Hello Chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, what we're
gonna talk about is when things are not going right, how do you
correct the ship? Stay tuned.
This episode of Chef's PSA is sponsored by J&R Grills and
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Before we get into it, I'll give you a quick update.
I'm still doing my chef in residence.
Things are going really well. The food is clicking,
everything's going smoothly. I've put up a couple of
Instagram reels showing some of the food is it's upscale dining.
So if you all are in the Dripping Springs, Austin area,
come out and see me. I'd love to have you in the
restaurant. I'll be there for another couple
of weeks. I did miss The kitchen, but I'm
slacking a little on Chef's PSA. I have some books that I'm going
to get written here pretty soon once I get back to Full Time
Chef's PSA, and most likely that's going to be a sequel to
the Bad Sue Good Chef book a lot of people have been requesting.
It might be a prequel. I don't know.
I'm going to do like a whole whole trilogy thing, maybe with
it. But I I like that series.
I like the conversational style of that book.
So most likely I'll have that book done.
I mean, if I'm fast, end of December by Christmas, but
realistically probably in January or February.
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But subject at hand, correcting course.
I've been thinking about this a lot.
A lot of times, as a chef, you go down a certain path and
you're married to it. You've committed to it, and it's
very difficult sometimes to admit that you were wrong.
Maybe you were punching above your weight.
Maybe you were too ambitious with your menu.
Maybe your team wasn't ready, or maybe you weren't willing to put
in the amount of hard work that it takes to make it a success.
It could be a variety of reasons, but in the restaurant
game, it's dangerous. And I want to point this out
because a lot of people don't really understand how dangerous
it could be. Now, if you're a chef owner, you
understand the dangers of not correcting course.
But sometimes you're just the hired executive chef, an
employee of the owner or the corporation.
And when you don't have skin in the game, I can tell you as
someone who has failed before, I I think I've I've failed just as
many times as I've succeeded the times when I failed.
I didn't act quick enough. The signs were there, the
writing was on the wall, but I couldn't read the writing.
And shortly thereafter, Failure is inevitable if you don't
correct course. Taking action is probably one of
the most important things you could do, because even the best
cooks on a sinking ship still sink with it.
But it also takes the maturity of the chef to recognize when
ownership is making knee jerk reactions or upper management is
making knee jerk reactions because they think the ship is
sinking. So I mean you're walking the
razor's edge because the fact of the matter is, they might be
wrong, but sometimes you might be wrong.
You might be stubborn in your ways and not want to correct the
food because you feel that you're losing a little bit of
yourself. We all want to cook great food.
We're all passionate about the food that we create.
We're attached to the identity and we associate ourselves
sometimes with the identity of being a chef.
I was talking to someone the other day and they were talking
about how they identify as a cook and they identify as a chef
and that is their personality. Now, I had this problem too, and
for many years all like like if you took me to a party, the only
thing I was going to be able to talk about was food.
That's it. Like if you talk about anything
other than food or probably, you know, fights, you know, the UFC
or the hip hop, I wasn't going to be able to hold a
conversation. So it got to the point where
people didn't want to bring me to parties because all I talked
about was the industry. That's fine when you're around a
bunch of chefs and cooks, but it creates for an awkward situation
when you're around the plebs, the normal, the normal people
out there in the world, right? Especially if all you could talk
about is, you know, what you're cooking, what you're doing in
your kitchen. You live it kind of in a bubble
when you're working in the industry.
Social currency in a kitchen doesn't necessarily equal
anything when you're outside of the kitchen.
The way we regard culinary skill doesn't matter to someone that's
a non chef. You could be the you could be
the most badass chef ever. But if they're not into food, it
does not matter. No one gives a shit.
And sometimes we get wrapped up in this identity of being chef.
And I face this problem and so I had to re.
I had to recreate my identity as Andre.
And so during this time, during the kitchen, when I was a chef,
I removed any embroidery I had on my coat.
I just wore a Cook's chef coat. A lot of chefs go through this.
I would tell people, don't call me chef, call me Andre.
I just kind of wanted to renounce the title because I
wanted to be who I was, not necessarily the title.
A lot of people, it's weird now. Like, sometimes I'll go places
and people will call me Chef's PSA.
They're like, you're Chef's PSA. Oh, hey, Chef's PSA.
What are you doing? It's like, that's not my name,
That's the name of the podcast, but that's not my name.
It's funny to me. Anyway, I crack up a little bit.
But but we digress. I had to reinvent myself and
disassociate myself from Andre the person and Andre the chef.
Well, the same thing happens in the restaurant.
