Six Chefs and Restaurateurs Get Real About How to Keep a Restaurant Afloat

For GQ’s September issue, we wanted to get a bunch of chefs together in a room to discuss kitchen culture, particularly in the wake of the numerous accusations levied against chefs and restaurateurs as part of the #MeToo movement. (You can find that particular conversation—and more on our chef panel—here.) But when you get a bunch of chefs together, they’re also going to talk business, particularly when the future of their industry is so wrapped up in food and labor costs and heightened competition.

The idea of the “sustainable restaurant”—one that harvests its own wheat and uses every part of a pig and makes mead from spent cocktail napkins or whatever—has become something of a cliché. More interesting is the idea of a financially and culturally sustainable restaurant, one that can survive a tough market and keep its employees happy and supported. It’s a slightly less sexy topic that these chefs are far more passionate about.

GQ: I want to talk about the idea of creating a sustainable restaurant—not, like, from an agricultural point of view or whatever, but creating an environment both front of house and back of house where people are gonna stay.

Jen Agg: I feel like Amanda should start with that one. [laughing]

Amanda Cohen: Well, I have a small restaurant—when we had little Dirt Candy [Ed. note: The first iteration of Cohen’s restaurant was very small], I could retain everybody. I kept staff for a really long time because we were a really close family with, like, no rules. And then we opened Dirt Candy, and we became actually real and serious and had an H.R. handbook and everything. It totally changed the dynamic of the restaurant.

GQ: And you got rid of tipping.

Cohen: And within the no tipping, we still had to motivate people, so we created a whole Dirt Candy University, where they can get points—like, if they take classes or they go to wine tastings, they get points, and the points can lead to money or free dinner somewhere. We want to keep encouraging them to learn. Unfortunately, [laughing] it is impossible to keep staff now. I'm paying an incredible amount right now for my staff, but they are going to work for other jobs, to work for more famous chefs, [who] they think will advance their career.

Preeti Mistry: If you can't keep chefs with how much you pay people, I don't know how I ever will.

Cohen: And I'm pretty nice, so I'm offended they don't stay! [laughs]

Agg: What’s the going rate here [in New York]?

Cohen: I'm paying $20 right now, and I can't find anybody.

Michael Solomonov: I'm going to apply for a job with you.

Agg: It can't just be money motivating cooks to stay—and I mean, I think that’s a really important thing.

Cohen: And back to the money thing—the last three people I've hired have been actually sous-chefs from other restaurants. I have this amazing line right now, but I still don't have enough people because they don't want to be in management [where they also have to run the kitchen]. Because A, they probably won't make as much, and they don’t want to work 80 hours anymore.

Gerardo Gonzalez: That's the thing, I think. More so than money, it's just about having a life outside [of work]. When you see people applying for these jobs, they want more flexibility in their life, so it's not just like the five-day work; they're doing other stuff. I find the most creative people and the people that I actually want to work with, they are doing other gigs at the same time. They're working their asses off, but they just don't want to do it at one specific spot.

Agg: Which is a huge shift for cooks in general, like in the last ten years.

Cohen: But we each only have one restaurant, right? So there's no movement, really, in our restaurants. I mean, when somebody leaves, people can move up that way. But people [applying for jobs] are always like, So what's your next project? And I'm like, Well, I'm just trying to hire you. After that, we'll see.

Solomonov: We have sort of grown that way. We've grown by having enough people that we're like, All right, we have to start making moves now.

Agg: You’ve got to reward them!

Solomonov: There's no way for you to grow without a great team. It just doesn't work. Every time we try, every time I've seen people try, it sucks and it fails. And then you're also stuck, because—I wish I could pay my sous-chefs what they should be making in five years, but it's just not sustainable. There's this line you sort of have to toe, making sure that everybody else's needs are fulfilled and then making sure at the end of the day you get what you need to get by, you know?

Gonzalez: I mean, I personally don't think the economics of running a restaurant today in lower Manhattan is viable. You have to start being a little bit more creative. The last place that I had accidentally did that, where—it was a small place, 13 seats...

GQ: El Rey, yeah?

Gonzalez: Yeah, and all the cooks were essentially taking orders, bussing tables—

Solomonov: Oh, so they could get tips.

Gonzalez: They were literally providing all of the service. When I think about it, all my line cooks were easily making $25 an hour, the baristas were all making $30 an hour. And looking at the numbers, it was crazy what that small 650-square-foot restaurant [could make].

Tom Colicchio: And that’s going to happen [across the board] in a very short time. Minimum wage has gone up to $15 an hour, so porters make $15 an hour, cooks are making $20.

Gonzalez: There’s going to be no middle [ground, price-wise].

Colicchio: So we need to be able to charge more money for food.

Cohen: That’s our number one problem.

Colicchio: Across the economy, the economics don’t work anymore.

Cohen: So we're all deciding we're going to charge a lot more money, but we're not colluding, right?

[Laughter]

Solomonov: Cost of labor continues to grow, cost of food continues to grow, cost of real estate continues to grow—

Agg: But nobody wants to pay what food costs. It should cost $43 for a main.

Solomonov: And there's a thousand percent more restaurants. There's so much more competition.

Gonzalez: I think the way people think of restaurants has to change. There's going to be less and less of that middle-ground restaurant. It's going to be fine dining and then—

Solomonov: Fast casual.

Mistry: It’s the middle that’s being eaten away at. There's no viability for the middle. When I think about what I'm going to do next—because everybody keeps fucking asking me—I just think in my head, it can't be what Juhu [Beach Club] was, ’cause that's just not possible.

GQ: ’Cause that was in the middle spot.

Mistry: Yeah. Mid-range casual. Like, the most expensive item was probably 34 bucks. There's just no space for it. It's either fast casual, serious volume—and that could be either counter service or a bar or something—

Agg: We should all open bars.

Mistry: Or I do some fine-dining thing that I would normally call bullshit and elitist. But maybe I'll fucking do it, ’cause I'm also not going to run an unprofitable business.

Cohen: Well, I like to run a non-profitable business.

[Laughter]

Gonzalez: At my restaurant right now, I am looking to divest and use [my equity] to just put into the back of house, whether that's a bonus structure or just paying people more. To me, I'd rather have less equity in something that can be more sustainable, than having more in something that's going to close in like a year or two. I think naturally, I'm just really bad at wanting to make money. So I just kind of went into it like, I'd rather have a place that motivates me.

For me, I’ve had to let go of a lot of ideas of what it means to succeed in this industry. Like, I think about the direction that I could've gone, in the eyes of what it means to be successful [for a lot of other people]. And it's like, at a certain point you start to understand that you can't build a community out of just people solely in your industry. And you start to actually participate in a larger community as, like, "I'm a chef, this is what I'm coming [here with], this is how I can help." You're a lawyer, we're all getting together, we're all doing something that's effecting positive change on a greater scale. You get outside of this tunnel vision of what your world is, and for me it's just been way more fulfilling.

Solomonov: We all have to be clear that we're talking about a luxury product here. If it was only about ethics and about treating people really kindly, you would not be in this industry. You know? And what you were referring to, Gerardo, of not opening another restaurant but doing something that was more elaborate, more community-focused—right now there is a voice for that. There is a reason to do it.

Back when I started cooking, I worked for the fucking meanest motherfucking people, and [the idea was that] I would work my ass off and the idea was to maybe go to San Sebastián and work for free for two years. Then I would come back and have the most beautiful alienating fucking restaurant ever, and I would die in that restaurant. It wasn't about making other people feel good. It wasn't about representing my heritage. It wasn't about building bridges for peace or for dialogue, and it certainly wasn't about community.