Calling out sick, for example, does not have to signify weakness or lack of commitment. As much as I was intent on creating a positive work environment in my restaurants, we often ran with just adequate staffing. As a result, we had little flexibility in responding to staffing emergencies. We leaned on people to come into work, whether they were fully recovered or not. This led to instances when influenza outbreaks moved through the entire staff, wreaking scheduling havoc and even possibly transmitting the illness to guests. At the time, risking transmission was an acceptable cost of doing business. Fortunately, the pandemic has taught us that restaurants can better serve their community by building the staffing capacity to allow ill employees to stay home.
The changes restaurant owners must make will succeed only if diners support them. If restaurants are to raise their wages, grow their staffing rosters and improve their cultures, diners will have to pay more to dine out, and should embrace those increases as expressions of their own values.
I have faith that diners can accept these changes gracefully, even if it means going out to eat less often. As a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement, I was one of many chefs who accustomed diners to paying what we understood to be the real cost of good food. At my restaurants, we heralded farming practices that built up the soil. Our diners willingly paid higher prices for food produced this way. Our reputation was built on transparency and the tacit agreement between chef and diner that, for the benefit of the planet, everyone was participating in paying the true cost of food.
Adjusting to the price of better work cultures will be difficult for many. But dining out less isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Treating a restaurant meal as a special occasion rather than a frequent convenience may represent a quality of life improvement for all. And operating restaurants five days a week, instead of seven, could make work life more manageable for staff members.
Unlike the taste of a fabulous heirloom tomato, a kinder and more fair work culture may not be immediately discernible on the palate. But many consumers already fold labor considerations into their ingredient choices. They buy coffee and chocolate from Fair Trade sources that pay living wage premiums to workers, for example.
Can we build a work culture that doesn’t thrive on exploitative policies? The answer will depend on whether owners can improve workplace culture and food sourcing, whether diners will pay higher prices for those improvements, and whether we can view restaurant dining not as a replacement for home-cooking, but a special addition to it.
In addition to operating the New York City restaurants Savoy, Back Forty and Back Forty West from 1990 until 2016, Peter Hoffman is the author of “What’s Good? A Memoir In Fourteen Ingredients.”