Welcome to the Mis En Place podcast. Hosted by chef, restaurateur and Chefs Table Society president Robert Belcham, the podcast covers a variety of topics related to the complicated lives of the people who cook your food.
Even with Cooks Camp 2020, the Chefs’Table Society’s culinary jamboree, now moved to 2021, we’re keeping its core mission alive with this podcast. What is that mission? To enable and foster some long overdue dialogue about a sustainable future for both the professional cook and the restaurant/hospitality industry.
And, as many business leaders have already remarked, the current pandemic crisis, often called The Great Pause, may also provide an unprecedented opportunity to advance some of that positive change. Chef/host Robert Belcham calls it The Big Reset.
To kick-off our exploration of how that the typical restaurant business model can evolve, we’ve invited three leading chef/owners to discuss the Big Reset models they’ve already tested and installed. Ottawa-born Amanda Cohen is chef/owner of Dirt Candy, a leading vegetable-only restaurant in New York City; chef Todd Perrin runs Mallard Cottage and the Inn at Mallard Cottage in St.John’s, Newfoundland; and Australian native Adam Hynam-Smith brings his global culinary and business experience to Dispatch, a leading-edge sustainable restaurant in St.Catherines, Ontario.
Join us for some thought-provoking, challenging and, yes, inspiring conversation about a better way forward for cooks and the business we love.
Chef Belcham is really doing a service with this podcast series.
No fan of tipping, which I think impacts dignity, I’m nevertheless a little surprised to see so much of the woes of the industry laid at its feet by people who obviously know what they are talking about and understand the issues better than a civilian such as self ever could. In USA, labour regulations seem to make it impossible to mitigate the revenue split between front and back of house via tip-splitting, but I don’t think that’s the case in Canada. A downside of moving away from tip-based remuneration that I hadn’t considered is that it increases the risk of owners, who need to make payroll even on off nights. The impact on insurance is something I never could have imagined, though that might apply more in USA than Canada?
Thanks, Scout Magazine, for being the media sponsor.
It seems like nobody really likes the terms “server” or “waiter” for front of house staff. I get that, but what’s better? I haven’t heard any suggestions yet.
Podcast #5…very well done you all!
This merits being labelled “for immediate release” and sent out to ‘Eater’,
‘Vice Munchies’, and the ‘Food Section’ at the NY Times, HuffPost, and
especially perhaps the ‘New Yorker’ in view of the article below.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-case-for-letting-the-restaurant-industry-die