:37
  information. I've been up to a lot lately and
• 1:39
  unfortunately I've spread myself a little bit thin.
• 1:42
  So I'm trying to write a book. I'm building a platform.
• 1:45
  I'm working on another AI app for menu writing, and I'm going
• 1:49
  to be a guest on a few podcasts that are upcoming.
• 1:51
  Getting those scheduled and recorded over the next couple of
• 1:54
  weeks, and we're quickly approaching the 100th episode of
• 1:58
  Chef's PSA, which I got to do something good for that.
• 2:01
  I haven't fully figured out what I'm going to do, but I can't do
• 2:03
  the same stuff for the 100th episode, so I'll have to do it
• 2:06
  big. Anyway, let's get into today's
• 2:07
  subject, which is Don't forget this is still a business.
• 2:10
  I put up a Chef's PSA the other day, which kind of sparked the
• 2:13
  idea for this podcast I put up on Instagram and it said don't
• 2:17
  forget about the person that's eating the dish.
• 2:19
  Remember to cook for them. And it's something that I think
• 2:21
  as chefs we get wrapped up and we end up making food for us.
• 2:24
  We end up making food to impress other chefs.
• 2:27
  We end up making food to satisfy our creativity.
• 2:29
  We want to express ourselves on the plate.
• 2:31
  We want to introduce new things to guests that are coming into
• 2:34
  the restaurant. And while there is nothing wrong
• 2:36
  with that, sometimes we forget about just creating delicious
• 2:40
  food that people want to eat. And if you follow Chef's PSA on
• 2:42
  Instagram, you'll know that not only do I put up the daily
• 2:45
  Quote, but sometimes I put little comics with it.
• 2:49
  And there was, there was a comic that I was pretty proud of and
• 2:51
  it was a chef talking to some culinary students.
• 2:54
  And he said, you see kids fuck those customers.
• 2:57
  I cook for me. And the reason I put that up is
• 2:59
  because that's the mentality that a lot of chefs and cooks go
• 3:03
  with when they're coming up with dishes for the restaurant.
• 3:05
  It's it's not necessarily with the guest in mind, they think
• 3:09
  about what do I like? How am I going to express
• 3:11
  myself? This is my playground.
• 3:13
  I'm the chef, and I can tell you that sometimes that's the wrong
• 3:16
  approach. And why can I tell you that?
• 3:18
  Because I've done that before. I've been that chef that wanted
• 3:20
  to make it a playground before I ever cared about what the guest
• 3:23
  wanted to eat. It was more about satisfying
• 3:25
  myself, my need to be creative. I wanted to learn new things, so
• 3:29
  I wanted to experiment with new ingredients, new techniques.
• 3:33
  Some of the dishes that I created throughout my career
• 3:35
  were really bad. I've probably created, you know,
• 3:38
  27 year career, let's just say thousands of dishes I've put up
• 3:41
  on a menu and I would say I'm batting about 500.
• 3:44
  There was about 500 really bad ones on there and about 500
• 3:47
  really good ones. Then the question comes up, have
• 3:49
  you ever been so caught up in the creative aspect of your job
• 3:54
  that you forgot about the customers, that you forgot about
• 3:56
  the business side of it? And what are the consequences of
• 3:59
  doing that? There's a certain aspect of
• 4:00
  creativity that's mature creativity, understanding where
• 4:05
  you're at, understanding the restaurant concept that you're
• 4:08
  cooking for and creating food for the audience in your
• 4:12
  restaurant. So these are the locals that
• 4:14
  come in. These are your customers.
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  Depending on where you're at, this is the local palette, This
• 4:19
  is cooking on brand to the restaurant that you're in.
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  You're not going to cook Greek food in your Mexican restaurant.
• 4:25
  And sometimes we really go off the rails as chefs, and we want
• 4:28
  to work with bubbles and spheres and alginates and melting salts,
• 4:33
  and we want to cure egg yolks and sous video them and make a
• 4:36
  little egg yolk skin and put that on top of something.
• 4:39
  But like, you're supposed to be a Taco shop.
