Restaurant consulting

Foodwoolf Returns After Three Years

Hi friends! It’s been a while. Since my last post three years ago, a lot has changed.

The social media landscape has completely transformed the way we communicate. In just three years, Instagram has created a visual equivalent to visual blogging. It’s given us a constant stream of food-porn gratification and visual stories of our favorite food brands. This is the time of websites, lifestyle brands, podcasts, and online personalities.

It’s good to be back to the website I started in 2007. Ten years ago, I was an early adopter who joined the “blogosphere” after the first wave of food blogging started to gain momentum. I wrote recipes, food essays, restaurant reviews, and eventually began writing a series called Service 101. These pieces were a place where I could share my insights and experiences as a service leader and consultant working in some of Los Angeles’ top restaurants.

Three years ago I began to get the inkling that if Foodwoolf was to continue, something needed to change. I was working on a book about restaurant consulting, when I realized that the most important shift I was seeing in the food industry was in fast casual restaurants. Wanting to expand my experience beyond fine dining and coffee shops, I decided to dedicate my next few years to the study of the industry from the inside out.

I put this website on the back burner and my consulting practice on hold.

I joined a healthy fast food concept called Sweetgreen. I became an operator of the company’s first west coast store and dedicated myself to learning about the healthy fast food industry from the inside out.

I experimented with leadership approaches. I had beautiful triumphs and some heart-breaking failures. I did intensive training in D.C., NYC, and Maryland. I learned about sourcing great ingredients. I met world class leaders. I developed great people and trained future leaders. I saw the power of vision and core values in action. I chopped more kale than you could imagine. I worked side by side with leaders who inspired me. Together we struggled, failed, pushed, pulled, kicked ass, and pushed ourselves to be better than the day before. I lifted cases of romaine like a boss, counted lemons and weighed every vegetable in the store at four am on inventory days, and lead a team of enthusiastic team members to market success and personal development.

Several years later, I was approached to return to my consulting work to help a healthy food chain in Florida. I developed recipes, people, and operational plans that helped the restaurant grow and thrive.

I returned to LA to help open a world-class Northern Italian restaurant. Together with the founders and, in an unexpected turn of fate, my husband, I helped the team re-define the traditional restaurant paradigms and build something truly groundbreaking.

In these three years, I’ve seen a lot of pretty remarkable things. I’ve grown professionally, learned new skills, and experienced a whole new level of personal development.

I’ve seen how love, vulnerability, and patience make up the most important muscle I’ve got: faith.

I’ve learned a lot more while I’ve been away. I’m so excited to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.

In addition to new content, I look forward to giving Foodwoolf a tune up. I’m eager to make this site a resource for people who love restaurants, who work in a food business, for people who are looking to open their own restaurant/cafe, or are interested in becoming a consultant.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I’ve missed you.

July 15April 16

Service 101: How I Became a Restaurant Consultant

I recently received an email from a business student who wanted to know how most restaurant consultants get into the industry. Though I may not have the official statistics on restaurant consulting at my finger tips, I do know my own story. I’m happy to share my perspective on the business of restaurant consulting with you.

How do restaurant consultants get into the industry?

For me, I started young. I was a teenager when I got my first restaurant job. I worked in the 110 degree kitchen making milkshakes at a fried seafood shack. My intention getting into restaurants at that time was to make some spending money. I never imagined the food and beverage industry would be where I would make my profession.

I became a waitress and bartender in my twenties. I enjoyed taking care of people and found comfort in the camaraderie I felt with my co-workers. I knew I had a unique talent for service and my entrepreneurial spirit helped kept me rolling in the tip money.

From Part time to Full Time

I went from dabbling in restaurants to taking things a lot more seriously when I started managing restaurants in my 30’s.

The more I poured myself into my job, the more I discovered that the work I did in restaurants fulfilled me in a way that writing never could. I enjoyed building a community, being of service to others, and getting passionate about the products we sold. I saw how leading others not only helped transform their lives, but also mine.

