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Okay it's time for me to chip in properly, forgive any typos I'm on a phone. Preamble: I'm rated as an executive chef(my last 3 positions before leaving the in

Okay it's time for me to chip in properly, forgive any typos I'm on a phone. Preamble: I'm rated as an executive chef(my last 3 positions before leaving the industry), and I had worked for over 17 years in hospitality (from apprentice chef, to manager and executive chef - I also spent 4 years traveling to different restaurants to try and save them from foreclosure). "That chicken is a confit (with duck fat, aka $$), then served with a stock/stew that takes days (of labor dollars) to prepare, plus cost of employees to serve" I sympathised with the author until this point. No it doesn't take days in the way the author points it out, it takes minutes with a time to follow. (Eg you don't have to actually do anything after you prepare and set it). That's akin to saying a good jam or beer takes months - yes in pure time, but it doesn't take staff time(and $$ as the author said). As for the hours? The author is correct, hospitality is a slug fest, there is no doubt about that. What I take from this article? An unexperienced person tried to build a new business in an industry that didn't have the experience in. Would you try to start a software business, a cloud storage or a trucking business without experience? No it would be foolhardy, and that's the biggest problem with hospitality. Frankly if you're not a chef - dont purchase a restaurant. Anyone can cook one decent meal, now try doing 100 a day while managing costs and staffing. (That's just the basics, there are hundreds of things you need to do just to begin). At the end of the day, I sympathise with the author, I have seen (and tried to help), a lot of people in that situation, but you cannot just jump into hospitality with money and assume that it will work. Edit: typos ( thanks qwerty_asdf :-p )

