Culinary Cues

MARCH 22, 2023

From meager beginnings as a small artisan bread bakery, La Brea grew to become a national representative of the craft bread movement in America. No longer involved in the company she sold, Chef Silverton, is owner and operator of Mozza Restaurant where exceptional Northern Italian dishes are highlighted on the menu.

Coaching 368

Coaching Fine Dining Café Training 368

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

He brought his assignment to the chef before suiting up for work. Chef, I completed your assignment and met with the three chefs.” “So, Chefs Daniel, Pierre, and Deborah all began, like me, in high school as dishwashers. The chef nodded. So, what did you learn – Jack?” They really got into it.”

Back of House 265

Back of House Hotels Uniforms Certification 265

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

The question is how will we approach this truth? The question is how will we approach this truth? One reality that I see and have experienced as a cook and later a chef is that there are ample best times and a fair share of worst – in fact they may both occur in the same day. So, let’s take inventory.

Employee Relations 385

Employee Relations Fine Dining Training Communication 385

Culinary Cues

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

Each of these independent operations can only be successful if they understand how they can and must work as a community of businesses and patrons. One of the most difficult tasks that any restaurateur or chef faces is convincing a customer to walk through the door for the first or twentieth time. President John F.

Customer Experience 362

Customer Experience Customer Service Food Safety Retail 362

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

The tasks of the chef are fairly universal: planning menus, putting your signature on each dish, hiring and training staff, ordering product and building vendor relationships, controlling costs and adhering to budgets, maintaining a clean and safe kitchen environment, etc. Each property is unique – thus the job of chef is also unique.

Beverage 487

Beverage Events Food Order Website Management 487

Culinary Cues

JULY 4, 2021

How does a chef or restaurateur approach the challenges of a public that wants to return to restaurants that are unable to meet the rapid growth in demand and a supply chain that is making it nearly impossible to get the ingredients they need and afford the ones that are available?

2021 495

2021 Food Supply Seasonal Menu Supplies 495

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 10, 2024

So, here’s the thing – knowing how to operate a restaurant is not difficult – executing the steps is a whole other story. The list of “what to do and how to do it” may be long, but it’s basically common sense. It’s easy to see how one little detail missed can snowball into a failing restaurant.

Uniforms 360

Uniforms Small Business Dine-in Training 360

Culinary Cues

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Push it out, how many covers, lock, and load, finish strong, over the hump, wrap it up: this the language of the kitchen during service, these are the timestamps like the number of quarters in a football game or innings in baseball. How do you feel about that plate?” Mission accomplished. Tomorrow there will be a need to do the same.

Customer Service 344

Customer Service Customer Experience Uniforms Point of Sale 344

Culinary Cues

MARCH 15, 2021

Sure, I know how much the restaurant/foodservice industry is suffering and how many operations are shutting their doors as a result of avoiding decades of challenges brought to a head by the pandemic, but believe me when I say that this will change. How will they measure their success as aligned with these standards or objectives?

Education 539

Education Food Supply Training Communication 539

Culinary Cues

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

How many of these challenges might be addressed if all of these silo groups actually viewed themselves as part of the same business and worked together? It seems that every time I check my email or flip through postings in social media – there is another restaurant, food business, or culinary school preparing to close their doors.

Social Media 497

Social Media Education Email Marketing Healthcare 497

Culinary Cues

MARCH 3, 2021

Well, to a significant degree chefs have been working on blind faith for decades. Chefs and restaurateurs need the freedom to “do what they like” and find success in terms of restaurant profitability, life balance, happy guests, and fulfilled employees. BLIND FAITH. This is a restaurant world that is not sustainable.

Dine-in 416

Dine-in Small Business Seasonal Menu Café 416

Culinary Cues

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

There is a long history of how kitchens and restaurants are structured. Although executed at different levels – this structure is something that all those whom work in restaurants can depend and lean on. It is this dichotomy of experiences that draws people into a career behind the range and keeps them there for decades.

Seasonal Menu 517

Seasonal Menu Back of House Customer Service Front of House 517

Culinary Cues

APRIL 18, 2023

What the pandemic did was put a spotlight on how difficult all of this is. So, here we are – what do we do to address the changing times, to finally face the challenges in doing what is simple but nearly impossible to execute? Everything is different since the pandemic, yet so many things are no different than they were 5 0 years ago.

