Chef Thomas Keller: Bouncing Back from Setbacks

[Music] as soon as I got on campus I said to one of my my travelling companions here is to make sure that I got a hat and sure enough there was one in the green room in the back so it's lovely to be here and thank you all very much course well I want to thank you for joining us tonight chef Keller it's really an honor to have you on campus thank you and I think that's probably safe to say that you have a very welcoming audience everyone here has either dined in one of your restaurants fantasized about dining in one of your restaurants or heard their significant other fantasized about dining in one of your restaurants and it's actually quite fitting for me because my fiancee Ben is in the audience and he has heard me fantasize about dining at the French Laundry for years then where's Ben okay I thought you just got you're travelling aren't you or is there dessert I'm hoping that this helps build my case for actually getting to the French Laundry one day good I hope so too great weekend so it all started with dishwashing your first exposure to restaurants was washing dishes in one of your mom's restaurants can you talk about how that first sparked your interest in cooking and then also what later drove you to connect your life's work to cooking well it's interesting because as a youngster my mother ran restaurants so being the youngest of five boys I find my I found myself in the restaurant after school doing odd things and certainly at a young age you know you weren't allowed to hold a knife or be anywhere near the fire so the most obvious and safe place to put me was in front of a dishwashing machine where you know looking back at that time I really learned so many skills that benefited me and becoming a really really good cook and just to explain a few of those when you think about it you know being a dish dish machine you have to be you have to be organized you know so setting out all these sample plates on the dirty dish drain board so that as the waiters came back they put the dishes in the right spots they put the glasses in the right spot the silver in the right spot you had to be efficient in the way you stack the plates and wash the dishes and got the the glass is done and putting them in the racks correctly so that when you put them in the machine the machine would wash them and of course by that forty five seconds later you knew through the feedback whether the the job that you had done was going to be satisfactory in other words the dishes we there came out clean or they came out dirty so if they came out dirty you know you didn't do your job correctly so the feedback was very important and then the idea that you really had to be part of a team you know as a dishwasher most of us you know think think of that as a really lowly position but everybody in the entire restaurant relies on you you have to give the dishes back to the cooks they need their dishes in order to plate the food the waitstaff are the bartender's needed there their glasses and of course the waitstaff needed the silverware so you really had to be a team player and that was really important so you learned how to be part of a team that relied on you to do your job correctly and of course there's the idea of some rituals and the rituals were also important you had to empty the dish machine you know every three hours and fill it up with clean water you had to sweep the floor at certain times throughout the night you had them to the garbage at certain specific times you had to do these things so rituals played a big important part of that and over the overarching that was repetition you did it over and over and over and over and over and over again so you really got very good at it and and when you translate that to what a cook does it's basically the same thing we have to be organized we have to be efficient feedback is really really important for us I mean one when we're heating up oil in a saute pan to cook a piece of fish and you put the fish in there you know right away if the if the pan was too hot if the pan wasn't hot enough there's enough oil or doesn't have enough oil right away you get the feedback on how on how that ingredients reacting in that pan and of course rituals were important you have to do things at specific times of the day to get set up for service which begins at 5:30 and repetition I mean repetition was such an integral part of becoming a good cook you know learning how to slice an onion you've all seen chefs on TV do the onion thing really really quick and you go how do they do that we do it because we've done it 10,000 times that's how we do it and you can do the same thing it's not hard so when you think about washing dishes it really set the tone for me becoming a really good cook interesting and then what was the later experience that ultimately convinced you that you wanted to commit yourself to cooking well for the for the first several years of cooking my mother came to me one day I said you know the chef is leaving you're gonna be the chef and I thought wow this is interesting I was a dishwasher yesterday and I'm gonna watch this guy who's in this small private Yacht Club in Palm Beach and I'm gonna do what he does well fortunately I have an older brother who who really embraced cooking at a young age and he was already a professional cook so he became my first mentor but it wasn't until 1977 when I met a French chef in Narragansett Rhode Island where I was working at a private club and and the job that I had at that time was cooking for the staff which was kind of a lowly job right you weren't you weren't doing the elegant food for the guests we were paying you know high prices to come to dinner I was cooking for the team there and it's a summer job so you have all these young people who are on summer break and they're in Narragansett because they can go to the beach in the afternoon and they could work at night and they have places to live and and and so but the interesting about it was you again the feedback feedback was really important because when I would cook something for them believe me they they were very vocal about whether they liked it or not right I mean there right away this was good or this was bad and and fortunately I was I was a pretty good cook by then so most of the things I made for them were really good and and the chef came to me and he was very he was very happy because typically his staff cook wasn't somebody who had the dedication of the skills that I have and and the other staff was always unhappy and and he made the connection for me on why why cooks cook why any cook cooks and it's it's to nurture people and and when he said that to me I thought that that's that's what I want to do that was something that resonated with me the idea that I could do something that would nurture others and give them give them not only sustenance but give them pleasure was the reason I became a chef so July 1977 I said this is my job this is what I'm gonna do and from that point on I was dedicated to really learning my craft my craft and and it takes a long time you know it wasn't until much later in life so that was when I was you know 21 years old and was wasn't until I was really 39 that I started to see any kind of financial success or rewards from from the work that I had been doing all those years I like how often you're referencing feedback because here at the GSB we say that feedback is a gift it is and all of us receive a lot of it so we can certainly empathize with you it's a good thing so that you moved on with no formal training and that you didn't go to culinary school and basically at different jobs and apprenticeships looking back and recognizing this success that you've had how much of that do you think is an 8 verse learned ah good point I think that you know we look at our early child life and I think that we have a lot of things and certainly I think all of you've got had gotten great advice from your parents where somebody that was meaningful for you because you're all you're all here at Stanford I mean you know you just don't show up without having some guidance on that and I think it early in my life again my my parents are divorced so I grew up with this with a single parent that was my mother and I was very thankful that I grew up with my mother because she had an attention to detail a work ethic that became part of who I was because she exemplified that every day and it was through those example those those examples