These points are in a bit of competition: assuming your analogy (Chef/Owner is a CEO), then FOH would be a great concern of theirs, and they would likely be just as involved in FOH as BOH. If FOH needs more time to adjust and improve, but BOH does not because they are ready for opening day, then why not be around for the launch period? Food, and service, are not up and running before guests are served anything.
I do expect to see a Chef, and owners, and Chef/Owners, in their restaurants during the first 3 months. Perhaps not always in oneās office, but at the operation particularly for a company wherein 100% of sales are generated on premise. Aside from the analogy, itās quite comforting to see a Chef (owner or not) actively involved in the day-to-day operations. Weāre not talking about Mario Batali here, but a chef with two restaurants that are both in the same square, whoās chef de cuisine is also out of stateā¦ Furthermore, it appears from previous comments by uni that there is reason for concern/disappointment in the chefās absence as the food may not be 100% ready to go and the concept is Chef-Driven, as in showing a full page bio on your homepage.
**Disclaimer: Iām enjoying the conversation from a big picture perspective about chefs/restaurants generally, and not making assumptions or calling out a particular chef for their absence. I have no idea why this chef wasnāt there, and do not want to state that their absence is unjustified, as I do not know this chef, did not talk to the staff myself, could have been anything. Emergencies and generally lousy sh*t happens all the time.
Most up and running restaurants arenāt well hired. Many restaurants have a few who went to school for the trade and the rest are scrounged up and trained on the job (or at their previous job). Hard to retain good staff when the pay is so bad, the rents are so high, and there is no affordable transportation home late at night to get to the lower rent parts of the state.
The best way to start up a new place to poach half your staff from your old place to manage, serve, etc. which leaves gaps in both places. Hiring people you have absolute faith in is rather difficult and it is easier to slide people around after they have earned the chefās trust.
In my current restaurant that I was an opening staff member, the chef/co-owner didnāt take a night off for the first 6 months which is when we eliminated Monday night service to give the kitchen a break. And it was another two months after that before he let himself miss a service shift (coinciding with the restaurant starting up brunch and doing two shifts, so the chef only too the night off after working the day shift).
Not really disagreeing with you but in my experience (since we moved only very recently to Boston is much more based on San Diego, LA and SF (which all have to different degrees similar issues - SD and LA comparable, SF much worse than Boston) the success of a second (or third) restaurant from one chef strongly depends if he sees it solely as a business opportunity or also to retain great people he trusts. The most successful opening often happen when the chef/owner wants to keep his CdC from his first restaurant from moving somewhere else and opens a second restaurant and promotes the CdC to the EC with relatively little ācontrolā as he knows the new EC knows his cooking/FOH/BOH philosophy. At the same time the first restaurant has well established structures that missing the CdC (and often promoting the SC) doesnāt have a negative effect. If she chefs starts to hire outside people for his second place often more problems happen (no idea which route Waypoint is going)
Boston is so very different from San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In every way, as I suspect youāve come to understand from your fairly brief time here.
Could you explain at bit more ? (I suspect that I donāt know the Boston restaurant scene very well yet but also wonder how much you know about the restaurant scenes in SD, LA and SF)
I know nothing about the restaurants in SD and LA beyond what Iāve read about the differences in regional economies, labor pools, availability of ingredients, cost of living differences, etc. I lived in SF Bay area for over 15 years, but not recently. Iāve never been to SD and Iāve only been to LA once. I didnāt mean to imply that I know anything about how restaurants in those areas expand and how they hire across their different sites, just that Boston (and New England in general) is in many ways so very insular compared to other regions, as far as I can tell, and that the economic dynamics seem very different. I could be wrong, just saying Boston compared to Calif. is like a different planet, to me. Barbara Lynch has the biggest Boston restaurant empire, but most of the āearlyā Boston pioneers worked together at some point (Todd English is not a force anymore, but somebody made a graph once about how the best known chefs interacted.) Boston food scene compared to SF Bay is still kind of young, in that there was nothing here for a long, long time except Locke-Ober, the Budapest Cafe, Doyles in JP (donāt go for the food, but the historic tavern atmosphere can be fun). Puritan values, Yankee thrift, arcane liquor laws, limited number of liquor licenses, very short growing season, immigration patterns quite different from Calif. (Central Americans, Brazilians, strong Portuguese/Azores, almost no Mexicans) etc. Ken Oringer is building his own empire both here and afar now. Maybe hotoynoodle, who is an industry insider, can comment on how the restaurant āgroupsā hire and staff among themselves. Just seeing how our local farmers markets have evolved in the last few years in terms of more varied produce is very encouraging and hopeful, to me.
