Kitchen Baby: advice for a fledgling chef

[Eliza]

A friend asked me to take over the kitchen of his successful restaurant/bar. The menu is tired and dated and he knows that I will want to change it completely, and he actually used the words "total creative license (!), to which I obviously add "within the budget." Here's the thing: I only made the switch to Cook from Server last summer, making desserts and salads at a fine-dining place and cooking and baking for a small catering company. I am in a committed relationship with the restaurant business and I'm a good cook but I'm oh so green! Budgets, spreadsheets, food cost percentages, staffing, dealing with tardy distributors, fiddling with broken reach-ins.. I have three months to educate myself before we open for the summer, so I won't be in over my head.

Whaddaya think, pros and semi-pros and non-pros? What do I need to know? What are your best/worst stories of restaurant beginners' folly? What stupid mistakes will I absolutely make, no matter what? What mistakes are avoidable?

I wouldn't be surprised if this thread already exists somewhere in the restaurant forum, but I couldn't find it.

[Chris Amirault]

Say (much) more! What's the general menu design? Price points? Staff experience? And what do you want to do with it?

[Qwerty]

I agree we need more info. Is it stuff like salads, sandwiches, soups, burgers, fried calamari, etc, or is it "fine dining?"

3 months to educate yourself? A cook for less than a year? Working for a friend? Doesn't sound like a recipe for success, but remember that people have done it before.

More information would help.

[JeanneCake]

If the restaurant is/was successful, what does the owner think needs to change? Or why does he think it needs to change? What happened to the staff from last year? (From your description, it sounds like a seasonal place with a clientele mostly made up of the tourist crowd and not open in the winter months?)

[Eliza]

I was looking to avoid blabbing too much and just solicit more general running-a-kitchen advice, but here's the lowdown:

It's a small, casual restaurant with a busy late-night bar, open only in the summer. We're in a seasonal tourist community so we do get some tourist traffic but the clientele is mostly local and regular. The menu, which has been essentially the same for 20 years, is sandwiches, salads, pizzas, simple entrees, quite a few veg options (meh). I would say the original idea was kinda hippified, pseudo-Mediterranean-influenced fare, and I'm going to want to change that. I'd really like to take hummus and pitas off the menu; I'm sure they were a little ahead of the times serving it in '89, but not so now. Lunch runs $8-$15, dinners $8-$22.

The chef I am replacing has worked there for a long time, has a drinking problem and was getting hard to work with, so the owner asked him to move on. The rest of the staff, all people I know (this is a very small town), is staying on.

Thanks for listening, guys, I'm eternally grateful.

[Edward J]

My humble advice?

No dramatic changes, if you depend on the locals, don't scare them off. If you have to increase prices, do this very minimally and slowly. Sure you can jazz up the pizzas, jazz up the humus, find or make some nice wild and wonderful bread to go with it. Focus on the quality of the ingredients and the presentation.

Gradually introduce new items, do this via nightly specials, and if they are popular, they'll morph into weekly specials, and then on permanently to the menu.

Remember, if the place has earned a rep. for pseudo Med. stuff, then build on that, as it is far harder and far riskier to go "cold turkey" with a new theme and menu.

Suppliers... If they're the same ones for the last 20 years and are, uh.."comfortable", then you really need to do your homework: Start digging around finding new ones. Then comes the crunch, and you tell the old ones that their prices aren't competitive enough, delivery times sketchy, so you'll put them on a trial period for the next two deliveries. If they make it, great. If not, use the new ones. The owner has to back you up on this however

Refrigeration. The cheapest and kindest thing you can do to a car is change it's oil frequently, the cheapest and kindest thing you can do to a refrigerator is to keep the radiator fins free of dust--use a brush and vacuum for this. After that, it's best to get a refrigeration guy to look at it.

Hope this helps

[Rob Babcock]

Sounds like a daunting task, but potentially a rewarding one. I would caution you to got slowly and not try to change things overnight. Presumably you have a lot of loyal local business; you don't want to drive them off. Inevitably they'll expect many of their favorites when they come in- heck, some of 'em probably haven't looked at the menu in years!

I can offer a few pieces of generic advice:

1) Work hard. In my years as an Exec and Sous I prided myself on being the first in in the morning and the last to leave. You may not have to work from dusk til dawn but it's important to let everyone know you're working harder than they are. Especially if you don't have a lot of culinary experience you'll have to work to get the respect of your staff.

2) Be fair. If you're going to be managing people, be reasonable. I have spent many nights in the dishpit just to show my guys that I'm willing to get my hands dirty, too. Then when I ask for a 'volunteer' for help it's not viewed as a 'sh*t detail.' Try to handle scheduling and disciplinary tasks with tact and treat everyone equally.

3) Keep an open mind. Taking a job as Exec/KM is a pretty big step for someone with so little cooking experience. You will have a lot to learn, and you can't do that if you think you know it all. Don't be afraid to solicit advice from people who have experience. Read magazines, pick up some books. Wayne Gisslen's Professional Cooking would be a fantastic place to start.

4) Be humble. It can be a hard sell to completely rewrite a menu even when you're a chef with a lot of experience- it'll be harder for you. So many people (and I've been guilty of this, too) try to force their ideas on the dining public and this doesn't work. For example, I once was the Sous for a very nice independent restaurant group, but working in one of the smaller market cities in the Midwest. We're talking farm and ranch country. I always tried to feature couscous, polenta lasagne, etc but that's not my clientele wanted- they wanted steaks. They'd pay $40 for a big steak but turn their noses up at Sea Bass. Eventually I learned to create features that reflected the realities of the market. Sure I snuck a few things in for the adventurous but I didn't try to buck what the customer wanted.

5) Keep a sense of humor. Running a kitchen can be stressful at times. You're overworked and underpaid; it's hot, your feet hurt and the hours are long; you will stand by the back door right before the start of your Saturday night shift wondering where the hell your cooks are. You gotta keep a sense of humor about the rough stuff or you'll go crazy.

Good luck and have fun with it!

Edited February 20, 2009 by Rob Babcock (log)

[Eliza]

thank you both for the good advice! very good to know about the refrigerator fan...