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From the outside, owning your own restaurant might look like the ultimate in the good life. But here’s the reality check – if you’re looking to get rich, the restaurant business could possibly be the hardest place in which to make a profit.
From the outside, owning your own restaurant might look like the ultimate in the good life. But here’s the reality check – if you’re looking to get rich, the restaurant business could possibly be the hardest place in which to make a profit.
Influencers, content creators, lifestyle curators, whatever their latest word to go by is – aren’t they all just self-absorbed narcissists and attention-seekers, parasites looking to fund their expensive tastes with freebies?
It’s credited with the rise of the Western world and industrialised agriculture; it’s been associated with witchcraft, and its flowers worn by royalty have sparked fashion trends; artists have painted it and there are at least 13 museums around the globe dedicated to it.
Ask any chef around the world to name an ingredient unforgettable for unique flavour and sheer indulgence, and the answer is very likely to be truffles – specifically, black from France or white from Italy, in their short season from autumn to winter.
Getting hot in the kitchen. It’s the stuff of office gossip and tabloid headlines – the illicit workplace romance where the doctor runs off with the nurse, the pilot literally flies off with the cabin attendant, the teacher and the school principal have their own kind of “homework” – and, yes, chefs making off with the hostess are right up there.
It’s the question at the heart of every conversation with a chef or restaurant owner. Right now, the global pandemic is killing our industry – lockdowns and restrictions on trade and movement across the globe, social distancing, and just plain fear. Business has come to a halt.
A restaurant kitchen is not called a pressure cooker for nothing. Hot, cramped, crowded and pressurised. It’s a danger zone for accidents and explosions, both human and mechanical.
Washing dishes and hauling garbage might seem like the lowliest of kitchen jobs, with zero glamour or celebrity potential, but no restaurant can function without them. No clean pots to cook in? No clean plates to serve food on? Restaurant at a standstill. A stuff-up of note.
This is how a love affair starts. At age 15 I had just finished three months working as a stagiaire in one of Paul Bocuse’s restaurants in Lyon.
It may sound melodramatic – and eating out might seem like a frivolous worry in a global health crisis – but the reality is that restaurants are an industry that creates employment, not just enjoyment.