I just saw this about how corporate catering has dramatically reduced the pool of restaurant employees in Palo Alto (not that it is a hotbed of culinary innovation, but there are people with money to spend in restaurants there)ā¦so maybe there is some similarity with Boston.
I donāt dispute that from a big picture how a city becomes a culinary hot spot over many decades it is hard to compare any two cities in the nation as the starting points, immigration, work force etc are very different (even for example within California it is hard to compare ābig pictureā between SD and LA). But this discussion turned more specific towards current issues especially towards hiring, maintaining a qualified workforce and here the discussion points are not that different between Boston and big cities in California. I would argue SF is the ānegativeā poster child which problems a successful (in terms of high paying jobs) city can have to maintain lower paid workers (including the restaurant industry). Your NYT paper is just the tip of the iceberg and I would argue that the SF at this point is even much worse than Boston with rents so high that restaurant workers canāt effort any more to live in SF or even two-three hours away. Boston has comparable house and rent prices to SD (which is facing similar gentrification issues as Boston) but SF house and rent prices are often 30-60% higher. LA seems to do a little bit better which has more to do with not having really one culinary hot spot but many different throughout the city/county which makes it easier to have affordable rents for restaurant workers and still live reasonable close to the worker place. (Good discussion - I like that it is not only about the next best restaurant/meal but goes way beyond, something I missed from the old CH times)
Iām confused what we are discussing at this point.
If Iām following - no promises
A well known Chef opened a new restaurant down the block from their original location. The new place has higher than expected price points and the known chef hasnāt been present during opening week.
The debate is if one should expect the chef to be around opening week? - then we got into broader staffing issues ā¦
Is that right?
If so Iām firmly in the camp of - yes, I would expect the chef to be around opening week. Yes I would expect the āhelmā to be transferred over to a trusted second but for opening Iād expect them to be around.
If their main restaurant canāt function without the chef AND the second who will take over the new location then they are not ready to open a second location and Iād expect both locations to suffer - and hopefully survive in this market.
thanks for the reorientation, Thimes. It is most ways is a simple issue as you state, and I regret getting drawn in to a more complicated, complex question that canāt be answered here, about moving around staff, etc. among multiple locations, even though it may be interesting. Itās two locations in Cambridge, MA, and what happens in San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco may be relevant on some levels, but we are talking about Harvard Square here and the same chef.
Thanks for bringing us all back to the topic (even though I would like to discuss the more broader questions perhaps in another topic) - but I disagree that a chef has to present at a newly opened restaurant (as long as he thinks his CdC is good enough for his new restaurant). It only matters what comes out of the kitchen and not if a EC is somewhere in the kitchen (or does anybody really believes even if he would be in the restaurant he would be still involved in the day-to-day cooking)
Iām unfamiliar with this blog, but am happy to make a quick comment here.
I wont be following it up, or getting into any exchanges, but I have posted my email (michael@waypointharvard.com) if anyone wants to identify themselves and chat directly.
Iām very proud of the Waypoint team so far as we near a month of being open.
In response to not being here, I have missed a few services. I missed a Saturday for Outstanding in the Field, and I missed this past Wednesday through Sunday for the PDX Feast in Oregon. I was happy to do these events and it was an honor to fufill those commitments. They were booked last year and I anticipated being open longer at that point when I agreed to offer my time.
I do not regret those comittments.
I can assure everyone that I have been (including the weeks leading up to) and continue to be here every day. I landed at 1 am last night and am back at the shop today.
I can assure you all that I missed my kids first day of school in a new district, that I have not shared a meal at home with them, or seen my wife for more than a few hours, even with all the traveling.
This is all for my restaurants and my 150 employees, and most of all, for my patrons.
Michael - thank you for taking the time to respond. Iām a little uncomfortable that you were looped into a blog discussion that really became more esoteric than specific to you or your effortsā¦ Iām sure you have many more important things to be doing.
Best of luck with the new location! Hopefully you can find time to do something with the family!
And I am even more disappointed that your kidās didnāt have you with them for their first day of school. Not in you. In lifeās circumstances. The life of the self-employed isnāt easy as my kid will confirm.
But I am still never going to pay $70 some odd bucks for a chicken.
Itās $59 for the chicken now and actually the same price as for example the āfamousā chicken at Zuni - it seems unfortunately the time of the $50+ chicken has startedā¦