that again I find myself looking back to and saying you know there is the foundation of my success in that early age of understanding what what expectations were how to reach them or how to exceed them in many ways and and and the amount of dedication and work that you had to contribute to actually do that was was for me it was it was a pleasure I would get excited by it and to the point where I remember one time and and and it was back when when when people had kind of fake foliage fake trees in their house so my mother had this wonderful kind of Japanese maple tree that was plastic and I thought one day I'm gonna take it apart I'm gonna really clean the whole thing really good so I pulled the whole thing apart and I cleaned every leaf and every branch and I had it all over the floor and and then I thought back together again she was happy that I cleaned it but she was very upset that we weren't able to put it back together again so often times at school we discussed how to respond to setbacks and the first restaurant that you opened for Cal in New York closed when the stock market bottomed out in the end of the 1980s what was the hardest part of that experience for you I think the hardest part of my experience is realized that you're your ultimate dream and your ultimate goal which was so so close and in many ways what was in your grasp was was something that could could just disappear without without something that you had no control over it as hard as hard as you worked as dedicated as you were as great a job as you did at that point there was nothing that I could do outside of changing the format of the restaurant to to make myself happier to make the restaurant successful yeah so it was a choice and I had a great partner service Raoul and he had a very successful restaurant not too far away across town in Soho and we had the choice to either to to establish a more of a casual restaurant because the Strand yeah like a bistro was like this was when you know fine dining became something that was unapproachable anymore people weren't willing to pay for it and so everything was becoming casual and so we could casual eyes the Raquel I could stay there as partner and as the chef or I could give it up and pursue my goals and I was I was so determined that fine dining was was going to be my venue that I I separated myself from the restaurant that believe me I mean when we were building the restaurant the contractors would come in in the morning and they would they would do their work and the place would be a mess and every night I would clean the restaurant knowing that the contractors would come back the next morning and make it a mess again I mean there were nights I would sleep in the restaurant this was this was this was my life this was gonna be my restaurant this was this was my future and and to five years later realize that it wasn't gonna be anymore in that New York City which was which again was my life in the center of the unit the universe for me wasn't gonna wasn't gonna be the place that I was gonna be was was devastating but what are your choices I mean at the end of the day you're faced with a choice you know either you can do something you can compromise on what your goals are you know I could have casualized the restaurant and been there and been miserable or I could have I could've left and pursued my two goals of fine dining and and and hopefully finding that that Avenue that would leave me to to success and it that was in 1990 when I when I when I left Raquel and moved to Southern California and did you take any lessons from that experience maybe that would help you fine dining big lessons big lessons I knew that you know I realized that it that I didn't know everything I mean you know it's at some point in my life I thought I knew everything I thought I know how to run a restaurant but I realized that I was a really good chef I was a really good cook I no idea about finances nothing I couldn't read a piano and I didn't know how to run a dining room and and those are a big part of a restaurant you know certainly a big part of any business and you know it turns a financial so when I when I when I was able to buy Raquel I was able to buy French Laundry I realized that I needed somebody in the dining room I can focus on it there was an expert on the dining room and I needed somebody you know who could take care of our financial and so it became a tripod there was me in the kitchen focused on the food which was really my expertise I realized that was my expertise that was my strengths and I need to play with my strengths and and find those individuals who could compensate for my weaknesses and so Laura Cunningham became the general manager the restaurant we had a young bookkeeper named Pat McCarthy and she took care of all of our financials and that's what the basis and the foundation was and it sounds like you all kind of respected each other's boundaries and well we were so busy that there was there was no real choice yeah you know we had to stay focused on our different departments mm-hmm okay so after 1994 when you opened the French Laundry your presence on the culinary scene just has exploded in terms of opening up who Sean and Sean bakery per se at hoc et cetera all of those restaurants include different locations different cuisine different clientele what have been some of the driving factors behind each decision to open a new restaurant okay good good question I just want to just if I can just yes they way back to - to French Laundry because you know it's something that's very important for me to tell you is that as we was pointed out it was 19 months I was raising money for the French Laundry now you know looking back at that time I realized that my biggest asset was my ignorance had I known what it was gonna take to actually raise the money and buy that restaurant when I began the process it would have been overwhelming for me I would have never done it what really drove me forward and kept me motivated were small successes every so often I was in a position where I had closed Raquel I was labeled you know someone have an emotional chef which can be interpreted in different ways and and I had I was unemployed and living in Los Angeles and I found this restaurant and that I fell in love with and I said there there's my my dream there's where I should be there was an instant connection for me and I decided that I was gonna try to purchase the restaurant but I had no resources I had no money I had no job and it was really through perseverance and through so many other individuals around me that were supportive of that process that we were able to accomplish it but it was really the unknown that protected me so well in in in that in raising that money and every day I would wake up and I would make make phone calls or try to fill out forms and and to think about that time in my life and you know talking to over 400 people that I didn't know and asking them for money I don't how many of you have actually called people you don't know and ask them to write you a check it's it's it's a very difficult thing but in the same time it reinforces Rhian it reinforces your your ideals and really what you want to do because you say it over and over and over again which are trying to accomplish and to the point where if you didn't believe it when you started you certainly believe in yourself at some point along the road and then to deal with with banks and and I'm sure all of you dealt with banks before but it's a very it's a very difficult process is to try to get people a bank to write you a cheque and then the federal government on an SBA loan a Small Business Administration loan was also somewhat of a challenge knowing that a white middle-class male was applying for a small business loan when they would give it to to to more or less minorities was also a compliment so the the ignorance factor would play a very important part in my success getting to your question about the the different the different restaurants around around the country and what drove drove me to open more restaurants so in the beginning it was it was always about the French Laundry and and how to make the French army better was always our goal now our first restaurant we opened was Bouchon which is just two blocks south of the restaurant and the reason we opened Bouchon was so that we can have a place to eat I mean and honestly I mean we there was a very small group of individuals at the French shani where we opened most of us