Sometimes you think when someone doesn't like a dish or someone's
asking you to change something in the kitchen, you take it
personal because you think they're talking about you
personally, not necessarily about the food.
And sometimes this could be to your detriment because it will
cause you reluctancy to act and take action.
And when you're in a situation where you need to act going down
the wrong Rd. because you have your ego attached to not wanting
to change the dish, maybe your team needs to to change it
because they can't execute it, or ownership needs you to change
it because they need to fill the restaurant.
Whatever the case may be, you as the leader, it's your
responsibility to know when you need to step aside, regroup.
As I like to say, breathe, wipe your cutting board and reset.
Because if you don't, disaster is inevitable.
It's right around the corner. Restaurants are going to close.
And if you don't have skin in the game, sometimes you might
not feel that. But you have to think about this
impact. If you have a typical restaurant
that has 50 employees, there may be two or three people off the
salaries of those employees. So now when a restaurant closes,
not only are you affecting 50 people, but you're affecting the
people that they support. So you may be in all actuality
affecting 150 people that are living off that restaurant, not
including vendors and other businesses and small farms.
So there is a certain level of responsibility that goes with
the chef to correct course when things are not going correctly.
Let's let's go back and touch on not taking it personal.
When people give you feedback on your food or asking you to
change something that may be your identity you feel is
attached to it. If we had 10 cameras set up and
they were all taking pictures of you and every single person that
took a photo of you, they'd have a different perspective of what
you look like. They'd have a different opinion
of you. It goes to this old saying, all
statements are equally correct. And what that means is if I say
the food is good and you say the food is bad, both statements are
true. This is a hard thing for people
to wrap their head around. You may love the food and you
may think it's great. Someone else may hate the food
and think it's terrible. Both of you are right because we
live in a subjective state when it comes to food.
So you have to understand that when someone is giving you
feedback, it's not a personal attack.
It's in their reality and their perception.
It's not good and that makes it true, but in your perception
it's not. So how do you find the balancing
act between them? Some things is just to look at
the numbers where your sales at are sales increasing or
decreasing, right? You want to go in the right
direction. You could look at online
reviews, are they going up? Are they going down?
Right. As long as they're trending in
the right way then keep doing what you're doing.
But if they're trending in the wrong way then you have to re
evaluate and reassess. One of the things that I talk
about often with teams is the idea of rapid prototyping.
I'm sure I've discussed this on the podcast before, but it's
something that Apple Products does.
You know, they release Update 1, Update 1.2, iPhone 15, iPhone
14. Anyway, they're always
innovating with their product and they're sending out updates
and they're rapidly prototyping now for the chef that could
filter and distil that information as it's coming in.
The quicker they could react to it, the better off they'll be,
right? It's like seeing the iceberg and
you're driving the Titanic. How quickly can you pivot the
ship? If you don't, it's inevitable
that you're going to hit it. So the idea of rapid prototyping
is something that I think people need to incorporate into their
kitchens every single day. The idea of 1% better
consistency is important, consistently good is great,
consistently bad isn't. So if you're getting negative
consistent feedback, it's important that you adjust and
make the necessary corrections. One of the most important things
that I think people do is that that, you know, there's usually
a pre shift meeting and there's a post shift meeting.
The pre shift meeting is to kind of talk about what's coming,
make any adjustments. You know, we could do this.
Let's adjust the time on that. Let's adjust the cook on this.
Let's adjust your setup here. This is how many covers are
coming in. These are the VI, PS:, or PX,
whatever you use and you prepare for service.
The post shift is sometimes where the greater learning
happens because you're able to reflect and look back and say
what went well and what didn't. Now as that information comes to
you, the quicker that you adjust what went wrong and what didn't,
The sooner you'll get better, but sticking your head in the
sand is not going to make things better.
And I know a lot of chefs just think, you know, we did fine.
It was the service team's fault or it was someone else's fault.
It was never their fault, right? It's always someone else's fault
when shit goes wrong. But it's always, you know, you
always get the credit when things go right.
But it doesn't really work like that.
The idea is you have to correct it and make sure that you as the
leader have the open mind. When your team sees that you
have an open mind and you're constantly correcting it, they
also start to incorporate the open mind idea as well.
Now maybe you're not in a position where you are the
leader. Maybe you're just a cook and
your leader doesn't do that. It's important as a young cook
to self analyze what went right and what went wrong at the end
of every shift. I've talked about this before.
You should journal. Write down all the things that
you did well, all the things that you could do better.
Have little competitions against yourself.
