Korsha Wilson, Author at Open for Business

Boosting Restaurant Employee Morale: How Gia SanAngelo of Untitled and Studio Cafe Keeps Employees on Point

The dwindling summer means it’s time for the last push of one of the busiest times of year for many restaurants. When you and your team are slammed shift after shift, it can be hard to inspire staff to consistently create memorable dining experiences and execute service at a high level — but it’s crucial and has a big impact on your guests.

It’s a common dilemma: How can you keep employees engaged and happy when the pace is frenetic? Increased sales are, obviously, good, but it’s important to remember that with the more sales come months of long days and nights for everyone, and it can be easy to forget some of the little touches that boost staff morale. However, taking the effort to do so is key to maintaining the customer service for which your restaurant is known.

Gia SanAngelo is the general manager of two restaurants, Untitled and Studio Cafe at The Whitney Museum in New York City, and the summer months mean an uptick in customers and events. “Untitled and Studio Cafe offer two unique dining experiences,” SanAngelo explains. “Studio Cafe is best enjoyed as a casual lunch or snack while visiting the museum. It also has a great terrace that is perfect for enjoying a drink with a view,” she says. “Untitled, open for brunch, lunch, and dinner, is everything that you want in a fine dining experience — but without all the fuss.” Managing both of these outlets while keeping staff top of mind means thinking about the experiences that they offer and how to maintain the same level of service and hospitality as in the slower months. Below, San Angelo shares tips for boosting employee morale and keeping staff motivated.

Always Communicate Any Changes to Staff So They Can Be Prepared.

“As a management team, we spend a lot of time planning to make each summer season, or ‘patio season’ as we refer to it, better than the year before,” she says. “We ask ‘Whoever wrote the rule…?’ for just about everything — uniforms, menu offerings, table layout, and etc.” Each summer, the team introduces a new aspect to service and that works to gets everyone excited for the coming months. “Once we put together our plan for the season, we do our best to communicate everything to the team with as much notice as possible.” Keeping everyone in the loop matters because it makes everyone feel at ease with the changes and gives them time to embrace them and have confidence when speaking to guests. “The year, for example, we made a change to the table layout and spent ample time making sure the whole team felt comfortable with the new table numbers before patio service started.” Changes like these make it feel fresh and different for your staff, which will keep them engaged.

Use Pre-Shift to Maintain a Key Part of Service.

The main concern when it’s busy is making sure that both restaurants are still executing the highest level of service. “Our main focus during the busy season is to maintain all of our service standards despite the busier pace,” SanAngelo says. The management team uses pre-shift gatherings to really emphasize what the team should be focusing on. “We spend time at meetings talking with the team about the most important aspects of what we do.” Use your time with staff to discuss and refocus your team’s hospitality efforts. [Read more…]

5 Tips for Working with Restaurant Stages from Chefs Gabriel Kreuther + Luigi Petrocelli

Since the early days of the kitchen brigade system and toques, stagiaires, or interns, have been part of fine dining kitchens, helping chefs and line cooks execute prep for dishes while learning how to work in a professional environment. Today, stagiaires still function under the same premise: inexperienced cooks get an opportunity to sharpen their skills by working in a kitchen with more experienced chefs. The mention of interns or stages can make someone recall a story about peeling potatoes or carrots in a basement for hours on end, but for chefs who see interns as a part of a healthy kitchen environment and want to make sure that they’re offering young cooks as much as they’re getting in return, there’s more to working with restaurant stages.

Gabriel Kreuther, chef and owner of the fine dining restaurant in Manhattan that bears his name, says that at any given time, his restaurant kitchen works with four interns. “We have two for the morning/lunch shift and two for the dinner shift,” he explains. “Pastry would have their own stages, usually one per shift that want to specialize in sweets or pastry and chocolate work.” At Hearth, chef Luigi Petrocelli and his team work with one stage at a time and make sure that stages are incorporated into the team culture. “We are not a giant kitchen and it’s easy for them to feel a part of the team.”

The stagiaire and chef relationship can be beneficial to both parties if both are clear about what is expected and what’s allowed. Here, chef Kreuther and chef Petrocelli share what they’ve learned about working with interns and what advice they have for other chefs on how to build an internship program that works for your kitchen.

Think about what you want them to walk away with.

The key to working with interns or stages is to understand that you have an opportunity to help a young cook learn specific skills and that means dedicating the time to working with them in your kitchen. “I want them to see that in this industry — and that we all care deeply about what we do, and each other,” Petrocelli says.