came from urban environments where we could go out after work and get something to eat whether it was in San Francisco LA or New York we were used to that finishing work at midnight and then going going for dinner and in Napa Valley at that time everything closed at 9:30 so what do you do you restaurant that stays open late and fortunately had already guard garnered a certain amount of respect and admiration from from not only the press and from the public but also from the partners that we had so when I proposed opening a French bistro in Yountville you know it took me 18 months to raise 1.2 million it took me 18 days to raise 1.5 million so it just goes to show you success breeds you know success and interest in what you're doing and we opened Bhushan but we opened Bhushan because it gave us an opportunity to have a place to eat now I knew at the same time that if my little restaurant needed a place to go to eat after work and Napa Valley being a center for hospitality and what that means is there's there are so many restaurants in Napa Valley as well as hotels everything is based on hospitality so if we need a place to eat then then they're obviously dozens of others or hundreds of other people who would love to have a place to eat as well and so that was speculation but obviously it paid off because the restaurant stayed open to one o'clock in the morning and it was packed every night with with who with hospitality workers the next thing we opened was Bouchon Bakery and we opened Bouchon Bakery because really again because of the French Laundry and in Northern California as you know we have probably the the the the largest population of the most amazing artists and bakers in America we just do they all they all travel in Northern California and so we had we certainly had our pick of great bread but none of them would bake bread specifically - not necessarily the standard we wanted but the size the shape or the variety so what choice do we have but to open our own bakery so we opened a bakery to supply bread for the French Laundry and obviously the byproduct that would be supplied from Bouchon and if you can open a bakery why don't you open a little retail area so people who come and and get morning breakfast so we built a little a little retail area and there's a little courtyard there where today it is it's a community center I mean it's a wonderful thing to go down there in the morning time and see people sitting around in the morning having their coffee their costs on and engaging with other people you know it's really created this this community of individuals whether they're our neighbors whether they're our friends or the visitors that come to Napa Valley it's a wonderful experience but I was really it was really the genesis for French money so the first expansion that I would really conceived as expansion happened in 2004 is ten years after we opened the French Laundry I opened a restaurant in New York City called per se and a restaurant in Las Vegas called or a second Bouchon in Las Vegas so that's where I really really thought about expansion because it was outside of that that a medium geography the immediate geography of the French Laundry or what what was right there what I can control very easily because they were right down the street and why per se though well it's a very it's a very you know it's a very easy question to answer I mean if I asked that question to all of you if you lived in New York if you began your career in New York if you've gotten some notoriety in New York and you knew you had friends in New York you knew the media in New York and he had suppliers in New York where would you go to open your next restaurant you'd go to place where you they knew you so going back to New York for me was an obvious choice but but also might you have to understand what my life has been been very interesting and I kind of separate myself from from from from Thomas Keller many times I can kind of look at it but when I moved to California and I became became successful you know at the French Laundry you know all my my my previous guests you know and friends in New York said when you coming home it's like coming home what does that mean I was born in California so when I came to California in 1990 you know everybody thought I was coming home to California so it can't this idea of me being back and forth and you know how LA and California have this kind of a competitive edge with each other so when I moved to California from New York to California people thought California so it's okay although I never really lived in California when I when I got the French on it as they said New Yorker said when are you coming home so really again gave me more confidence to go back to New York because New Yorkers thought I was from New York so per se was per se me was born and it was a very interesting process as well it was it was a three and a half year project which began in in mid-2000 and opened in 2004 and saw a lot of a lot of difficulty obviously one of the big setbacks was 9/11 and and realizing that you know New York had changed dramatically after after that catastrophe and and and and persevering through that process finally opening the restaurant and then we had a devastating fire in the restaurant which closed the restaurant and it was a it was a very as much as we had spent a lot of time organizing the restaurant designing the restaurant building the restaurant staffing the restaurant we closed the French Laundry this was this was a business decision that I made late in the process and and it was interesting because I didn't think of it and and you realize that that those individuals that are around you and I always listen to people and and I always liked the idea of team and I like the idea of a collaboration and many of the ideas that I have aren't necessarily my ideas there are other people's ideas and I think one of the things that I'm able to do is give others the confidence and courage to express ideas I think we've all been in those environments where where we've we've been either prevented or we're afraid to express our ideas to to to our supervisors I try to give the opportunity for anybody to say whatever they want I don't want them to have an impact and there was there was a woman at the time when I was building per se and that was with us that was actually doing a her doctorate theses for the other school in California we won't name and and she spent two years with us studying the the business and at French Laundry and she she actually published a book on it and and she became a close friend and I didn't know what I was gonna do when I was opening per se as it relates to how I was gonna open per se and maintain and continue operate the French Laundry and she got to know me so well we would sit and talk and we were sitting in the garden one day and she said Thomas you know I know you've been struggling with this but it's very obvious to me what you should do I said Rebecca what is that she said just close the French Laundry I thought wow what an idea just close the French Laundry now from a business point of view you're gonna close a restaurant that's doing you know over a million dollars a month in business you're gonna close it for five months to go open another restaurant which has nothing to do with the partners of the original restaurant right so you're a partner of the French ROM you go wait a minute why would you why why would you do that well we're gonna do that for a number of different reasons we're gonna do that because if we do this successfully in New York City it's gonna have a very positive impact on the French Laundry it's going to give us the opportunity to really have this this cultural exchange between two restaurants that has never been done before so we did that we closed the French Laundry we moved 30 individuals like Noah's Ark we moved 30 staff members from the French Laundry from different departments that were intended to go to New York temporarily to help inoculate this team in New York and then they'd come back and up with the French Laundry and that's exactly what we did and and to this day it established such a strong foundation for for that restaurant that almost immediately it became one of the best restaurants in New York City and ultimately one of considered one of the best restaurants in the country now you could argue a lot of different things we could we've done that before without that well there's this idea certainly in the media as it relates to