brianwawok 9y ago
So is a random business guy hiring a chef to run his restaurant kinda the startup equivalent of a business guy hiring a dev to build his startup? Both seem in a similar boat. A restaurant is nothing without a good chef. A programming startup is nothing without a good developer. Both have cases where the chef/developer starts their own companies.. and many more cases where an outside guy with some money comes in and tries to make it happen. You can succeed in both paths, but it sure as heck seems a lot harder! I cannot image funding a software startup if each MVP I wanted took say 30k to make (instead of a few hours of time). It seems reasonable that cooking is similar..
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  You can be a great cook but a terrible chef. A chef is an experienced cook who can also manage a kitchen. Management ability without cooking skill is what you get at fast food franchises and meal manufacturers like Sysco. Being a foodie is a negative hiring signal in those contexts.
  - marak830 9y ago
    Actually it's a little more in-depth(well it useto be, I'll explain that lower). When I started out it was: cook: two years training(while on the job), basics of most styles of cooking. Chef: 4 years training (most of the time, on the job), with a day of University each week. Learnt basic cooking skills. Plus how and why of ingredients, how to cost and manage a kitchen, basic logistics(to understand how distance effects produce and the best ways to minimise the effects to ensure top quality ingredients), and a whole assortment of similarly unthought of information (put it in way most techs would understand: backend coding). Recently most chef's qualifications have been reduced to 2 years, But that's a whole 'nother story :-p To sum up, a chef isn't an experienced cook who can manage a kitchen - they are someone with the training to manage the staff, costings, health and safety checks, menus, discover and cater to local and new tastes, research upcoming trends, minimise risk(be it personnel, upcoming laws, basic food and hygene, ingury management and mitigation etc), as well as prepare and cook every dish on the menu (in a timely and cost controlled fashion). While some cooks can manage and run a kitchen, (and I have met some amazing ones over the years), to say they are eanywhere near chef's in general, is akin to saying a student programmer is a full stack dev
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Agree completely - sorry for my lack of clarity. I meant 'manage' to include everything on the operational side of the business, vs the financial/investment aspect that an accountant or tax lawyer would be concerned with, without regard to the fact of it being a restaurant.
      - marak830 9y ago
anigbrowl 9y ago
Indeed, this could generalize to any industry: Domain expertise (cooking, coding, whatever) - slow for one client Logistic expertise - fast for large numbers of customers, not clients Business expertise - becoming a legal and financial client Financial expertise - pure cashflow and accounting with little regard for the specific business model The skills applied in labor-intensive work are not automatically transferable to capital-intensive work as you move down the list. That's why the CEO of McDonalds trained as an accountant, and has probably never worked a grill in his life; for the job he does managing a global corporation, learning to cook would have been a waste of his time. ISTM that a key difference in left/right political philosophy is that the left thinks its more ethical to start at the bottom and work up, whereas the right feels it's OK to leapfrog as far ahead as you're able. A libertarian economist would argue that this maximizes both individual freedom and value across the economy as a whole, whereas a Marxian economist would argue that such maximization strategies exacerbate boom and bust cycles, like a car with an accelerator but no brakes.
- eutropia 9y ago
  I'll be a bit pedantic here, but Fred Turner, CEO of McDonald's from 1974-1987, started at the company as a grill operator.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I wanted to cite him too for that very reason, but since he departed 30 years ago the corporate culture has probably changed significantly.
mark-r 9y ago
Being experienced is no guarantee either. I had a neighbor who was operating multiple successful restaurants at the Mall of America when he decided to quit and open his own place closer to home. He poured his heart and soul into that project, completely remodeling the space into something 100% better than what had been there before. I think it was the debt that did him in - the restaurant closed in 9 months, and he lost his house too.
- marak830 9y ago
  Running a successful restaurant is -hard-. There are so many things going in, such a complex system with variables that change - sometimes within days - that sometimes I'm unsure how anyone actually runs a successful restaurant. Otherdays, when I go visit a few friends places and see how things are organised, it's amazing how smoothly things operate. But those same people, I know from being there with them, are constantly under stress, and have broken down to me after a few drinks after hours.
dkrich 9y ago
Yes, this to me was the most telling part: That chicken is a confit (with duck fat, aka $$), then served with a stock/stew that takes days (of labor dollars) to prepare, plus cost of employees to serve, stuff to serve it on and rent to pay, not to mention the utilities (the water bills on that cursed grease trap were the opposite of "the gift that keeps on giving"). That damned chicken should be $40! But people won't pay $40 for chicken, so it's $29. This seems to suggest that the author (who I sympathize with very much) doesn't have much understanding of cost accounting, and therefore pricing, which is near the top of mistakes inexperienced business owners make. The cost of the chicken is variable. The costs of rent, labor, and utilities are fixed on a per plate basis. I'm friends with the owner of a very large and very successful restaurant and he once told me that he basically makes no profit on food and that the food is just a way to get people in to sell alcohol which is where the majority of his profit is made. It's also true that some foods are necessarily more profitable than others. People won't pay your costs for the chicken confit and you lose a few bucks on every one that goes out? Fine, add a few dollars to your pasta dish that costs far less to make and if you sell the same number you're even. Or, if the chicken isn't profitable and you aren't selling many of them, just accept that people don't want it and take it off the menu.
- nathan_f77 9y ago
  It's a strange concept to have loss-leaders in a restaurant. If I were starting a restaurant, I would probably just want to sell everything at a profit. I don't have a burning desire to pay people to eat my food.
  - mhb 9y ago
    It's no stranger than paying them with the use of your room, utensils, plates, tables, etc. to eat your food. The different menu items are fungible just like all the other costs.
  - dkrich 9y ago
    It seems counterintuitive to me too, but when you think about it it makes sense. If you sell burgers, the food costs are pretty high. After all, good hamburger meat, cheese, and whatever else you are going to put in it is pretty expensive. If you charge your costs plus some fixed percentage to ensure profitability on every item, but your customers are used to buying burgers at similar places that charge for the food at cost and make their profits on french fries and drinks, you will quickly earn the reputation of being overpriced. If you can earn some sort of adoration that drives people to your place regardless of price, like Shake Shack or In N' Out, then you have the luxury of charging a bit more, but that's hard to achieve.
qwerty_asdf 9y ago
tricking business Is that supposed to be "trucking business" or is there some other business like souping up automobiles, referred to in a regional dialect I'm unfamiliar with? EDIT: ...probably one of the anticipated phone typos, fat fingering 'i' instead of the 'u' key.
- marak830 9y ago
  Yeah it was, sorry I'm stuck using a smartphone and I type faster than I correct :-)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
vpalanc1 9y ago
> That chicken is a confit [...] plus cost of employees to serve Is that really a thing in the US? Honest question, I'm confused. The justification for requiring 20% tips (and considering you "nasty" if you leave any less) is that the waiters in the US are not even paid minimum wage, they rely on the customer tips to make a living. So, which one is it? If they rely on the tips, surely they don't cost the restaurant owners any significant amount of $$, do they?
Ntrails 9y ago
What I take from this article? An unexperienced person tried to build a new business in an industry that didn't have the experience in. Few things wind me up more than people who've never worked in a kitchen/restaurant deciding to open one because it's their dream. They think they can do it better, or just that it will be fun and rewarding. Over here it tends to be people buying a pub, because they like the idea of hanging out behind the bar serving the odd drink whilst the money rolls in. How hard can it be? It's infuriating and I have zero sympathy