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  No one wants egg yolk skin at the Taco shop.
• 4:45
  And it's a chef's mistake to forget about the business side
• 4:48
  of it. Because at the end of the day,
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  if you want to continue to cook this food, you have a
• 4:51
  responsibility. If you're the chef leading the
• 4:53
  kitchen and you've been hired to do a job, part of that job is to
• 4:56
  make sure you're responsible to the business.
• 4:59
  You're held accountable to it. An owner has trusted you with
• 5:02
  their business to create good food.
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  They've put a lot of money into a restaurant.
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  And for people that don't know, restaurants are not cheap.
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  A lot of people think that, oh, I'm going to graduate culinary
• 5:11
  school and I'm going to open up a restaurant.
• 5:13
  And then you find out how much it costs to build a restaurant
• 5:16
  and you're like, oh, do you have several $1,000,000 ready to go?
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  Oh, maybe you're not going to open up a restaurant right away.
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  You don't have investors. Maybe you're not going to open
• 5:22
  up a restaurant, but someone has put up money somewhere to fund
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  this project and their whole thing is they want an ROI return
• 5:29
  on investment. It's highly unlikely that
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  they're just building a playground for chefs.
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  So chefs coming in need to understand that while, yes,
• 5:36
  creativity is important, you need to make sure that you have
• 5:38
  food that is competitive, that's on the cutting edge, that's
• 5:41
  delicious, that's creative, that's going to make the
• 5:44
  customers want to return because they enjoy the experience.
• 5:46
  But it also has to make sense financially.
• 5:48
  Being a chef is not just cooking.
• 5:51
  It's about understanding the financial aspects.
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  Do you understand the food cost, the labor cost, all the
• 5:55
  operating equipment and expenses?
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  Are you able to make good decisions on menu pricing?
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  Are you pricing yourself out of the market?
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  Are you too high or are you too low?
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  And I can tell you in my personal experience, I've always
• 6:06
  wanted to be the top end, the most expensive, especially if
• 6:10
  I'm working in a higher end restaurant.
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  And the reason that is, is there is a little bit of psychology
• 6:15
  behind being the most expensive or having a very expensive item
• 6:18
  on your restaurant menu. And that is when you go out to
• 6:20
  dinner and you want to do the flex, you're flexing how much
• 6:23
  money you have and you look at the menu and you want to impress
• 6:26
  the table. You never say give me the second
• 6:29
  most expensive wine on the list, give me the 4th most expensive
• 6:33
  steak option. No.
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  You want a flex. You can say, get me your most
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  expensive wine, which might not even be that good.
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  Give me the most expensive champagne.
• 6:41
  Give me the most expensive protein on the menu.
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  I want to flex. And so if you're being good
• 6:46
  steward of the business, you want to give them an opportunity
• 6:49
  to flex and take their money. So have expensive items on the
• 6:52
  menu. There's that expression that a
• 6:53
  fool and their money are soon parted.
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  Don't prevent a fool from partying from their money,
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  especially in your business. Also, if you're running a
• 7:01
  restaurant, you need to have cost mitigation strategy.
• 7:03
  So what if food cost is too high?
• 7:04
  What if labor cost is too high? How do you prevent the ship from
• 7:07
  sinking again? You're the steward of the
• 7:09
  business, you're held accountable to make sure that
• 7:12
  the business is running well and you need to have strategies to
• 7:15
  save cost and you need to be able to implement them.
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  And it's difficult. I'm not going to sit here and
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  say it's easy because it is difficult when you solely focus
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  on the cutting cost side because the other side to the equation
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  is the revenue generation side. You have to learn how to make
• 7:30
  money. So it's an attack from both
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  sides. You're attacking the cost side
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  and you're also attacking the revenue side.
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  You got to think to yourself, how can I make more money in the
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  restaurant and how can I minimize the amount of cost,
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  whether that's overtime, whether that's food cost, making sure
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  employees are taking breaks, putting locks on the cooler,
• 7:48
  making sure you're not giving things away for free.
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  And this is something I talked about as often people will just
• 7:54
  give stuff away for free for no reason.