It was also around this time that I began to see that restaurant work was an honorable profession. It was a job I was learning to enjoy from the inside out.

Then, after six years of thriving as a restaurant General Manager, I went to work for Nancy Silverton, Joe Bastianch, and Mario Batali as part of the service team of Pizzeria Mozza and later, Osteria Mozza. It was there I honed and developed a service vocabulary and systems. I became a trusted leader in the dining room — in sales and in happy, return guests. Then, after more than four years of putting my service theories to the test through personal research and development, I felt ready to begin my work as a Service Consultant.

Continue reading “Service 101: How I Became a Restaurant Consultant”

April 16August 16

Service 101: On Becoming the Service Coach

Teaching the art of giving great service is a gift. Thanks to my business as a service consultant, I get the chance to learn on a daily basis that to be of service one must maintain humility, vulnerability, empathy, confidence, and courage in everything I do. I’m discovering that in order to teach the art of service, I must be willing to be of service to everyone and everything, regardless of outcome.

Honestly, when I came up with the big idea to be a service consultant I had no idea what I’d be getting myself into. All this teaching has revealed to me something much bigger is going on: it’s one thing to give good service, but it’s another thing entirely to pursue the vocation of being of service. I never fathomed this consulting business would lead me to the working opinion that I’ve got to be humble enough to be of service to everyone no matter what. The whole idea of putting all others before myself is a tall order for anyone. Especially for someone with a big ego.

Now that I have realized the true job requirements of making a career out of putting other people’s needs before one’s own (humility and selflessness are big challenges), this shifting of perspective and objectives has started working its way into my personal life.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I avoided this transformation for so long.

Teaching the art of service breaks open my life and shows me I have to demolish the way I used to do things. Consequently, my life is experiencing something of a serious renovation.

When I wrote down the words “service consultant” on my dry-erase vision board a dozen months ago, I had no idea the work would have the power to transform my life, let alone pay my bills. I didn’t know what my business would look like, how to come up with a consulting fee, or even what my title (or more importantly what my domain name) should be. All I knew was that I had a unique talent for hospitality and a real passion for understanding the philosophies and ideals behind giving great service. I figured I’d come up with the rest as I went along. Continue reading “Service 101: On Becoming the Service Coach”

December 23August 16

Service 101: Restaurant Christmas

It’s just days before December 25^th and I’m not even close to having my holiday shopping done. In all honesty, I haven’t really started. A stack of holiday cards lay on the dining room table awaiting a final stamp before I send them off. There are no presents under the tree. I don’t have a holiday menu picked out. Not one Christmas cookie has emerged from my oven.

My heart is full of cheer but I just can’t get myself to catch up to all the holiday festivity making. It’s not that I don’t believe in celebrating. I do. It’s just that I’m not like other people. I celebrate a different kind of holiday. I wait until January 25th for a little holiday I like to call Restaurant Christmas.

Restaurant Christmas happens on (or around) January 25^th and looks a lot like your typical Christmas celebration. Restaurant Christmas is about celebrating love, joy and hope. But one big difference is there’s a lot less traffic. Also, airline tickets back home are less expensive, gifts are on sale, vacation is easier to come by, and my family and loved ones are less stressed because they don’t have four different parties to go to and numerous commitments to fulfill on the very same day.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I refer to Restaurant Christmas, it’s because Restaurant Christmas isn’t celebrated by many. As a matter of fact, Restaurant Christmas isn’t really known by many people at all because it’s something I invented several years back.

Restaurant Christmas came to be because I needed a way to get through the holidays with my job in the service industry intact. It’s a self-made holiday which gives me the ability to work every holiday season at my restaurant job with a smile on my face.

My first Restaurant Christmas began one January 25th almost a decade ago when I recognized that only a few restaurant employees can take a vacation during the holiday season. In the world of restaurants, most employees—especially the managers—are required to work through the holidays because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are some of the busiest days of the year. So rather than leave a career I loved because of missing out on spending time with my distant family, I decided to create my own kind of celebration.

