Executive Chef/Partner of gertrude's; Author of Me Chef, You Chef, Oui Chef (2027)

If you're in a leadership position, everyone is looking to you for mentorship and guidance and advice. One minute of your time can be super valuable to a young cook. Try not to blow them off, and try to have patience and compassion for those people that work for you. They wanted to work for you because you are exceptional, so don't let them down.

I think a big problem within our industry is people keeping these things to themselves. If you're struggling, it's always better to go to someone that you can trust and talk with them about it, and hopefully they can help you out.

I want to be in this industry and do this job because it's the only thing that I want to do. It's really satisfying for me to speak and talk to people that love doing what they do and are in the industry as well. I love chatting with folks across the industry about what's going on with them.

We've all had the exact same issues with equipment and with people and with our mental health. Everyone's kind of in a silo in their own world, head down, having these problems. And yet we're all having the exact same problems.

You do not realize how much of owning a restaurant is just filling out compliance paperwork, insurance, legal, city compliance. As an executive sous or a chef de cuisine, you don't necessarily have to touch those things because you're just making the restaurant go round in terms of staffing, putting food on plates, and running service. So as an owner, if you rush into it and you haven't actually shadowed an owner who knows what they're doing, you then have to make it up as you go. That's what my brother did, and I would say that that is not a strategy. A good strategy would be to gather as much experience on the owner and operator side as you can before doing it yourself.

There are other ways you can be involved in hospitality that are not necessarily back of house. They're not necessarily cooking food. They might not even necessarily be inside of a restaurant. Restaurant groups need controllers, accountants, and someone who handles their event work. All these people support the restaurant and the hospitality world and the restaurant group or individual restaurant, but they might not be a server, a maitre d, a line cook. There's so much opportunity within the hospitality industry that I'm not sure people even think about.