• 7:56
  So the server, for example, is like, hey, they want avocado on
• 7:59
  their burger and they don't charge anything or get we're
• 8:01
  going to give them an extra piece of bacon and it's free.
• 8:03
  It's like, well, you wouldn't give someone a dollar for no
• 8:05
  reason. If I came up to you and said,
• 8:07
  hey, can I get a burger and can you also give me a dollar?
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  You'd say, no, that's crazy. But you give them that dollar
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  with the free slice of bacon or the extra avocado that you
• 8:15
  charge nothing for. So make sure you're charging for
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  everything. And there's subtle ways to do
• 8:18
  that as well. Maybe you're not going to charge
• 8:20
  them for the avocado, but if you're giving away free toppings
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  on your burger, you might just raise the burger price knowing
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  that you're doing that. So make sure you're accounting
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  for everything financially. And like I said, attacking it
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  from the cost side, attacking it from the revenue side.
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  Don't leave any money on the table now.
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  I've been that chef of that high end restaurant tasting menu
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  style where food cost is really high.
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  You know you're running in your 38 to 40% food cost because you
• 8:46
  have to buy the expensive luxury ingredients, the A5, the caviar,
• 8:49
  the truffles, the UNI, all those things that cost money to create
• 8:52
  this beautiful tasting menu. And then you're only doing like
• 8:55
  15 to 20 covers and you have 10 cooks in the kitchen to pull it
• 8:58
  off. And eventually something has to
• 9:00
  give because ownership looks at it and say, hey, how are we
• 9:02
  going to make money on this? And I know a lot of chefs that
• 9:05
  have these very high end restaurants that struggle
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  financially. Not all of them do because I
• 9:09
  know some chefs that run some very high end restaurants that
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  print money, but not every restaurant is the same.
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  So understanding what type of restaurant you are is extremely
• 9:16
  important. So what are some skills that
• 9:18
  every chef should have? Well, one, before you go open up
• 9:21
  your own restaurant, you need to understand how to manage a
• 9:23
  restaurant 1st. So like I said, don't go get
• 9:25
  $1,000,000 loan from the bank and find all these investors if
• 9:28
  you don't know what you're doing yet.
• 9:29
  You may know how to cook, but you might not know how to run a
• 9:32
  business. And 1 executive chef that I used
• 9:34
  to mentor. Fantastic Cook, one of the best
• 9:36
  cooks that I've ever worked with.
• 9:38
  Anything this chef would touch would be beautiful and
• 9:42
  delicious, but struggled as a chef to understand the bigger
• 9:45
  picture. And I would always tell them the
• 9:47
  difference between the chef de cuisine and the executive chef.
• 9:50
  The chef de cuisine could run the kitchen beautifully and make
• 9:53
  sure it's pumping out beautiful food, but the executive chef can
• 9:56
  run the restaurant beautifully and make sure it's successful
• 9:59
  and makes money. I think if you're going to be a
• 10:01
  good executive chef and you want to bring business to your
• 10:03
  restaurant, you have to understand how to manage costs.
• 10:06
  You have to understand the marketing aspect, how to gain
• 10:09
  attention for your restaurant, get eyeballs on it, how to go
• 10:12
  viral on social media for something that you're doing.
• 10:14
  You think about all these restaurant sensations, like when
• 10:17
  the cronut came out with Dominique Ansell and there was
• 10:20
  lines around the corner to get one of his cronuts or those big
• 10:24
  milkshakes. I think it was Black Tap.
• 10:25
  That was the first restaurant that came out with these super
• 10:28
  gaudy milkshakes that were over the top with, like, doughnuts on
• 10:31
  them and painting the glass with chocolate or some BBQ joints
• 10:35
  that have a line out the door. And when it's out, it's out and
• 10:39
  it's a whole experience to wait outside to get the BBQ.
• 10:42
  You know, you don't think that's part of the marketing.
• 10:44
  Understanding social media, how to create some food that's going
• 10:46
  to go viral, that's going to increase the amount of butts and
• 10:49
  seats is important. So it's not just about creating
• 10:51
  it. It's also about letting the
• 10:52
  world know that it exists. And I've been the chef of places
• 10:55
  where it's like we're cooking really serious food.