Maybe yesterday it took you 30 minutes to do something, today
do 29 the next day to 28. Always be looking to get that
little bit of a improvement 1% better every day, because
sometimes you don't have a boss or a chef that's pushing you to
get better. And let me tell you something,
No one is responsible for you to get better.
You're responsible. You're in the driver's seat.
No one's coming to save you when times get tough and we're all
going to go through difficulty, right?
Maybe you lose your job, maybe you don't get promoted, maybe
you're stuck in your position and all your friends are going
to give you advice. They're all going to tell you
what to do. They all have the right answers,
but none of them can do it for you, and none of them are going
to really be there to help you when the times get tough.
Best thing that you could do is learn to help yourself, learn to
correct things on your station. When you're in a situation that
isn't getting better, it's your job to make the decision to get
you out of there. No one's going to pull you out
and save you. I do these Sunday Q&A S often,
and one of the repeat questions I get is, you know, I don't like
my job. The chef sucks.
How do you handle the chef that you're better than or that
doesn't care? And I'm like, why are you still
there? What?
Why are you working in a place where you don't respect the chef
and the chef doesn't care? No one is chaining you to the
stove. There's no reason why you have
to be there. There are a ton of great
restaurants in pretty much every city, and there's nothing
holding you back for going from going and working for these
great chefs that are in these great cities.
What's holding you back, right? Do you do you like complaining
about how your chef sucks and how your team sucks and no one
cares? Sometimes you just got to change
the environment and no one's going to change it for you.
Like, if you wait it out, we're going to wait for that chef to
quit. Maybe it's going to be a year.
And then what if you get another bad chef?
Why not take action now when you need to correct course, the only
thing that you can do is act sitting around and waiting for
magic to happen. It it doesn't work that that
way. We all we all fall into that
pattern of like oh maybe some magical elves are going to come
clean the walk in for me. Like no, the walk in.
You got to clean that shit. You spilled it.
You got to clean it up. You made the mess you got to
clean it up. Chef's PSA is all about helping
you stand on your own 2 feet. I'm not going to do it for you.
I'm just going to tell you what I think and what works for me.
But ultimately, you got to do it yourself.
Now, when you're looking at what's going right and what's
going wrong, when you're looking at the food, sometimes you got
to look at it objectively. Is the food too complicated?
Do you need to scale back the technique a little bit?
Are there more efficient ways to do it?
One of the things that I like to say is the shortest path to get
to the most delicious result is the right way.
So is there a quicker way to do it?
And the reason I bring that up is because sometimes we fall in
love with the idea of difficulty.
We think, oh we got to broom wall this by hand or we got to
do this but maybe you don't have the labor to do that so you got
to find deficiencies in what you're doing.
Maybe you have to buy the pre peeled garlic.
Not not the garlic, the pre peeled garlic.
You got to get that. Who who the fuck uses garlic
anyway? Home cooks use it bad.
Not just home cooks, but bad home cooks use it.
Don't. Don't buy the pre peeled garlic.
And also one other thing, don't use that lazy lemon that comes
in a bottle. That stuff's nasty.
Lazy lemon is disgusting. It tastes weird.
Doesn't taste like fresh lemon or fresh lime.
I I don't know why people buy that and have that in their
kitchens. I mean, how hard is it to
freaking squeeze a line or a lemon?
Strain out the seed? Anyway?
We digress. I I think it bears repeating
because I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here.
The person that takes action has every single advantage over the
person who takes none. And when it's time to act, it's
time to act. The the expression that if a
Tiger's chasing you, you could either run calmly or you could
run frantically, but to not run would make you unwise.
So just because you're facing a difficult situation doesn't mean
you don't got to hit the panic button and you got to act
frantic and you got to run around like a chicken with your
head cut off and the sky is falling sometimes.
Sometimes you could act and create action without hitting
the panic button because the team sees that, especially if
you're the chef. If you're panicking and running
around and correcting course versus if you're calmly running
around and correcting course, your energy affects the people
that are around you. But anyway, take this to heart
what I said. Because maybe you're in a
position right now where your restaurant needs you to take
action, or you're on a station where you need to take action.
Don't wait. The longer you wait, the more
difficult it'll be. The sooner you act, the sooner
you'll correct it. That thing that you're avoiding
is probably the thing that you need to do the most anyway.
You all know what to do. Go to chefspsa.com.
You can get the the merch. You can get the books.
It's hoodie weather. Add some beautiful hoodies, one
says. Sucker free kitchens.
So if you run a sucker free kitchen, you need that hoodie.
Go get the journal. Write.
Shut down. Make a plan.
Act on it. We'll see you next week.
Hit the porno music.