chefs that we spread ourselves too thin has anybody heard that expression Oh actually I've sprayed himself too thin I know he's opening another restaurant that's not a good thing for him to do they don't say that but any other businesses do they I mean Hermes can open as many shops as they want without somebody saying what Hermes are spreading himself too thin right I mean you think about you think about retail you think about general commerce and most people think well you should just continue to grow but when it comes to restaurants and chefs mm-hmm it's a bad thing and I tried to explain is that that is such I'm trying to it's it's it's it's so wrong when you think about you could have said what you have so it's Oh hon sorry it's so wrong because when you think about it if I have the French Laundry where there's a hundred employees is understaffed numbers right they're all focused they have a common vision we have common goals we're achieving great expectations we're exceeding our standards we're doing all the things right we open per se and I've got 150 employees there who doing the same thing so now I have 250 people that are working for me that are all folks how am I have I become weaker how I stretched myself too thin I mean we've become that much stronger by opening another restaurant so really it really you know this idea that you know there I I must admit that some of my colleagues may be doing doing things other ways that don't really enhance or strengthen their their businesses but if you do it correctly if you really think about you do it for the right reasons I mean you we become so much stronger we were able to exchange you know I've always worked towards this exchange program we've always continue to exchange staff the last summer we exchanged our chef de cuisine 'he's right the heads of the kitchens from the french auntie and per se they got in airplanes at the same time went to each other's restaurants right for 15 days they walked into each other's restaurants and operated each other's restaurants without a problem now we built up to that because as Eli came to Yountville he was walking to restaurant where Matthew was now Matthew had worked for Eli in New York and came to to Yountville right so he's walking into an area where Mike Wallace was there Mike Wallace work for free Lyon in New York Timothy was walking into restaurant where Nick was there who had worked for Timothy in Yountville so we have this wonderful exchange program where we built this the this culture of knowledge and the ability for if you're a young chef you can come to French Laundry and work in this beautiful idea like Napa Valley and when you get tired of that you know we'll send you off to New York City this vibrant exciting you know place in New York and you can go go to work there so this idea of this exchange that we have has created a bond a bond between the restaurants that is that that exchanges knowledge so you think about evolution we all talk about evolution well we have a rapid rate of evolution because now no longer do we have just a hundred people thinking about something we have 250 people thinking about something so our evolution is it just goes out such a pace it's hard to keep up sometimes with what's going on in our restaurants because there are everybody is exchanging ideas and then we become strong we've got the strength of our restaurants is is extraordinary when I look at when I look at this and and I've said you know it's almost like a I write up I run a sports franchises the way I describe it because we have to be thinking generation generationally about who is coming up who's going to be replacing who and how we're gonna do that how we're meant to how we're hiring how we're mentoring how we're training our staff so that they can become sooner or later can become the franchise player and and ultimately then let them go and become become their own business you know that's that's the ultimate goal is to actually push them out so that they can start their own restaurants and be successful on their own so at the beginning of what you're just describing the hiring piece yes what are the top three qualities that you look for when hiring new talent for one of your restaurants desire desire and desire you were quoted saying that it's desire that really matters it's not passion leading people talk about passion you know I sometimes it drives me crazy you know some of the some of the vocabulary that we use in people's house a young coconut a say so why do you want to work your chef I'm so passionate about what I do you don't believe the passion I have I mean every morning I wake up I'm so passionate about this I'm thinking okay whatever this kid just doesn't doesn't understand it's wonderful to think it like that right think that you're gonna be passionate about your job all the time but we all know I mean passion absent flows I mean if you've ever had a relationship with somebody I mean I mean they're there in lies the perfect example of you know how how passion goes I mean we're passionate about somebody you know for a while then it kind of subsides and then you know reignites for some reason you know it's all over the place right and and if you relate that to food I mean you know the the first asparagus of the spring which we saw three weeks ago you just like wow it's amazing you haven't seen it all year long it's like I love it you know I'm passionate about doing something with asparagus but what happens three weeks later when you've seen asparagus every for the past three weeks it's like okay or whatever you know it's just another bundle of asparagus I got to do something so what keeps you going with is it's the desire it's a desire to do something with the asparagus it's the desire to be with that person that keeps you with that person because it was all based on passion we'd have a different partner every other year right it's the desire to do something that really drives us so that's what I look for is I look for that desire I know that there are levels of skill that some people are born with and some people will be stars and some people won't and and it breaks my heart to see those young individuals that are in our restaurants whether they're in the kitchen in the dining room who have this strong desire to do a good job and they just don't have the skills to do it that that's really heartbreaking and we try to find places for them where they're gonna succeed maybe it's not at the French Laundry maybe it's at Bouchon maybe it's at a colleague's restaurant and then and then there's those ones who have amazing skill and you know they could be a star but you know they just they just don't have the desire and and that breaks your heart because you just want to stop them in the face you know you are so good how come you don't you apply yourself more it's about desire is there a question you asked in interviews to tease out whether someone has no really you know it's what we what we the way we interview is we have them in our kitchen you know if we're talking about a culinary person we want them to come into our kitchen for two different reasons we want to watch the way they move it's it's a dance you know I mean let's face it in the kitchen that is that is crowded with people and you know everybody's moving it you know it intense speeds everybody's focused it's it's about how you move in the kitchen so we want to really see how they're moving in and sometimes it's an innate thing as well understanding who's behind you how you feel about about being close with people cuz we touch every you know it's it's like a basketball game you're right you're constantly touching somebody you know and if if people don't like to be touched that's a problem but making but having them in the kitchen gives us two opportunities gives us an opportunity to see how they move through the kitchen to see how they react to others in the kitchen and you know to give them some basic skills you know here here yours here's an egg scramble an egg or you know here's some vegetables chop an onion or things like that we can out we can teach almost anything if some he has a strong desire to do it but the other important thing during that aspect is for them to actually see the kitchen themselves and we want them to answer the question do I think I can work in that environment mm-hmm so I know what they're getting themselves exactly and and and you'd be surprised how many people realize that they can't work in that environment it's too