René Redzepi: "Noma Needs to be the Best Place to Work"

“We are now entering a different cycle. A post-Covid cycle.” This is what René Redzepi told the crowd at The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, just moments after his Noma restaurant in Copenhagen was voted the best in the world. “We spent the last year and half dreaming of something, we are ready to go build it now.” 

It was an unexpected, disruptive message from a restaurant owner who had just topped the famous list for the fifth time across two different locations, and been handed his third Michelin star just weeks earlier. 

Throughout his speech and subsequent press conference, Redzepi hinted at pending changes, systematic overhauls within the restaurant, new organisation, new hires and ways of freeing his team to be more creative. 

Replying to the fact that one of his team said Noma was the best place to work in the world, the chef categorically disagreed. “We are not the best place to work. She might think that but others don’t. I can only say that every day I go to work wanted to do the best. I have not always been the best, I have had periods in my life where I couldn’t control myself, I had no tools. I would go home everyday and be so upset with myself. For years I would hate myself.

“I felt like I should be this leader for people but I was just such a disappointment. I had gone through all these kitchens around the world where the head chef was screaming and I was like, ‘can’t they see that it’s not working? When I’m going to be a head chef I’m never going to do that,’ then I became a head chef. You realise, shit, this is a completely different thing to be managing and I was very disappointed in myself.” 

Reflection, honesty and transparency - it’s a theme that has shot through the restaurant industry in recent months, as chefs have emerged from Covid cocoons faced with new ways of managing finances, new ways of attracting customers and new ways of hiring, motivating and retaining their staff. 

“How can we be the best? Have the most incredible creativity, the best energy but also have everyone able to have children? Support everyone and have them work in a way that gives somewhat of a balance for the future?

“That is some of the questions we have been asking ourselves very hard and we have put some things into motion for that to come into fruition. This is not a light switch and tomorrow everything is going to be glowing. It’s a long grind.”

Redzepi wants better balance within his multi-disciplinary team of 79 employees spanning 20 different nationalities. “We need to change quite a few things. A transformation of how we plan for our team, how we plan for our work and how we plan our year in production. How can we have less production and more creativity? In order to achieve the wave we are looking at we need to change: structural, hierarchical. There’s a lot of things going on.” 

The ‘how’ of all this is what Redzepi remained coy about throughout the evening. “I can’t talk about these things… I feel we are going to jinx it.” However, when pressed, the chef did reveal that a lot of his focus will be on less production, more creativity, better balance and more input for his team from far outside the restaurant industry. 

“If we were to have a total transformation of the team, of how we work, have less opening days, spend more time on creativity. We would either have to raise the price a lot or do something completely different. We can’t raise the price more because people would be shocked so how can you find a different revenue stream? Like the garums,” he said, referring to a new product line launched by the restaurant a few months earlier. 

“We are also planning to have a different set of skills into the organisation. Somebody that can come and see things from a different perspective and really tell us what we are doing wrong. I have a myriad of people I’ve been talking to for the last year and a half about what sort of disruption to put into a food organisation that’s part of a very old, sort of, stuck system. It’s something that needs to be addressed urgently. We need to be the best place to work, let’s be the best place for that.”