brianwawok 9y ago

So is a random business guy hiring a chef to run his restaurant kinda the startup equivalent of a business guy hiring a dev to build his startup? Both seem in a similar boat. A restaurant is nothing without a good chef. A programming startup is nothing without a good developer. Both have cases where the chef/developer starts their own companies.. and many more cases where an outside guy with some money comes in and tries to make it happen. You can succeed in both paths, but it sure as heck seems a lot harder! I cannot image funding a software startup if each MVP I wanted took say 30k to make (instead of a few hours of time). It seems reasonable that cooking is similar..

anigbrowl 9y ago
You can be a great cook but a terrible chef. A chef is an experienced cook who can also manage a kitchen. Management ability without cooking skill is what you get at fast food franchises and meal manufacturers like Sysco. Being a foodie is a negative hiring signal in those contexts.
- marak830 9y ago
  Actually it's a little more in-depth(well it useto be, I'll explain that lower). When I started out it was: cook: two years training(while on the job), basics of most styles of cooking. Chef: 4 years training (most of the time, on the job), with a day of University each week. Learnt basic cooking skills. Plus how and why of ingredients, how to cost and manage a kitchen, basic logistics(to understand how distance effects produce and the best ways to minimise the effects to ensure top quality ingredients), and a whole assortment of similarly unthought of information (put it in way most techs would understand: backend coding). Recently most chef's qualifications have been reduced to 2 years, But that's a whole 'nother story :-p To sum up, a chef isn't an experienced cook who can manage a kitchen - they are someone with the training to manage the staff, costings, health and safety checks, menus, discover and cater to local and new tastes, research upcoming trends, minimise risk(be it personnel, upcoming laws, basic food and hygene, ingury management and mitigation etc), as well as prepare and cook every dish on the menu (in a timely and cost controlled fashion). While some cooks can manage and run a kitchen, (and I have met some amazing ones over the years), to say they are eanywhere near chef's in general, is akin to saying a student programmer is a full stack dev
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Agree completely - sorry for my lack of clarity. I meant 'manage' to include everything on the operational side of the business, vs the financial/investment aspect that an accountant or tax lawyer would be concerned with, without regard to the fact of it being a restaurant.
    - marak830 9y ago

anigbrowl 9y ago

Indeed, this could generalize to any industry: Domain expertise (cooking, coding, whatever) - slow for one client Logistic expertise - fast for large numbers of customers, not clients Business expertise - becoming a legal and financial client Financial expertise - pure cashflow and accounting with little regard for the specific business model The skills applied in labor-intensive work are not automatically transferable to capital-intensive work as you move down the list. That's why the CEO of McDonalds trained as an accountant, and has probably never worked a grill in his life; for the job he does managing a global corporation, learning to cook would have been a waste of his time. ISTM that a key difference in left/right political philosophy is that the left thinks its more ethical to start at the bottom and work up, whereas the right feels it's OK to leapfrog as far ahead as you're able. A libertarian economist would argue that this maximizes both individual freedom and value across the economy as a whole, whereas a Marxian economist would argue that such maximization strategies exacerbate boom and bust cycles, like a car with an accelerator but no brakes.

eutropia 9y ago
I'll be a bit pedantic here, but Fred Turner, CEO of McDonald's from 1974-1987, started at the company as a grill operator.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I wanted to cite him too for that very reason, but since he departed 30 years ago the corporate culture has probably changed significantly.

