The True Importance of Staff Meal

In Boston, almost every restaurant offers "staff meal" or "family meal" between 4:00 and 4:30. Because we are feeding everyone with a "normal life", we cannot eat dinner at the conventional dinner time - early dinner is better than no dinner. However, some restaurants do not even offer family meal. I noticed this to be the trend in most restaurants in Denver and St. Louis in my travels. I have also heard of a couple restaurants that take money out of employee paychecks for staff meal (which I think is ridiculous).

In the French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller writes a couple pages on the subject of staff meal. Keller reminisces about his responsibility to cook staff meal early in his cooking career at a restaurant in Rhode Island. He explains, "The staff meal cook was a low man in the kitchen heirararchy." At this restaurant, called the Dunes Club, his chef/mentor taught many fundamentals, including how to make use of scraps and by-products to create something not just nourishing, but tasty and pleasing for the staff. He writes, "If you can make great food for these people...then someday you'll be a great chef."

Staff meal is an opportunity to drastically decrease the amount of waste at a restaurant. At the end of the night, the mashed potatoes should be saved for the staff the next day if they're not suitable for customers, not thrown away! "Staffing" certain ingredients when they are past their prime but before they spoil is a great way to move product. In a restaurant that does not provide a family meal, what might be "staffed" because it isn't as fresh as it could be but has not yet spoiled will either end up on the customer's plate or in the trash. Either the food quality at the restaurant suffers, or waste and thus food cost is high. That alone is reason enough to provide staff meal free of charge to everyone who wants it.

In most restaurants that do provide staff meal, the servers and other diningroom staff get to sit down and eat, talk about the food, wine, and service points while the managers and chef "breif" them about the upcoming service period. In every kitchen I've worked in or witnessed, the cooks do not get the luxury of being able to sit down while they eat their food. Cooks are seldom allotted any break time to sit and eat due to the usual large amount of prep that needs to be done before service. I have had many days working in kitchens where I didn't even have time to eat staff meal, even though I had made it myself! A lot of this has to do with the general "I won't be ready for service" paranoia. And kitchen culture leans towards the idioms that "no one takes breaks" and "nobody sits down". As a result of these unwritten rules, cooks and chefs frequently spend at least 8 hours straight on their feet, without sitting down once. That takes its toll physically, and many cooks suffer from short-term aches and serious long-term back and knee problems.

When I become a chef, I will be instituting a mandatory 15 minute break for every cook to sit down and eat staff meal. Every chef should be concerned about their cooks' health. Plus, that 15 minute break will give them a bit more energy and ability to concentrate later in the night. During the sit down family meal break, we can talk uninterrupted as a group about how certain things can be improved in the kitchen. We can discuss our goals, both personally and for the restaurant as a whole.

I believe any chef who thinks this is a bad idea is blinded by the industry trend of what constitutes family meal. If it doesn't work financially, I am sure most cooks would be happy to work 15 minutes for free every day for the opportunity for a break to enjoy staff meal. I am aware of a couple restaurants that do allow and encourage cooks to sit and take a short break to eat their early dinner - L'Espalier in Boston and Charlie Trotter's - good for them, and I'm sure they aren't the only ones. However, more chefs need to take this issue seriously and make the move for a happier, healthier kitchen.