intense it's too quick it's too difficult it requires too much dedication the hours are too long I mean all these different things that come into into effect you can look at somebody's resume they come out of school they're there they're recommended by by somebody and and yes I mean you you know it's it's it's a gamble you know you flip a coin we've had we've had very successful chefs who come from I mean Timothy Hollingsworth who came from from basically nowhere 13 years ago began working the French on tea and became the chef de cuisine without any any formal education as well his whole education was at the French Laundry as a young he came at 21 years old he just he left last week he came in as a Comey which is the lowest level position in the kitchen and he left the highest level of the position with you know with the respect of an industry competed as the buku store captain who placed higher for the US than any other team had ever done and his only experience in the kitchen was that the French Laundry and he got there by accident because my chef who was in at the time Eric Z bald didn't want to hire him and and I didn't I didn't realize that he didn't want to hire him so I hired him and he gets in the kitchen and and so you just never know but but you have this you you have other people who have great resumes who come from great houses and and and they just they fall they they fail so it's it's hard to really tell it's it's a it's an important process of hiring we we have to spend our time making sure that we're trying to identify the right person for the right job I mean that's an important thing and back when I was young in in the business it was about being in the right place at the right time you know if you were there when they needed somebody you were hired doesn't necessarily mean that you were good at what you did or that you had a great background you were just the right place at the right time and and and they would beat you in a submission or Beaches the point where you you became you understood what they wanted and you did it that the beating was always there but today we want to make sure that we're hiring the right person for the right job and putting him in a position where we can we can train them because that that's really an important part is training and again training has no time limits when you think about it I mean you're native to a child and I don't know how many you have children but when you're teaching your child how to swim you've got floaties on their arms you don't tell them they have two weeks that are not a swim and then you can take the floaties off think it drowns well it's your fault you know you didn't learn how to swim in two weeks I mean it could take it could take two months we could take three months the point is once you hire a person you have to be committed to that person hundred percent and that training can take a while and and but the commitment has to be there and the commitment from them has to be there and and the deciding factor and that is when they have a hard day and you go to them and say Walter you know you struggled today what do you think about tomorrow and the kids got a smile on faces Jeff I'm gonna get it tomorrow I'll be back tomorrow and and and and that stro it shows a strong dedication strong will and an attitude that they know in their mind that one day they'll get it if you have the patience and persistence to continue working with them they'll get it one day and believe me when they get it it's an extraordinary thing to watch because it's like turning a light on one day they'll come in and it's just it's like night and day and then that person that you've spent the time with that you've dedicated that training moment you've given him what he needs or she needs you know Walter was with us for four six and a half years an extraordinary young chef to today now is a chef too was inna in another restaurant and then and then the point is so if you hired you trained and then you have to mentor them and mentorship is something that goes beyond beyond work you know it's it's it's a it's a process it's a life process and the point is if you fired correctly if you train correctly and you mentored correctly then the result of that is it's that you have somebody who is better than you are and and that was that's a hard thing for a lot of chefs to say is that person is better than I am but if they're not then you really haven't done your job very well have you I mean they have to be better than you are you have to give them a better environment you have to give them better skills you have to give them better to work with you have to give them a better education you have to give them a better opportunity than you ever had and if you do all those things then then the the overarching goal that we talked about is raising the the standards of our profession have been achieved I know that there are some fantastic questions in the audience so I do want to open up for questions from the audience if you have a question please raise your hand and someone with the microphone will find you my question is about you you've been quoted to to speak about the importance of ownership in every person in the restaurant and you've said that you don't work for somebody your whole life and then suddenly wake up one morning and think like an owner right could you talk about what you've done to instill that in people at your restaurant given that it is a high turnover industry yeah yeah it's funny because we don't really have a high turnover as much as you know it is a high turnover industry our turnover really occurs when when there's not the ability for somebody to be promoted and that's typically because you know as it's a pyramid and as you get up towards the top those individuals are staying longer so you know as a Comey goes to a chef to party chef the party goes to Demi's sous-chef that my sous chef goes to sous chef sous chef goes to executive sous-chef and then goes the CDC there are fewer fewer people so typically somebody leave after two or two-and-a-half years at the chef de Partie level but to answer your question we've preparing them to be a chef to Azim we're preparing them to be a chef to cuisine because we begin them as a Khomeni so at that level at that beginning level they're understanding the foundation of the kitchen really understand the true foundation of how to operate a kitchen opening kitchen what what what the what the fundamental practices are how to do how to do the fundamental work and and at the same time they get to work with a chef to party a chef to party is somebody who actually is responsible for a station you know fish meat vegetable cheese whatever the different stations are in the restaurant so you've created this this team environment and the chef de Partie is now working with that with that Co me or that group of homies and and and and supervising them managing them in a way that they are actually understanding what it is to be a chef because now they have their own little small team that they divide we define the menu stay to find their dishes and then they start to write out their list of tasks they have to be done and they have to then then motivate supervise their commis in order to get the the task completed in the appropriate amount of time so as a chef de Partie you're learning you and a couple of it as a Comey your next position would be a chef to party so you're learning as a Comey what it's like to be managed by somebody at that fount of that Foundation and then you're promoted to the chef de Partie positions so that the roles are reversed you understand what you need to do in those positions so as a chef de Partie you understand how to manage and supervise that position so we're teaching them how to be chefs little mini chefs in their stations before they're ever become a sous chef if you forget you get to become a sous chef then you're now responsible for a group of chef's to parties that for all the chef's to parties before group to chef to parties so you're managing or supervising even even more people if you get to be an executive sous-chef the executive sous-chef is the same as a chef de cuisine in other words he's responsible for the entire kitchen and understanding how to supervise and manage that group and then as a chef de cuisine obviously you're responsible for the entire kitchen now start to revert to what what it is to operate a business it's not just about the kitchen I mean the kitchen is a very important part