• 10:57
  But I always say we got to have some sucker shit on there.
• 11:00
  Some examples of that sucker shit would be like just put some
• 11:02
  tater tots with black truffles or put a big dollop of caviar at
• 11:06
  the table. Don't put it on in the kitchen.
• 11:08
  Put it on at the table so that everyone gets out their phone
• 11:10
  when the caviar tin comes out. If you can shave the truffles
• 11:13
  table side so people are watching.
• 11:15
  If you could pour the sauce, if you could light it on fire, if
• 11:18
  you could crack the chocolate pinata, maybe not the chocolate
• 11:21
  pinata, but you get the point. Whatever you could do that would
• 11:24
  allow people to take out their phone and be advocates for you
• 11:29
  so that they are showing your food to other potential
• 11:32
  customers. So that people want to go and
• 11:33
  they say, I want to crack the chocolate pinata, or I want that
• 11:37
  extra dollop of caviar or I want that big gaudy ice cream sundae
• 11:41
  to come to my table where they're pouring the chocolate
• 11:44
  magic shell homemade at the table.
• 11:46
  That's what you want. So you have to understand the
• 11:48
  marketing aspect, and if you're paying attention to social media
• 11:50
  right now, you're seeing a lot of chefs are getting really good
• 11:53
  at marketing themselves in their restaurant.
• 11:55
  If you could think of daubbers, someone that I admire, he does a
• 11:58
  great job on social media. He's always cooking these dishes
• 12:00
  and explaining them, and he closes out with that.
• 12:03
  Oh La La. I think it's pretty good because
• 12:05
  you remember it every time you hear that, you think of daubers.
• 12:08
  You see his food, you know his restaurant.
• 12:10
  And is it the best restaurant in the world?
• 12:12
  I don't know. I've never eaten there.
• 12:13
  But I'll tell you what, it's got my attention and I'm sure it has
• 12:16
  the attention of many chefs also.
• 12:17
  And would you know about that restaurant had he not gone viral
• 12:21
  on social media and started showing his personality and
• 12:24
  cooking those dishes? I saw a video on Instagram
• 12:26
  recently where they were talking about the tiramisu drawer and
• 12:29
  how much business it brought to them.
• 12:31
  Simply by doing that one video. People line up now to get that
• 12:34
  tiramisu. So don't underplay how important
• 12:36
  marketing is for your restaurant and how much business it could
• 12:39
  generate. Don't forget it's still a
• 12:41
  business On top of marketing. You need customer service.
• 12:44
  You need to make sure they have a great experience when they get
• 12:45
  there. You need to train your service
• 12:47
  team, the art of hospitality, which is a subject that I'm
• 12:50
  working on for a podcast right now.
• 12:51
  Make them feel welcome. Give them a space where they're
• 12:54
  going to enjoy the food. Make sure your servers are
• 12:57
  trained how to sell your food and tell that story.
• 12:59
  Food with the story tastes better and you can get away with
• 13:02
  some mistakes if there's a story behind it.
• 13:04
  And as I always say, the reason for this podcast is to educate
• 13:07
  chefs and cooks. But there's other resources out
• 13:09
  there for leadership and management.
• 13:10
  I know there's a lot of free online courses.
• 13:12
  E Cornell. I think Harvard offers free
• 13:15
  online courses. Ioffer a video course on
• 13:18
  culinary leadership fundamentals.
• 13:19
  There's podcasts out there. There's books.
• 13:21
  My book Culinary Leadership Fundamentals, as well as many
• 13:24
  others. But don't just look at culinary
• 13:26
  resources. If you're the type of person
• 13:28
  that likes to read, look at business resources.
• 13:30
  Read business books, read entrepreneurial books, read
• 13:33
  leadership books, understand management.
• 13:35
  Because although culinary is a part of it, your food alone can
• 13:38
  only get you so far. Managing the business is the
• 13:40
  other aspect. One of the little cartoons I put
• 13:42
  up the other day was a conversation between two people
• 13:45
  and said what's more important, a good food cost or good food?