Food Truck 319

Food Truck Back of House Education Training 319

7 Shifts

APRIL 21, 2023

Not every restaurant worker wants to be a celebrity chef. These 4 executives started out working in entry-level restaurant jobs. Here's how they got to where they are today. While he had work experience as an account executive in India, he had to start fresh once he moved to the US. That was 20 years ago.

Leadership 195

Leadership Training Front of House Customer Experience 195

Modern Restaurant Management

APRIL 4, 2024

Make Sustainability The Mission (Literally) – Ganzler inspires companies to think through how their overarching goals are supporting or hampering sustainability efforts. I wrote You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime to show people how to make meaningful environmental or social change and get market credit for doing so.

Sustainability 190

Sustainability Book Waste Food Supply 190

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Grill cooks, sauté, prep, garde manger, bakers and pastry chefs are all very unique. If you fit the mold – then you possess a special value reserved for just a few, value that – to the chef goes way beyond the ability to prepare breakfast items. When this person is identified then the chef can rest easy. The list goes on and on.

Back of House 518

Back of House Dine-in Restaurant Law Ordering 518

Culinary Cues

MAY 18, 2020

The format that we have become accustomed to may change, in fact it certainly will, but restaurants as gathering places are absolutely essential to a civilized world. This is an accomplishment that over the course of your lifetime will reward you tenfold. This is also the environment where a virus can find a fertile home.

White Paper 519

White Paper Certification Food Safety Food Supply 519

Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 24, 2022

It is a menu change that tests a chef’s ability to understand the seasonality of harvest, the connection that menu items have with the concept of the restaurant, executive cost-effective items, push the kitchen crew to enhance their skills, and excite the customer. How are your menu planning skills? Are you up to it?

Seasonal Menu 308

Seasonal Menu Front of House Presentation Menu 308

Culinary Cues

JULY 14, 2021

Yep, I get the reflection time that was the hallmark of the pandemic shutdown, those moments when every cook and chef took inventory and wondered why it is that they work under adverse conditions, invest way too many hours, and do so for wages that never compete with other professional careers. Do you really want to give this up?

Food Order 473

Food Order Café Ordering Inventory 473

Culinary Cues

MAY 5, 2021

My question to you is, how will management of Restaurants, Clubs and Hotels try to provide a sense of balance and wellbeing for the chefs who have the history of working from dawn until well into the night, six and sometimes seven days a week. “My I thought you would be a great colleague to ask.”. Is there truth to this?

Hotels 415

Hotels Coaching Employee Relations Training 415

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 29, 2020

You know that every chef has wrestled with this – should the menu reflect a personal philosophy to move the bar or stick with time-tested standards? Chefs are, for all intents and purposes, inherently creative people who are always looking for a way to express that creativity and place their signature on the plate.

Fine Dining 426

Fine Dining Café Menu Customer Experience 426

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

It’s time to accept where we are, listen and understand where we might be going, put aside our frustrations and begin to establish a working strategy that is based on what is inevitable. Yes, I’m talking about what it will be like in our restaurants from this point on and into the foreseeable future. So, they decided to look for a change of career.

Food Supply 416

Food Supply Employee Relations Kitchen Safety Social Media 416

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

I am optimistic in the ability of the restaurant business to recover and shine, to bring people together once again, to return to a position of central to the life of neighborhoods, and optimistic that this business of food will provide wonderful careers for cooks, chefs, service staff, bartenders, managers and owners – THIS WILL HAPPEN.

Small Business 359

Small Business Front of House Customer Service Communication 359

Culinary Cues

JUNE 4, 2021

Nowadays a question I am often asked is: “Why is it so difficult to understand cooks and chefs?” What I have personally found among those people whom I respect and enjoy being around is an interesting case study. [] Think about the type of person who seeks the job of cook or the career of chef. Maybe, but I am trying to be real.