of any restaurant but it's it's not it's it it's not the area where you're going to find success in being a business owner and and that was evident as I spoke earlier me being a really good chef didn't make didn't qualify me to run a business in fact it qualified me to run a business into the ground and be unsuccessful so so understanding that you know at that point when to become the executive chef even when they become a sous chef they start to understand human resources they start to understand public relations they start to understand the finances so that they can start and start to formulate what it is that they are impacting so as they're as they begin to order food they understand you know how to keep inventories how to price inventories they understand how to not how to manage inventories and then the more the further up they go as an executive sous chef and as executive sous chef and chef de cuisine now are in the budgetary process so every year they are actually right their budgets for for for their department so we're actually teaching them how to be these owners before their owners and that's that's really what I want to be able to do and and then as they start to understand that they're working in human resources and public relations as well so they have really the three criterias that they need in order to understand how to open their own restaurant and then and then understanding that there's a transitional period I know if I walk into my kitchen today and I said who wants to open their own restaurant 95% of us hands are going to go up so annoying immediately that everybody in my restaurant is in my kitchen is gonna leave some day prepares me for these transitions so understanding that as a chef to asine that that chef wants to open his own restaurant so we begin early in the process so that we have a smooth transition process for him to be able to not only learn what he needs to learn about running a restaurant but now how to open a restaurant so we can offer that person the only the financial information needs but but also legal to help him understand how to write a business plan and preparing him for that so the ownership is it becomes something that is very tangible for them at a very early age in their career at our restaurants because they are owning it even though they may not realize it so that when someone leaves our restaurant even now to even have a young age even at a young position at a shefte party's position damn they've already tasted and felt what it's like to be a chef hi my name is Candace Cromartie I'm a first year MBA I was just curious what right now your favorite thing to cook is my right now we have some beautiful white asparagus that's right right now I know it's interesting we were talking about this a little earlier about you know about ingredients and now and I mean they are the most important part of what we do and and and the seasonality of them we realize that the proteins are very easy right I mean we forecast our proteins every week we we don't necessarily forecast our vegetables every week we know that you know our duck producer is gonna produce ducks for us every week we know our lamb roars got lamb we know or you know our ranch in Idaho has beef for us we know you know that the fish we're gonna get you know we know we'll mostly we know what we're gonna get if we can't get Cod this week we'll get another fish but we know we can get these different proteins it's really it really we really build our menus around the vegetables because vegetables have a defined season we all think of seasons seasonality as you know spring summer winter fall but that that has nothing to do with the seasonality that we deal with because the fava bean for us may only have a season of three and a half or four weeks we may see fava beans in the market for three and a half months but we know that the last two and a half months those fava beans you know typically are overgrown and starchy and we don't really want to work with that so really understanding the seasonality of each ingredient and certainly in this aspect as relates to vegetables so right now you know the white asparagus that we're getting the white asparagus we're getting right now is from is from Germany which which arguably has some of the best white asparagus that's available because they have they they're the northern north of Germany you think of the Scandinavian countries they have white asparagus as well but it's still a little too cold so they don't get as as median as big and then further south in France it's already getting too warm by the time their season hits Jeremy has that wonderful wonderful season that prime season when the temperatures are just right for the growing of asparagus and the size that we like and the texture that we like so I hope that answered your question but they won't be around much longer I thanks for coming here it's really excited to have you to jump off on that question could you talk a little bit about your supply chain there's a lot of it coming from local organic farms or is it sort of worldwide I'm glad you asked that question you know people talk about there's all this this talk recently about local right everybody has anybody heard not heard that you know local is a but I've heard the word sustainability in the in the past three or four years you know chefs have always been focused on on quality ingredients you know and chefs have always been focused on our farmers our suppliers so this whole idea that farm-to-table of something new is a bit absurd and insulting to me you know because you know it's something that we've every chef in every generation any chef that's that that's been worth anything has always been had relationships with with their farmers their fishermen their foragers their gardeners I mean those those individuals are who we rely on I mean we truly support them in what they do in every way and and local has nothing to do with geography I mean where did where did this idea come from that we have to use products within 25 miles and what is wood but what defines local anyway is local you look at the dig what is local can anybody define it for me I was I was I was doing a lecture couple weeks ago and someone was that was 25 miles okay so it's 25 miles right so that means if this farmer is growing a carrot within 25 miles I can buy it and if it's a shitty carrot that's okay it's local but if there's the guy 27 miles away that's growing the most amazing carrot that you've ever tasted I can't buy that carrot and by the way what are you drinking coffee is there is is there a coffee plantation 25 miles from here you know like what's that about I mean we have it we you know we live with a little bit of hypocrisy all of us do so if we believe we're truly buying a local ingredients but we're drinking tea or coffee or sugar or using vanilla or oil or you know any of these things I mean you tell me you tell me where where these farms are where these producers are that are producing all these things locally you know and what is local anyway is that 25 is it 50 is the hundreds of 200 to 300 miles you know around I have no idea what that local with local means so local to me has to do with ingredients we realized that the culinary diversity of the world has been based on transportation right do we agree on that I mean the most famous country in the world for chocolate is where Switzerland do they have any cocoa plantations and switch them I don't think so the Italians are known for what tomatoes tomatoes came from the new world right they didn't come from Italy the Italians Evert potatoes the Irish potato famine in the 1600s right they got the potatoes from from from Peru I mean it wasn't something that they had locally it was brought there by by by somebody from a bone so the the spice roots you know of ancient times I mean this is this has been the makeup of our culinary heritage for centuries for and it's not going to stop so why would we say we're not going to support any longer the the the the the the the the coffee bean plantations in in South America or Sumatra or we're not going to we're not going to support the the vanilla bean plantations in Mexico or Tahiti I mean would we really do that would we put out would we put out of business these communities that have been thriving for decades or centuries on the idea of exporting their food and then how many of you drink wine and is anybody drink French wine would you think that comes from local I you know all these different