National Restaurant Workers Day

Natasha Pickowicz on Why Great Workplaces Make Great Restaurants

December 13, 2022

The acclaimed pastry chef and activist on why she loves restaurants that put employee well-being first.

Guest essay by Chef Natasha Pickowicz for National Restaurant Workers Day.

At fine dining restaurants, new staff are often trained on how to create a “magical experience” for the diner. I’ve heard every metaphor: that dinner is like a magic show, a multi-act play, a choreographed ballet. In other words, a performance.

What diners definitely don’t want to see? A harried chef on expo screaming at equally harried line cooks behind on their fire times. A dishwasher drenched in sweat pushing through a brutal brunch. Servers gulping down cold family meal from a pint container in between refilling $28 glasses of French wine.

No, what a diner wants — what every chef dreams of doing — is to be seduced. And overhearing the pastry chef ugly crying in the polishing room kind of kills the vibe.

I’ve struggled with both desperately loving restaurants and also wanting to reject them as an institution completely.

As a chef, I’ve been on both sides of the velvet curtain. During especially long days, I would ping pong across the divide, moving from the windowless backstage workplace to the linen-draped dining room, where guests are so pampered it’s like being in a spa. I know the feeling of being seduced as a diner — but I know what makes it possible, too.

Deep down, even with our abiding love of restaurants and hospitality, and our appreciation of the craft and concentration needed to execute complicated menus, most of us know that there must be some kind of unsettling cost to this magic. In fact, we pay good money so the magician doesn’t reveal how their trick works. We’d rather stay in the dark, delighted. But lately, I’ve been wanting to pull the curtain back and peer backstage.

These days? I’m in love with the restaurants that seduce without magic tricks, and provide a more honest version of hospitality.

This year, we celebrate the many restaurants, bakeries, and cafes that operate with greater, more radical transparency. Owners who publicly acknowledge the difficulties of managing books or completing a new buildout or handling staff turnover, and still make sure their staff are paid a reasonable amount and treated with dignity. The new magic draws its power from prioritizing humanity and empathy.

Pickowicz: Why Restaurants Are Getting Political

I think the key to supporting and believing in this kind of magic is communication. When I worked full-time in restaurants, discussing your salary was hugely taboo. The taboo was so effectively upheld by management that it became systemic, and therefore invisible. I never questioned why we weren’t all talking about what we were making, or what it would feel like to have that kind of information.

The secrecy serves one purpose: to maintain inequitable power structures across lines of race, gender, ethnicity, and age.

In response, resistance and alternatives spring up. On a larger scale, service and retail workers are unionizing at massive chains like Starbucks and Trader Joes. In countless independent restaurants, employees are transforming sole proprietor businesses into worker-owned cooperatives — often a deeply empowering strategy for employees once without agency.

These days? I’m in love with the restaurants that seduce without magic tricks.

As restaurant workers, the most we can do for each other is be generous with our knowledge instead of holding it close to our chest. I am here, as a chef in this world, to share templates and strategies for how to run a food cost, write a schedule, plan a bake sale, organize recipe drives, stay engaged, not burn out, and stay in love with this work. The more we are open and share what we have, the more others can pull up and contribute their own voices and stories.

In the past year, I’ve struggled with both desperately loving restaurants and also wanting to overhaul — or even reject — them as an institution completely. What keeps my hope alive is when I spy, peeking through the cracks of venerable “institutions” of dining, those beams of light, pointing me towards something new.

I love restaurants. They create community through nourishment, creativity, and teamwork. I’m awed by the magic, especially if I know how the trick works.

Follow Natasha Pickowicz on Instagram @natashapickowicz. To learn more about National Restaurant Workers Day, taking place December 14, 2022, click here.

Natasha Pickowicz on Why Great Workplaces Make Great Restaurants

Recommended

“Taking Care of Our Own” with Chris Shepherd

How to Celebrate National Restaurant Workers Day 2022

Taking Ownership of Hospitality: 3 Stories of Worker-Owned Restaurants