Gerald Ford, CMC
In seeking culinary staff, there are a number of sources club chefs find success with, from recruiting at culinary schools to referral programs to social media outreach.
“Talk to the people you hire, who you love, who you want more of on your team, and figure out what social media they’re using, where they’re looking, how they found their way to the job,” says Gerald Ford, CMC, Founder and Culinary Director of Legit Concepts.
If you’re having issues staying staffed, it’s important to consider how you can appeal to potential candidates externally, Ford says. A distinct brand and online presence is a valuable tool.
“Create opportunity for people to interact with you on LinkedIn or Instagram,” he adds. “I’m not saying Instagram is a silver bullet, but that’s where a lot of cooks are. Find a way to appeal to the cooks that you want to hire and allow them an opportunity to see you.”
Whether recruiting is handled internally or externally, a club must have an aligned vision on its values and expectations—and benefits—for prospective employees.
Club + Resort Chef (C+RC): Apart from pay and housing, what benefits do you find are increasingly valuable to the next generation of culinary staff?
Gerald Ford (GF): Having a set schedule is a big deal. A clear understanding of the work culture is important. People want to know what they’re getting themselves into before they come on board.
Having policies in place that share the load, as far as time and scheduling goes, are going to make a big impact. If you work Thanksgiving, you don’t work Christmas, or if you work Christmas, you don’t work Thanksgiving. Or maybe it’s Christmas and New Year’s. Find a way to help people understand what they’re getting themselves into and what their time investment is.
The newer two generations that are coming into the industry need clear upfront expectations, and they need a clear description as to how to execute their job. They want training, and they want to know what the expectation is. I see those as an intrinsic need for them. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
C+RC: How do you recommend communicating those expectations up front?
GF: Do some discovery and figure out what it is that you need. You can also do some discovery and figure out what it is that you’re missing because you’ll know that from the pain that you experience in your operation. Then talk to your directors, your other leadership and figure out what’s going to work. What is the path to handle this situation? What is our call-out policy? Is it clearly defined? Are the consequences of not calling out clearly defined, and are we following them? Are we staying consistent with them? Drafting a policy and then holding yourself and the others around you accountable to it, and then, using that as a point of reference to train new team members. And again, staying consistent and accountable.
A lot of the training that needs to go into newer employees is helping them understand that they will be held accountable. More effort and energy needs to be put into holding people accountable.
For every 45 minutes you delegate, you’ve got to leave about 15 minutes worth of checkup time. And if you’re not, then you can’t reasonably expect that the work is getting done to the standard that you’ve established.
C+RC: What advice do you have for a chef who who’s moving to a new club, who’s inheriting a team?
GF: Moving to a new club, it’s really important to have a vision of where you want to go and pay close attention to where people are, so you can make the plan to make the change. And know that change takes time.
Culture shifts happens one person at a time. As a new chef coming into an operation, you’ve got to get somebody on your team first. Before you can get everybody, you’ve got to get one. And when there’s two of you, then you can try and get two more people on your team. Otherwise, there’s no possible way for the culture of one person to overcome the culture of the team. It’s a slow and steady progression, and patience is important, as well as having a clear vision and being able to recognize where people are and where people aren’t.
C+RC: How can a chef who’s inheriting a new staff at a new club communicate expectations to their GM?
GF: I was told, when I was a young chef, that I could expect it to take two to three years to turn a team in culture. That feels about right. Depending on what resources you have available, you could potentially do it in 18 months.
If I come in, I’m in somebody else’s budget. How much change can you really influence if you haven’t had an influence on the budget? Sometimes that takes two or three years, because it takes you six months on the job to know what you need, and then you’ve got to write next year’s budget, and then you may not even have it next year, you may get it the year after.
A chef coming into a new operation, one, should come in with a clear vision of where they want to go. Two, they should spend some time documenting everything they see that they want to change. Critical issues like cleanliness have to be handled immediately. But it’s important to spend, with your fresh eyes, time filling notebooks, with all the things that you want to change. What you fill up in your first 30 days on the job could take you the next decade to fix.
It’s important to have that conversation with the general manager, that says, “I understand the priorities you have me coming in to execute.” I think it’s also really important to say, “I’d like to make sure I have some time to figure out exactly what the problem is for those things, and figure out some workable solutions.”
Communication is so critical. Willingness to communicate is a precursor to good communication.
C+RC: What do you think makes chefs move on more quickly?
GF: I think it’s a communication problem. I think it’s an expectation or lack of upfront expectations. Was the job sold as what it actually is? There’s always room for misunderstanding, misinterpretation. I think when you’re younger, you’re a lot quicker to jump ship, if you see that it’s not going in the direction that you think it is. Boards change, and that’s also a leading factor, but I do believe that, it’s a communication issue first. Do I know the job that I’m taking? Is the job that’s being presented to me what I see? Be okay with having those conversations.
