Why Mentorship in Restaurants Matters
After dinner service at埃斯梅厨房工作人员，夫妻二人杰恩·托马斯卡（Jenner Tomaska）和卡特里娜·布拉沃（Katrina Bravo）的新开业的芝加哥餐厅，以一种液体运动清洁台面：磨砂膏，挤压，干毛巾。进行挤压的人以S形上下向下，在将其倒入水桶之前，收集了最大的水池。
埃斯梅（Esmé）的副厨师塞巴斯蒂安·克鲁兹（Sebastian Cruz下一个-Grant Achatz他不断变化的餐厅概念 - 他在托马斯卡（Tomaska）下工作的地方。在接下来的工作之后，有人对克鲁兹说：“你一定是在詹纳工作。
当时,克鲁兹,这样我感到惊讶nial as squeegeeing had left such a lasting mark. But when he started teaching younger cooks at Esmé how to squeegee in that same way, he realized that this small act speaks to something much larger. "A lot of being in a kitchen, and being in this industry, is follow orders, get it done, go home, come back, do it again," Cruz said. "Little things, like how we squeegee, get missed or lost in translation when there's not someone saying, 'This is why we're doing this, this is why this matters.'"
That kind of sustained mentorship is rare in restaurants, with their limited budgets and high turnover rates, but it also builds community like nothing else can. At Esmé, Tomaska and Bravo are prioritizing mentorship. They're educating their staff about the nuances of running a restaurant, maintaining transparency about the pressures of ownership, and fostering an environment that encourages people to ask questions and have conversations. "It's when attention to detail gets dropped, and the conversation of why gets lost, that it becomes another restaurant with no mission," Tomaska said.
Tomaska and Bravo learned the importance of mentorship while working for another Chicago power couple, Lisa and Michael Kornick, at their now-closed restaurant MK. "Front and back of the house have to understand and buy into the fact that the restaurant team is only as strong as its weakest link," Kornick said. "If you create a nurturing environment, every person can feel how mentorship is connected to their overall success."
在MK，员工不仅被视为家庭，他们被视为资产。布拉沃说：“我从来没有像迈克尔，丽莎和埃里克那样照顾我们。”Bravo离开MK几次追求其他兴趣，每次丽莎·科尼克（Lisa Kornick）总是对她说：“你总是可以回家。”
"I didn't really have a home I could ever go back to, so to hear that from somebody who casually fell into my life," Bravo said, "was really impactful." Bravo intends to say the same thing to team members at Esmé because, as she has learned, "You've done your job correctly if someone feels empowered enough to go out into the world on their own because of the fundamentals you've given them."
实际上，这正是Tomaska在接下来的最终结果。在MK工作了四年后，Tomaska认为他想要一些不同的东西，所以Erick Williams-another mentor of Tomaska and Bravo's who was then the executive chef at MK and is now the chef/owner of美德in Hyde Park—helped him get a new job. "Rather than hearing the negative from a young, immature person, Erick placed me somewhere to further myself," Tomaska said.
In the years since, Tomaska has managed people and led teams, and he now recognizes how difficult it can be to keep mentoring someone once they move on. "It's hard to continue to invest in that person. But I'm thankful for Erick and how he has done that, and I aspire to do that, too."
根据Tomaska的说法，餐馆的指导是稀缺的，因为目前其他事情似乎更重要，尤其是在培训新团队成员时。他说：“如何烹饪牛排优先于教某人的批判性思维以及如何成为一个好人。”
威廉姆斯（Williams）看到的方式：“在我们的行业中，对食物有很多承诺，但对人，社区和文化缺乏承诺。”vwin德赢ac米兰他说，这部分是因为餐馆老板可以陷入雇用他们已经认识的人的陷阱。不需要太多培训的人。做这项工作以寻找和指导新人才可能会落在路边。尤其是当餐厅已经在预算有限的情况下运营时，重点倾向于完全转向食物，从而摆脱了制作和服务食物的人们。vwin德赢ac米兰由于这些干扰，威廉姆斯认为指导需要是故意的。
Williams also believes that mentorship is an investment. "We expect the person that we're investing in to both manage and maintain a standard," he said. Sometimes, that investment creates the unforeseen return of flipping the mentor-mentee dynamic. Like when Williams was getting ready to open Virtue in 2018 and confided in Tomaska that he was nervous, and Tomaska assured him that "we got you."
威廉姆斯甚至不知道谁是“我们”，但是他在开幕前几天就发现了他雇用的许多厨师退出。托马斯卡（Tomaska）呼吁全国其他一堆其他厨师，其他威廉姆斯（Williams）导师，让他们知道威廉姆斯（Williams）遇到了麻烦。他们都动了计划，飞往芝加哥，帮助威廉姆斯开放。
威廉姆斯说：“这就是为什么指导很重要的原因。”“如果您出于正确的原因这样做，它会以最好的方式产生未知数。”
托马斯卡（Tomaska）和布拉沃（Bravo）希望提供与威廉姆斯（Williams）和科尼克斯（Kornicks）在埃斯梅（Esmé）的员工那里获得的同样的支持。布拉沃说：“照顾您的团队，您的团队将照顾您的客人，业务将得到照顾。”“团队必须先排名第一。”
Tomaska和Bravo还经历了跨餐厅指导的价值。就像扎克·恩格尔（Zach Engel）时，中东位置的厨师/所有者盖利特, located a few blocks away from Esmé, called to walk Tomaska through the logistics of a health inspection in a new restaurant. Or when Tomaska helped Trevor Teich, chef/owner ofClaudia在巴克敦，弄清楚如何处理获得酒许可证。布拉沃说：“您可以将其视为指导，因为我们正在互相指导，但这与支持有关。”
托马斯卡说：“每个人都在竞争中，但是这些联系是重要的。”他们说，与其他厨师和餐馆老板的锻造和维护是从Kornick和Williams那里学到的，他们说，他们总是拿起电话。
At Esmé, Tomaska and Bravo are striving to balance business with humanity, and to communicate that goal to their team. "What Jenner has opened my eyes to more than anything is that there's two sides of being a chef," said Cruz, the sous chef at Esmé. "There's cooking and running a kitchen, but there's a huge second part which is interpersonal relationships and ethos."
克鲁斯和Tomaska,布拉沃,威廉姆斯,Kornicks—mentorship is wrapped up in that ethos. It's a vital ingredient of a career, and a life, in hospitality. And that's in no small part because, for this group of chefs and restaurateurs, the mentor/mentee relationship turned into something much more powerful: friendship.