For Kreuther, it’s about giving young cooks a first-hand view of the hard work that it takes to make it in the restaurant industry. “I want to provide a true insight on what our industry is like,” he says. “I want to show the importance of respect, organization, timeliness, teamwork, and cleanliness.”

Set expectations and be there to help them achieve their goals for their time in your kitchen.

It can be tempting to give interns or stages small tasks that don’t impact service much because they’re inexperienced, but it’s important to trust them enough to let them take on important tasks. ”Don’t put them in the basement picking herbs,” Petrocelli says. “Hold them accountable for things with an understanding that they are learning.”

“Part of being a mentor to an intern is being there to help them if they make mistakes,” says Kreuther. “Encouragement and mentorship are the best support to get them closer to their goals if they are willing to listen and take the advice,” he adds.

Make sure your staff is prepared to work with the interns.

It can be intimidating for a new cook to step into a kitchen, so you want to make sure that your other cooks are aware that they’re expected to treat an intern like a part of the team. “When you’re out of your comfort zone, if you’re surrounded by positivity and passion, you can take everything you want from that experience,” Petrocelli says. But it’s not your job to hand hold, and it’s important to let them meet and interact with the staff in their own way. At Hearth, Petrocelli gives interns space to interact with other line cooks. “Becoming acclimated to the culture is something I leave partly up to them. I have talks and guide them, but learning how to deal with new people, new tasks, in a hectic environment is what this industry is all about. Ultimately, it’s a team working together, so it’s important that they see each other that way.” Kreuther recommends letting interns be a part of daily lineups and meetings so they feel like they’re a part of the kitchen.

Working with interns can also be a learning experience for your cooks on how to be a better team player. “I always tell all my cooks that they are essentially the chef to a stage,” Petrocellis says. “If you show them a task and they do it wrong, it’s your responsibility. It is good for the more experienced cooks to learn how to deal with those situations as well.” [Read more…]

Louis Risoli of L’Espalier on 5 Questions to Ask When Creating a Restaurant Cheese Program

Cheese programs offer restaurants another opportunity to convey to their guests what their restaurant is about. “You can use the cheese program to help create an identity,” says Louis Risoli, fromager and maître d’ for L’Espalier in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. “It can show uniqueness and passion to your guests when done right.”

Few restaurants are as committed to their cheese programs as L’Espalier, and the program is an integral part of the dining experience. “People often tell me that it’s their favorite part of a tasting menu,” Risoli says. When a guest orders a cheese plate at L’Espalier, Risoli personally picks which cheeses and accompaniments to add to the plate and delivers it to the table. “We have a cheese trolley that I use which is exciting for some guests — and intimidating for others,” he says.

Risoli has worked at L’Espalier for 35 years and inherited the role of fromager from a manager who was there before him. “The person who was leaving basically passed it on to me, and I didn’t know that much about cheese at the time,” he remembers. “I started by talking to as many distributors as possible and tasting as many cheeses as I could.” Today, the cheese program is known as one of the best in the country thanks to Risoli’s carefully curated program of cheeses from New England and beyond.

While every restaurant can’t run the same scope or breadth of program as L’Espalier does, there are ways to make sure that a cheese program is as excellent as it can be. Here, Risoli walks through some of the questions every fromager or chef should ask themselves when building a cheese program.

First, start with your why.

“The first thing I would ask is, ‘Why do you have a cheese program?” Risoli says. It’s a given that guests want to have the option, but what does having the program do for your restaurant and its identity? What do you want your cheese program to add to your restaurant’s menu? “At L’Espalier, we have a strong focus on local ingredients so it makes sense to have local cheeses.” The cheese program always features options from Massachusetts and other parts of New England. “People are absolutely delighted to try cheeses from New England,” he adds. Knowing the why will inform the ethos of the program.

How and where are you going to get your cheese?

There are many ways to get the cheeses that you want for your program, Risoli says. “If you’re working with a particular region or style of cheese, you need to know if there is a distributor that can get those for you.” You can also source straight from farms, but keep in mind the time commitment that it will take to do so. “If you’re going to work with farms directly then that’s going to take you going to the farms to see what they have and pick up orders,” he says. “You can also work with cheese shops and they can usually put together a great program.” Assess how much time you can dedicate to the program and decide which method works best. [Read more…]

4 Tips for Managing Your Restaurant’s Open Kitchen from Chef Mike Isabella of Graffiato

“It’s fun, exciting, loud, dark, and cool,” says chef Mike Isabella, owner of several restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area. He’s talking about Graffiato, his restaurant in northwest D.C., known for Italian small plates, charcuterie, crudo, and homemade pizzas. “We make the food that I want to eat, and we have a really cool space.”