things it's just fascinates me that local has been has has been defined as something that is within a certain proximity locals about the ingredients and the quality of the ingredients to me that's what it's all about it's about communities that are producing food for us and we talk about sustainability the sustainability has nothing to do with ingredients they're saying ability has to do with communities communities are very important so if I'm buying my ingredients from the right individuals there they're the ones that are going to be concerned about the sustainability of their ingredients i buy lobsters from Ingrid Ben gist who lives in Stonington Maine is anyone we're starting to menas has anybody been to starting today there you go if if that community of fishermen had to rely on selling their fish in their lobsters within a certain proximity to that town that community would not exist there would not be the the fisherman there that it would not be the teachers there or the doctors there are the pharmacists there there would not be a community in Stoney in Maine if they couldn't transport their local ingredients elsewhere and then they're worried about the sustainability this is a community that's been there for generations they're the ones that that that are that are monitoring the quality of their harvesting of the lobsters or the scallops because every year for 30 years I've been buying lobsters and scallops and Cod things from from Ingrid benches okay and she buys them from her fishermen so there's a sustainability in the community and those fisherman's are the ones that are worried about the sustainability of what they're harvesting so I shouldn't really have to worry about the sustainability of those ingredients or or the locality of them other than we're supporting people who are who are doing who are doing work that had been going out for generations and supporting a community around them I answer your question organic I'm sorry organic is that doesn't matter it doesn't matter to me because again we buy ingredients for for therefore the flavor for the quality of the ingredient and and and sometimes our ingredients that aren't organic are much better than something that's labeled organic and if I'm gonna tell my my farmer in Yountville that he has to get certified organic from the state of California so he's for five years he's gonna have to monitor his I have to send in every six months or every three months his test results would cost him money he's gonna have to wait for the state to verify that and then and then give him a stamp on a piece of paper that says he's organic when he's been when he's been farming this his father farm the farm and his grandfather farm the farmer they've always been practicing organic you know what he's gonna tell me right it's gonna tell me to stick it because you know he doesn't need to be involved in the bureaucracy of the state certifying his property Organic when he's been farming organic for four generations sorry no it's clear you've thought a lot about the topic so I want to close with a question that's asked at many of you from the top engagements the current GSP application includes an essay that asks what matters most to you and why how would you respond to that question you know I think what matters most to me now is really education I think education is is is the tool for success in anything we do in life and you know our profession was one that we were told how to do something for so long and not necessary why and you know it's only been recently in in my career span in the past 25 years that we've actually learned why we bet actually become more knowledgeable on on the science of food right you've all seen a lot of things that Harold McGee wrote a book 30 years ago called you know on food and cooking which really opened up so much knowledge for for so many cooks who never understood you know why in a multiplication worked you know what was it what was the property and the fat of an egg yolk in the oil that brought it together and how much could you do and and and it was the knowledge that opened up a lot of doors for us and and I would say that what we want to be able to do to do is is is to share that knowledge with everybody to to help impact and enrich people's lives and and certainly in my profession it's it's been an extraordinary rise in in knowledge and an understanding of what we do and why we do it that in America today we live with the culinary culture today that is only 30 years old and we have achieved enormous success notoriety and and reputation because of the knowledge that we have and the dedication we have to our craft and to each other I think those are important things thanks for sharing so before we finish I understand that you have a surprise for people in the audience we do there's a story about green green tapes has anybody heard the green tape story no one person heard the green tape story so you know as I told you when we were opening per se we took 30 individuals from French on E 2 per se to help inoculate this this group of people in at in New York City with our culture in our philosophy and so I gave them all this this you know this big rah-rah speech about you know you're gonna go there you're gonna meet people it's New York City we want to make sure that we teach you know this new staff who we are give them the examples of who we are find something find a way to to just make it better a little bit you know find something that's gonna impact them find something that's gonna say something to these individuals in New York and we had a young expediter named Zion qu al I think he's probably 23 24 years old at the time who worked at The French Laundry now the green tape was something that we use at our restaurant I began using 1994 it's painters tape right and and and we use it to label everything in the restaurant and the reason we use green tape is because masking tape which is typically used or labels which are typically used have such a strong adhesive that when you take them off it leaves a residue on the container I hated that I do know it just drove me crazy green tape has a very light adhesive so then when you take it off nothing stays on the container so every container everything that's marked at the restaurant is marked with green tape every time we tape down the past which means we put a tablecloth on the past the table that we played our food on it's taped down with green tape for 10 years an entire decade hundreds of people toward the green tape right we would just tear it Grant Achatz Jonathan bento Sebastian Bach cell Eric Z bald I mean dozens of chefs today does is the people in our profession today Paul Roberts sommelier I mean you know man everybody nobody thought about doing anything else but tearing the green tape Zion who L who taped on the past at the French chandi every day for two years shows up in New York City on February 16 2004 the first day he's taping down the past for the first service of per se what does he do it picks up a pair of scissors and cuts the green tape everybody in the entire restaurant was like what what just happened and and from that moment on 600 other employees where there's a roll of green tape there's a pair of scissors and it just goes to show you how big of an impact one person can have just with the idea that they're gonna make a difference and it wasn't a big thing you know it wasn't it wasn't sudden when you think about it's like okay whatever he picked up a pair of scissors to cut the green tapes that's it's not such a stretch is it but he did it he thought about it he made an impact he had the confidence and he had the courage to pick up a pair of scissors and cut the green tape and now I have over a thousand people that work at TK RG and everywhere there's a roll of green tape there's a pair of scissors and now they have actually dispensers so they don't have to be there I don't know where the dispenser came from but somebody thought about the dispenser so with that said there is three pieces I hope it's cut green tape thank you there's three pieces of green tape under your chair okay so there are three chairs with a piece of green tape under it and we want to be able to give you something from us so whoever has a piece of green tape let me know do you remember where you put them anybody find green to any fine green tape oh we've got one where right here and back there where's the third you have three okay come on thank you everybody I appreciate it you [Music]

