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It’s a year since New York’s restaurants began to open up after Covid. Demand is certainly there, with customers returning in droves, but there are new challenges to face. Rising costs and blocked supply chains are giving chefs headaches all over the city, but the staffing crisis is the problem that everyone seems to be talking about.
With so many of the demographic that make up the hospitality industry having fled the city and in no hurry to return, and with many others coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it, restaurants are struggling to recruit and maintain staff.
Some restaurants are doing well though. They have kept their staff and are able to train them up and move forward with consistency. We caught up with two chefs, both of them nominated for James Beard Awards 2022, about what they are doing differently to create healthier work environments and build back better kitchen culture.
For Ayesha Nurdjaja, chef-owner of restaurants Shuka and Shukette, and a James Beard Awards 2022 nominee for Best Chef: New York State, the key was to bring the front and back-of-house together. There’s more transparency when things are out in the open, and when chefs are in contact with the guests.
Photo by: Instagram Shuka
“I wanted to open a restaurant that really cleared the lined between front and back-of-house,” says Nurdjaja. “For the last seventeen years, we were in the basement. Real estate has always been like that as a way to maximise space."
“When the kitchen is down in the basement, you can afford to lose it – a pan goes flying… when you’re out here in the open, and the customers are right here, they don’t want to see that.”
Creating kitchen culture is like building a puzzle, the corner pieces of which are the salaries and benefits that come with the job. Nurdjaja pays above the average, and staff are treated respectfully and rewarded for their hard work and loyalty.
“We pay about $10 over the minimum, so dishwashers start at $18 an hour, line chefs at $22, it can go up to $30. We are pushing for a maximum 40-hour week so people aren’t working overtime. Some people choose to have a second job, others choose to have a work-life balance. For our salaried employees, we’re trying to keep it at a 55-hour week, before it was closer to 80. When you’re short-staffed, it’s very easy to rely on the people that you have on salary we’re trying not to do that.”
It can be surprising just how many chefs and line cooks, never actually get to sit down at their restaurants’ tables and enjoy a meal as a customer. It seems blindingly obvious but allowing them to do that regularly builds loyalty and insight into the customer experience.
“We do a dining programme in our company so you can eat at any of our five restaurants once a quarter, you get a free dining experience for you and four guests – a free night out,” says Nurdjaja.
“When I started seventeen years ago I worked in fine dining, and if I could tell you I ate in the restaurants I worked in, I could say one time, maybe two, usually never. Mostly because I couldn’t afford it and secondly because it was never a thing.”
It all feeds into Nurdjaja’s concept of creating a culture of hospitality. You don’t have to neglect self-care in order to serve others, in fact, the opposite is true.
“Hospitality happens within. We’re always worried about the customer and that’s a good thing, to be always thinking what [more] can we do, but we have to ask, are we cheating each other with the same type of hospitality. For us, that was really important coming back from Covid. Things have changed physically, but there’s a cap on those changes, there’s no cap on kindness and decency, those little details make all the difference,” she says.
“I treat my chefs, not as friends, but in a professional environment, where there’s open communication,” says Nurdjaja. “Back in the past, my chef never talked to me, he didn’t know when my birthday was, or whether I had children. We keep it professional, but there is a level of knowing people and personalities and treating people like people."
“Kitchen culture is so important, keeping morale up. It’s the health and wealth of the restaurant. That’s what is important to me. I’m not saying that the bottom line isn’t, but the way people feel is."
Photo by: Instagram Musket Room
Another chef who is building back better culture is Mary Attea of the Musket Room, nominated for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State. For her, it’s just about creating a positive atmosphere, but one in which people feel they can grow.
“We’re a very nice kitchen, it’s not a toxic environment,” says Attea. “We try to have a nurturing, educational kitchen, so they’re all young and they feel like they’re learning. I don’t see how many kitchens are going to survive other ways and as each generation comes along, the toxicity will diminish more and more. People will realise they don’t have to be yelled at. A lot younger people won’t tolerate it. They’re looking for a nice balance to life, not working 16 hours in a kitchen getting berated. Talking to our staff, they tend to prefer to have four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days a week."
Attea believes that positive kitchen culture will propagate with time. Treating people well will be contagious, just like toxicity was. It starts with individual kitchens, but there’s a ripple effect.
“I have young cooks here and they have no other work experience, no other reference, so they just believe that this is the way to work. So with each person that passes through this, or any other kitchen environment that values them, they’ll be less and less inclined to stick around any place that doesn’t feel comfortable. The more good places there are, the more difficult it will be for toxic places to hire new staff.”
It seems the genie is out of the bottle in terms of kitchen culture. The next generations simply won’t tolerate what previous generations wore as a badge of honour. The great wheel turns, this time, for the good.
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