• 13:48
  And the person answered a busy restaurant.
• 13:50
  Because as they say, sales forgives all sins.
• 13:53
  Food cost is important, food quality is important, but if no
• 13:57
  one's showing up, neither of them matter.
• 13:59
  You want to make sure that you're generating sales, you're
• 14:02
  creating an environment where people want to go and you're
• 14:04
  able to take their money. When I was young, in my career,
• 14:06
  I focused too much on plating and pretty food.
• 14:09
  And I had one dish that I created and this was almost 20
• 14:12
  years ago and I had 20 touch points or 30 touch points on it.
• 14:16
  And I remember my boss coming up to me is like, why is there so
• 14:19
  much on this plate now? I was an insecure cook back
• 14:21
  then, so I wanted to showcase all my tricks on one place.
• 14:24
  Like well, I could do a sphere here and I could do some foam
• 14:27
  there and I could put a gel there and it was just busy and
• 14:30
  messy. I don't even know if it tasted
• 14:32
  good. It looked really pretty though,
• 14:33
  but I would need 3 cooks just to pick it up.
• 14:35
  And there was like 10 recipes that went into the one dish.
• 14:37
  It was a complicated dish, It wasn't smart, but it fed my ego.
• 14:41
  The crazy thing was is that as I started to sell it in the
• 14:44
  restaurant, people didn't like it.
• 14:45
  They said it was weird, there was too much going on.
• 14:47
  It didn't make sense. Now, at that time was I
• 14:49
  devastated and think that everyone was an idiot and they
• 14:52
  didn't get it? Yes, but in retrospect they
• 14:54
  weren't the idiots. It was me.
• 14:56
  I was trying too much. Sometimes less is more on the
• 14:59
  plate and in that particular chef job, I struggled because I
• 15:02
  was so focused on the quality of food that I let the management
• 15:07
  and the leadership in the business aspect suffer.
• 15:09
  I wanted to create great food by any means necessary.
• 15:12
  And while the food was good, I was constantly in the office
• 15:15
  having to explain why my food cost was up five, five percent,
• 15:18
  10%, why my overtime was out of control, why I had so many
• 15:22
  unhappy cooks in the kitchen. And the reason was, is because I
• 15:25
  was creating dishes for me, for my ego and not for the business.
• 15:28
  I had one of my mentors come into the kitchen one day and see
• 15:31
  some of the food that I was creating.
• 15:32
  They said, why don't you do something simple like a green
• 15:35
  papaya salad with some shrimp? People love that and I was like
• 15:38
  mad, too simple. But to placate this person, I
• 15:40
  put it on the menu. Guess what happened?
• 15:42
  None of my creative fancy dishes sold, but that green papaya
• 15:46
  salad with shrimp #1 seller? Every single table got one, and
• 15:50
  I couldn't understand why. I was like, how do you want that
• 15:53
  boring papaya salad with like 4 things on it versus my creative
• 15:57
  30 touch point dish? Like I said, I was the one that
• 16:00
  didn't get it. Sometimes it's the simplest
• 16:01
  things that do extremely well. As I reflect as a chef and I
• 16:06
  think about food that I crave now, I crave simple things like
• 16:08
  lobster bisque, you know, a good onion soup, a good steak, a
• 16:12
  roasted chicken, some nice roasted vegetables, a good
• 16:15
  Curry, a really nice bowl of ramen.
• 16:17
  I never crave any of this complex stuff that I used to
• 16:21
  make. I actually crave the simple
• 16:23
  things that I used to make. Now that's me as a chef.
• 16:25
  Think about the customer who is not a chef.
• 16:27
  They just want something delicious when it says Caesar
• 16:30
  salad on your menu and they've had a Caesar salad everywhere in
• 16:34
  the world and they're excited to try yours.
• 16:36
  Then it comes out with crispy chipotles on it and cornbread
• 16:40
  and freeze dried corn. They're like, what the fuck is
• 16:42
  this? I just wanted a Caesar salad.