Channel: Stanford Graduate School of Business

Views: 128,319

Rating: 4.901895 out of 5

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Management, Marketing, Operations, consumer, family business, competition

Id: -8yFqrynkXE

Length: 59min 4sec (3544 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/thepersianperversion]

I had dinner at the FL a couple years back. It was in January and actually fell on the first day the restaurant was open that year, so TK was actually in the restaurant! Our waiter asked if I wanted to meet him and of course I got out of my seat and walked into the kitchen...

The next 5 minutes was me just awkwardly staring at him while he kept telling me to thank the chef de cuisine (timothy hollingsworth at the time). My buddy/roommate at the time then whips out a resume from inside his coat pocket and hands it to him. It was hilarious I'll never forget it.

The waiter took a picture for us http://imgur.com/eReIbGi

[u/moikederp]

I find it odd that he remembers the exact date that cutting the tape became a thing, but doesn't know when or where the dispensers came from. Also, what did the green-tape-Oprah folks get?

He always comes off as a pretty down-to-earth guy. I especially like his take on "local" and "organic".

[u/Samein]

I fucking loved the rant about "local" at the end. Fantastic.

[u/clashmo]

nice, thanks

[u/Dildo_Saggins]

That was an excellent video, thank you. I've never heard of this guy before, and I'm thinking that maybe I should have :/

He seems like he knows his shit in a way that I've never seen in a restaurant owner before. Then again, I've only worked in a handful of restaurants.

[u/facehack]

this is a pretty long talk... is it worth watching? beyond 'ill never do it in hindsight/ the idea of local food is BS/ where did that tape come from'?

[u/clashmo]

Did the 3 people with green tape under their chairs get to blow him?