mark-r 9y ago

Being experienced is no guarantee either. I had a neighbor who was operating multiple successful restaurants at the Mall of America when he decided to quit and open his own place closer to home. He poured his heart and soul into that project, completely remodeling the space into something 100% better than what had been there before. I think it was the debt that did him in - the restaurant closed in 9 months, and he lost his house too.

marak830 9y ago
Running a successful restaurant is -hard-. There are so many things going in, such a complex system with variables that change - sometimes within days - that sometimes I'm unsure how anyone actually runs a successful restaurant. Otherdays, when I go visit a few friends places and see how things are organised, it's amazing how smoothly things operate. But those same people, I know from being there with them, are constantly under stress, and have broken down to me after a few drinks after hours.

dkrich 9y ago

Yes, this to me was the most telling part: That chicken is a confit (with duck fat, aka $$), then served with a stock/stew that takes days (of labor dollars) to prepare, plus cost of employees to serve, stuff to serve it on and rent to pay, not to mention the utilities (the water bills on that cursed grease trap were the opposite of "the gift that keeps on giving"). That damned chicken should be $40! But people won't pay $40 for chicken, so it's $29. This seems to suggest that the author (who I sympathize with very much) doesn't have much understanding of cost accounting, and therefore pricing, which is near the top of mistakes inexperienced business owners make. The cost of the chicken is variable. The costs of rent, labor, and utilities are fixed on a per plate basis. I'm friends with the owner of a very large and very successful restaurant and he once told me that he basically makes no profit on food and that the food is just a way to get people in to sell alcohol which is where the majority of his profit is made. It's also true that some foods are necessarily more profitable than others. People won't pay your costs for the chicken confit and you lose a few bucks on every one that goes out? Fine, add a few dollars to your pasta dish that costs far less to make and if you sell the same number you're even. Or, if the chicken isn't profitable and you aren't selling many of them, just accept that people don't want it and take it off the menu.

nathan_f77 9y ago
It's a strange concept to have loss-leaders in a restaurant. If I were starting a restaurant, I would probably just want to sell everything at a profit. I don't have a burning desire to pay people to eat my food.
- mhb 9y ago
  It's no stranger than paying them with the use of your room, utensils, plates, tables, etc. to eat your food. The different menu items are fungible just like all the other costs.
- dkrich 9y ago
  It seems counterintuitive to me too, but when you think about it it makes sense. If you sell burgers, the food costs are pretty high. After all, good hamburger meat, cheese, and whatever else you are going to put in it is pretty expensive. If you charge your costs plus some fixed percentage to ensure profitability on every item, but your customers are used to buying burgers at similar places that charge for the food at cost and make their profits on french fries and drinks, you will quickly earn the reputation of being overpriced. If you can earn some sort of adoration that drives people to your place regardless of price, like Shake Shack or In N' Out, then you have the luxury of charging a bit more, but that's hard to achieve.

qwerty_asdf 9y ago

tricking business Is that supposed to be "trucking business" or is there some other business like souping up automobiles, referred to in a regional dialect I'm unfamiliar with? EDIT: ...probably one of the anticipated phone typos, fat fingering 'i' instead of the 'u' key.

marak830 9y ago
Yeah it was, sorry I'm stuck using a smartphone and I type faster than I correct :-)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

vpalanc1 9y ago

> That chicken is a confit [...] plus cost of employees to serve Is that really a thing in the US? Honest question, I'm confused. The justification for requiring 20% tips (and considering you "nasty" if you leave any less) is that the waiters in the US are not even paid minimum wage, they rely on the customer tips to make a living. So, which one is it? If they rely on the tips, surely they don't cost the restaurant owners any significant amount of $$, do they?

Ntrails 9y ago

What I take from this article? An unexperienced person tried to build a new business in an industry that didn't have the experience in. Few things wind me up more than people who've never worked in a kitchen/restaurant deciding to open one because it's their dream. They think they can do it better, or just that it will be fun and rewarding. Over here it tends to be people buying a pub, because they like the idea of hanging out behind the bar serving the odd drink whilst the money rolls in. How hard can it be? It's infuriating and I have zero sympathy