• 16:44
  Again, think about your customer.
• 16:46
  You need to look at those business skills early on.
• 16:48
  So don't forget, if you solely focus on the culinary side,
• 16:52
  you're going to become a really good cook.
• 16:55
  Don't neglect the business side, because at one point, if your
• 16:58
  goal is to run the business, you have to understand that, Invest
• 17:01
  in that now. So what's my recommendation when
• 17:03
  creating menus? I've talked about this before.
• 17:05
  I use a 8020 rule or a 7030 rule when creating menus.
• 17:10
  So 70 to 80% of the menu is going to be items that I know
• 17:13
  will sell. They're familiar people could
• 17:15
  wrap their head around them, 30 to 20% is going to be where I
• 17:18
  experiment. I'm going to try things out,
• 17:21
  fringe techniques, creative things that I want to work on
• 17:23
  that I don't fully understand yet and maybe that the customers
• 17:26
  are not ready yet. Sometimes you have to introduce
• 17:28
  things with training wheels to get them ready for what's
• 17:30
  coming. Can you imagine if you brought
• 17:32
  Renee Rezepi to Idaho and opened up Noma in the, you know, in
• 17:37
  just a regular neighborhood and he's serving you ants on a
• 17:40
  shrimp? And he's like, no people need to
• 17:42
  do this. This is great.
• 17:43
  This will be the number one restaurant in the world.
• 17:45
  And people in Idaho are like, what is this?
• 17:47
  I don't want ants. I don't want a book about shrimp
• 17:49
  has ants on it. Or maybe he's serving his, you
• 17:51
  know, whale sperm emulsion. Like, who wants that?
• 17:54
  Is it delicious? Does Renee Rezepi know better?
• 17:57
  Maybe. But why would he serve that in
• 17:58
  the middle of nowhere in a neighborhood?
• 18:00
  No, you got to have time and place and location.
• 18:02
  So some of these cookbooks and some of these Instagram sites
• 18:05
  are dangerous. You're going to put a reindeer
• 18:06
  peanut salad on the menu because it's in his new book.
• 18:08
  And then no one's ever going to come back to your restaurant
• 18:11
  because it's a diner and they just wanted good eggs and hash
• 18:13
  Browns. So anyway, creativity is
• 18:15
  sometimes a double edged sword. Make sure you're taking care of
• 18:17
  the business first. Objects to deep dive into.
• 18:20
  Understand food cost, understand how to control finances.
• 18:23
  I do a three-part series on food cost, but the formula if you
• 18:26
  could save yourself the time and not listen to all three parts.
• 18:29
  Cost divided by sales equals percent, so that applies to
• 18:32
  food, labor, operating expenses. But understand the finances,
• 18:36
  understand the marketing plan, understand and have a mitigation
• 18:39
  plan for costs. Understand how to balance your
• 18:41
  menu. Get feedback from your servers.
• 18:43
  Express yourself creatively, but don't make your whole menu a
• 18:47
  creative expression. Have some dishes on there that
• 18:49
  you know will sell those things that people are going to keep
• 18:52
  coming back for. Have a few dishes that are going
• 18:54
  to be Instagram ready where everyone's going to take their
• 18:56
  phone out and you have the potential to go viral.
• 18:58
  Create a demand for your restaurant.
• 19:00
  And don't forget it's a two-part equation.
• 19:03
  It's not just cost, it's also sales.
• 19:06
  Attack it from both ends and ultimately be a good steward of
• 19:09
  the business. And if you're in one of those
• 19:11
  Unicorn spots where you have complete autonomy, money's no
• 19:15
  object, and it's a playground, enjoy yourself and have fun,
• 19:18
  because those don't come often and you're a Unicorn anyway.
• 19:22
  If you want to support the show, you know what to do.
• 19:23
  Make sure you leave five stars. Nothing less than five stars.
• 19:26
  We already said that. Go to chefspsa.com.
• 19:29
  Get all the books, all the merch.
• 19:30
  Get this chef's PSA show your support T-shirt.
• 19:33
  We'll see you next week. Hit the porno music.