Thus, Restaurant Christmas was born.

Continue reading “Service 101: Restaurant Christmas”

December 4August 16

Service 101: Energy Crisis in America

“There’s an energy crisis occurring in America and it’s happening in the hearts and minds of its people,” said my friend Ari Weinzweig, in a recent conversation. He shared with me how clear he was that there’s an energy crisis going on–one that’s just as serious as the one centered around our planet’s resources– in our nation’s workforce. Working men and women are checked out, uninterested, frustrated, unfulfilled, and looking forward to going home and doing something else. Poll most people and they’ll tell you the only place they can find emotional rewards or intellectual stimulation it’s outside of the workplace. It seems that the happy and fulfilled worker is a lucky, rare bird with the good fortune to have stumbled across a very special job in a very place.

People who are truly happy in their work naturally give off a positive energy. Those that are happy in their work have a way of making the people around them happy. And unless you are a shut off individual with no ability to read energy, the good feeling coming off happy individuals is contagious.

I recently had an epiphany about the power of good energy the other day while spending some time at Huckleberry, a neighborhood bakery and gourmet café in Santa Monica, California.

Happiness is a transferable energy source

Huckleberry was packed the moment I arrived. Despite having secured a table off to the side of the small eating area, I was stepped on, brushed against, and more than occasionally jostled by the long line of customers waiting to be served. I didn’t really care about the unconscious manhandling of the hungry guests, however. I had a bowl of silky and dense yogurt covered in a blanket of golden granola to savor.

But it was more than the power of oven-toasted oats that made me feel so content. It seemed that my good mood was a direct result of the energy of the place. The positive energy was so abundant I could tap into it—like my laptop plugged into the wall jack–and fill up for later.

Continue reading “Service 101: Energy Crisis in America”

November 8August 16

Service 101: Finding My Mecca

Some people go to churches for inspiration. Others go to shrines, nature, the farmers market, or a synagogue for a higher message. For me, mecca is a tiny delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan named Zingerman’s.

I never expected to find bedrock inspiration from inside a humble brick deli with crooked wood floors. But ever since I took my first step inside the tiny footprint that is the deli, being there feels like I’ve been given a triple dose of hope. Within the overstocked walls of the hundred-year old building, there are employees who smile and gush about the products, and practically jump through hoops in order to please each and every customer. These employees—cherry cheeked teenagers, college students, young mothers, sisters and brothers, and gray haired men in bandannas–exhibit the kind of enthusiasm that one expects to see from the chorus of a big stage musical, just before the music starts.

They don’t serve Kool-Aid, but they’ll sample you on any product

At any of the Zingerman’s Community of businesses (or ZCob for short), the senses are bombarded. Colorful signs, packed shelves, freshly baked breads, and deli cases are filled with cheese and meats so appealing they have the power to make just about any food lover blush. With just one sample taste and an engaging description by an enthusiastic employee, many customers find themselves feeling the positive effects of the place. They loosen up. They smile. And, unsurprisingly, the soothed customer happily hands over piles of cash for a jar of wild flower honey, preserved lemons from Tunisia, the loaf of deli-sourdough, a chunk of Italian Pecorino, a vial of garum (an Italian fish sauce), a bar of chocolate imported from the Ecuador, and a buttery/spicy olive oil. Items that just moments before the customer had no idea they really, really wanted.

Look, if you’ve never been to Zingerman’s Deli, Creamery, Bake House, Mail Order, Candy Manufactury, Roadhouse, or Coffee Company in Ann Arbor, then you might think all of this positive work ethic stuff might sound a little bit hippy dippy. The thing is, there are no camp songs, no hokey character outfits that everyone is required to wear, and no corporate brainwashing. It’s simply a place where art and commerce meet and happiness and profit are friends.

Continue reading “Service 101: Finding My Mecca”