One of the focal points of the two-story dining room is the large open kitchen where diners can watch as pizzas and other dishes are cooked in a wood-burning oven. When guests enter the dining room, it’s one of the first things that they see. “It adds some excitement,” Isabella says. “Our guests love seeing what’s going on and seeing the cooks make the pizzas.”

Keeping a clean and organized kitchen during service is a challenge for any chef, but the trend of open kitchens in restaurants means that there’s even more pressure since guests have a front row seat. During the planning process, Isabella and his team knew that the open kitchen concept would bring along an additional set of challenges. “We wrote the menu thinking about what was going to be cooked where and how we could divide it for the different stations,” he remembers. Six years later, the open kitchen has become a focal point of the dining room for those people sitting at tables or perched on one of the 15 bar stools along its edge. Here, Isabella shares a few things he and his team have learned about running an open kitchen and what advice they have for other teams about how to use the concept to add to the guest experience.

Training is imperative.

“We definitely go through training with staff before they step into the open kitchen,” Isabella says. “It’s important to be with them through training so they can get used to working out there.” One of the skills that Isabella and his team try to impart to their cooks that are going to be up front is that they need to be very aware of their actions. Keeping a management-level chef out in the dining room with them helps. “We always try to have a chef out there with our cooks to keep an eye on their stations and help them out if they need it,” he says. “The chef also does expo and finishes the plates so they can keep an eye on how food looks before it leaves the kitchen.” Having an extra set of eyes in an open kitchen means there’s extra security to make sure that things are right for guests. [Read more…]

5 Tips for How to Build a Beer Program at Your Restaurant from Republic Owner Matt O’Reilly

The explosion of the craft beer market means beer has become big business for restaurants. Beer lists across the country carry domestic and international brews for diners who are more educated about what goes into a good beer. For beverage managers, knowing what to add or exclude from a list can be tricky.

“It’s like putting together a mixtape for your girlfriend when you were in high school,” says Matt O’Reilly, owner of Republic in Minneapolis. “You don’t want to have any bad songs on there.” O’Reilly manages the beer list at Republic, a restaurant and beer hall with 100 tap lines of domestic and international offerings.

“You have to strike the right balance between what you like and what your guests expect,” he says. Crafting a list with that balance can be difficult since there are so many beers on the market, says O’Reilly, but there are a few things that beer buyers can do to make sure that they getting as close to that balance as possible.

Below, O’Reilly walks us through how he has created the beer list at Republic and what advice he has for other beer buyers.

Add variety within categories

It’s impossible to carry every single beer type that’s on the market so it’s important to choose styles carefully. “It starts with having a diverse mix that is representative of what’s out there,” O’Reilly says. There are tons of I.P.A.’s available, so O’Reilly works to bring in really good examples within that category. “I want to make sure that I’m balancing different versions of the category for our guests to try.” On the Republic beer list there’s a section of I.P.A.’s that are from Minnesota which allows him to narrow down the choices of what to add to the list.

Have a few options to appeal to macro beer drinkers

“When you’re building a list there’s more to it than just having popular beers,” O’Reilly says. At Republic, there are no macro beers, or beers that are produced on a large scale, on the list. O’Reilly says that was a conscious choice. “It requires us to be more thoughtful and help people through our list.” If a guest comes in and asks for a certain macro beer by name, O’Reilly and his staff try to find an alternative on the list that offers the same flavors. “We really want to give people comparable, craft versions of those beers,” he says.

Invest in education

Maintaining a rotating tap list of 100 beers is quite an undertaking, and it requires O’Reilly and his staff to be knowledgeable about what they have on the list. “We work on education with our staff so they can offer our guests something that they’ve never had but they’re going to like,” he says. To keep everyone up to date, he and his management team do daily overviews of changes to the beer list and new servers and bartenders go through an extensive training process. “We cover the history of the company, the ABV (alcohol by volume), where the brewers come from, history of the style of beer, things like that,” he says. “I want to make sure our team feels comfortable enough with this information so that they can pass it on to the guest.” It also helps the team get on board with the list. If they’re able to learn and try the beers, they’re able to have their favorites that they can get excited about and talk about with guests. “Your staff has got to be on board with what you’re doing or it won’t work,” O’Reilly adds. [Read more…]