Café 425

Café Take-out Blog Training 425

Culinary Cues

AUGUST 28, 2022

There is a major fallacy about cooking – the belief that you can teach someone to become a cook. Now that every chef and culinary educator has their feathers ruffled – let me explain. The missing ingredient is who the person is and how they became that person from birth to a given point in time. So, where is the fallacy?

Book 354

Book Café Travel Training 354

Culinary Cues

MAY 31, 2021

Being a chef is a tough job, no matter where a person hangs his or her apron. The physical, mental, and emotional challenges are significant, and the dedication and passion required are as pronounced as one might find in any field. This is the life of the military cook.

Fine Dining 319

Fine Dining Training Customer Service Serving 319

7 Shifts

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Section 1: Executive Summary. It will also show how you plan to create a successful restaurant. There are a few reasons for this: A business plan is typically the first thing any lender or investor will want to look at. Taking the time and energy to create one proves to others (and yourself) that you're serious about the venture.

Point of Sale 397

Point of Sale Back of House Document Download 397

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 29, 2022

When an individual complains about the hours, his or her team, a lousy chef, a restaurant that doesn’t care about them, about how uninspiring the food is, or how poor the pay is and how limited the opportunities, then my reaction is: “it’s so sad that you haven’t found the right kitchen, the right chef.”

Uniforms 427

Uniforms Café Training Operations 427

Culinary Cues

APRIL 13, 2022

When cooking and eating add tradition and structure they become “dining”, an entirely new process that builds memory and organizes digestion into silos of recall, history, and correctness, but at their core – these two elements of life are pure pleasure. In recent decades we have become aware of the science of nutrition.

Coaching 350

Coaching Reference Food Order Customer Experience 350

Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 24, 2020

The menu comes first and should reflect the philosophy of the owners and chef and how the operators expect to be perceived by the public. This menu energy is attractive to chefs while at the same time it is risky. A chef’s signature without any research can set a negative perception of the restaurant that is hard to break.

Menu 388

Menu Seasonal Menu Front of House Café 388

7 Shifts

JANUARY 31, 2024

A better description might be a balancing act that presents new and unique challenges every day. Managers are responsible for nearly every aspect of the restaurant and have to cover a variety of duties. This wide-ranging responsibility is a lot, and it often leads to burnout.

Management 397

Management Management Kitchen Safety Front of House 397

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Ironically, there is always room to be great and there is plenty of room to be mediocre. With more than one million restaurants in the US we can flip a coin and hope for the great, will likely step through the doors of good, and far too often settle into the mediocre. I wonder why this is the case. Plain and simple.

Fine Dining 392

Fine Dining Front of House Customer Service Customer Experience 392

7 Shifts

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

During the pandemic, many service workers either left or were forced out of the industry and never returned. According to our data , the average turnover rate for restaurant staff in the U.S. When staff are unhappy, you lose more than just the cost of hiring and training. People are the heart of the restaurant. It makes them feel seen and valued.

Front of House 381

Front of House Social Media Back of House Sports 381

Culinary Cues

DECEMBER 6, 2021

My grandfather was proud and determined to become American. This homogenization has become an obsession. My grandfather came to the United States from Norway at the age of 17. He worked his way over on a ship as a carpenter and set his sight on the fortunes that would await him on our shores. Such a shame. Within a few decades the U.S.

Influencer 363

Influencer Customer Experience Dine-in Training 363

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 12, 2021

Chef Phil Learned stood tall in the kitchen of The Balsams Grand Resort in Dixville Notch, NH. Counts were tallied throughout the night and the chef/expeditor would keep everyone apprised as to how many guests had been served and how many registered guests remained.

Seasonal Menu 470

Seasonal Menu 2005 Hotels Customer Service 470

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 11, 2020

Sometimes the fault lies with a lack of desire to communicate, oftentimes the problem is the incorrect use of communication, but the majority of time the challenge is that leadership has no idea how to effectively communicate a message in a succinct, timely manner.

Communication 310

Communication Leadership Employee Relations Entertainment 310

7 Shifts

JULY 28, 2021

To understand how restaurant communication drives productivity and results, you have to develop a familiarity with the risks of poor communication. To understand how restaurant communication drives productivity and results, you have to develop a familiarity with the risks of poor communication. Table of Contents.

Communication 430

Communication Management Management Front of House 430