Try not to be run by emotion. Try and be as logical as possible about the information that’s presented. And if you don’t know what something means, ask for clarification. We all make mistakes, but I’ve made a lot less mistakes when I started being open to saying, “I don’t know what that means. What exactly are they asking for?”
C+RC: What are your thoughts on being more transparent upfront as an employer, in terms of benefits and pay?
GF: Full transparency is an absolute necessity, and I also think it’s a requirement of the new generation. I know my generation was okay with waiting to see. I think the newer generation that’s coming in is consistently showing us that they need transparency, they want to know what they’re getting themselves into.
They’re holding you to the job description that you write. As long as you’re transparent upfront, you’re going to save yourself a lot of time. But it also forces you to really look at what it is that you’re offering, what it is that you’re requiring, and making clear that you are showing people who you are before they’re ever going to come and work for you. And that’s why I also think having an external social media gives people a taste of who you are, and what kind of kitchen you run, in advance.
C+RC: In lieu of culinary experience, what do you recommend chefs look for in culinary candidates?
GF: I was at Westchester in 2010, and the majority of the beach staff was made up of [teenagers]. I would ask them things like, did they keep their room clean? What was their idea of organized? Have they ever used a broom? I was looking at foundational elements that would contribute positively to my environment in the kitchen.
When you ask a super direct question, anybody can give the right answer because they know what you want them to say. The point is to relate work experience to somebody who’s never actually worked the industry.
I’ve found that people who are self-starters, who are interested in working, who like to keep things organized, tend to work better with my style. I think most chefs have a particular style that works best with them. Simplifying the questions in a relatable way to a younger generation is a good way to bridge that gap.
I try to understand what I’m getting myself into before bringing them in. I love when I can bring people in on a trial, but some places don’t allow for that. A great tactic for adults is to pay them as a private contractor for a day, and them come in and see them work. You need a CFO and an HR department that’s willing to work with you on that one. But it is done a lot.
C+RC: You talked about lack of engagement and interest. Where do you think that stems from, and do you think that’s unique to newer generations?
GF: I think lack of engagement is an old problem, but I also think it requires new solutions. Some things that I would recommend is challenges or internal competitions with entertaining outcomes, chili cook-offs or things that get people to see the job as more than just a job. I like to reference Scott Craig and what he used to do at Myers Park when he had the championship belt. It was a huge driving factor to getting people to put in more passion and effort into their specials. Give them a challenge or help them see that it can be more than punching a clock and doing a job. There are creative ways to go about it.
I think engagement also comes with holding people accountable. If you know that you’re going to be held to the standard of executing the project that you’re supposed to complete, you’re probably more engaged in completing the project.
C+RC: Can you think of any other examples, from when you were a club chef specifically, of ways to get staff more involved?
GF: When I got to my first soft summer—I called it a soft summer because we went down to basically 70% of our normal operating hours—I started doing a monthly family meal. What I discovered with my team was that their definition of certain things was leading to really poor execution. One of the nights that I had was a taco night, I asked everybody to bring in a taco component and a garnish. We took one of the venues that was closed, and we talked about what people’s definition of a taco. It was an opportunity for people to show me what they knew, and at the same time, while also building team camaraderie.
One week, we were having problems with service. took my problems, and I turned them into these meals. So we did an Asian night, where we tasted light soy, dark soy, Yuzu soy, and had the team taste and understand those ingredients because they were cooking with them all the time. People stopped using the wrong sauce. People started paying attention.
It was an opportunity to train the team, that was indirect, and an opportunity to get to know everybody and get everybody invested.
What I learned from my Ritz Carlton days is that if you can get somebody’s spouse or significant other involved and invested in the operation, they’re going to be that much more invested in the operation. Our lives are holistic. If our work life isn’t good, there are challenges elsewhere. If our home life isn’t good, there are challenges in our work life. Those two things inevitably cross over, and I think it makes for an impossible negotiation if you’re trying to be two different people in two different places.
I find more and more that I have to find a way to be a better husband and father in the kitchen and be a better chef at home and cross those two things over. And I think that that’s what the newer generation is trying to do. They’re trying to have a more balanced life. I get that. And I think that therein lies a big challenge for many of us in my age range—I’ve been in the industry almost 30 years now—in reconsidering how that could look.
We’re at a time when a lot of the old things aren’t necessarily working. And I think it’s important to look at the results that we want and recognize if the old way isn’t working, [we should] try to find a different way to get to the result that we desire.
