He was a spokesman for Calphalon, the cookware manufacturer an hour and a half west of Cleveland, which featured him in a splashy double-page ad that opened Bon Appétit and paid him for appearances. When the company brought out a line of pans, they might package it with Symon’s sauces, and Symon would sell thousands of units at a single pop. The sauce line earned him another ten grand a year, and this was sweet because it required no work on his part. He was also the spokesman for Vita-Mix blenders, the high-performance series designed for home use, for which he did an hour-long instructional DVD and made appearances, most recently four hours’ worth of cooking demos featuring the appliance at a convention in Las Vegas.
How all this TV and national spokesman business got rolling from his relatively tiny outpost in a decrepit neighborhood in Cleveland is illustrative of the dynamics of chefs in the media. In 1998 he won a Food & Wine Best New Chefs award, given to ten chefs each year. That award, he says, was the catalyst. It led to the attention of the Food Network, which gave him a guest spot on Sara Moulton’s show, which led to a couple of appearances on Ready Set Cook, the deceased cooking game show (in fact, the place where Ming Tsai got his start on television). His lively personality on these shows brought the Melting Pot offer. These appearances led to the spokesman jobs for two high-profile companies and their nationally marketed products. An offer from restaurateurs to open a place in the heart of Manhattan was soon to come. One thing leads to another.
On April 30, 2005, I headed down to Lola to watch the restaurant’s last night of service. After more than eight years, Michael and his wife and partner, Liz, were closing Lola. For one month the space would be under redesign and reconstruction, including the installation of a huge wood-burning oven. In June it would reopen as Lolita, a restaurant serving more casual food than Lola. Michael and Liz would move Lola to Cleveland’s downtown on a redeveloped East Fourth Street. His Lola had been a major force in the rebirth of the once sketchy Tremont neighborhood. There was every reason Lola could be a big part of the uplifting of another downtrodden piece of the city. To support the growth, he and Liz partnered with his friend Doug Petkovic, who’d opened a competing restaurant across the street from Lola (one of many that had come to the area in the wake of Lola’s success) and who would now oversee general operations as Michael worked in all areas back of the house and Liz in all areas pertaining to front of the house for all three restaurants.
Symon was successful and busy, but for all the work, he wasn’t getting rich. He chuckled at the idea that he was raking in the dough—as many in town simply assumed, given his renown and packed restaurant. “I didn’t get into this business to make money, to get rich, but I do want to make a decent living,” he said. And perhaps the varied endeavors will bring that in, eventually. Till then, “I’m just a bald guy in Cleveland trying to make a buck!” he said, laughing.
Few outside the industry realize how little money chef-owners make. Michael and Liz, for instance, paid themselves fifty grand apiece out of profits. Additional profits went back into the business, toward everything from new purchases and repairs to renovating the entire upstairs into a demo kitchen, offices, and private dining rooms. Michael and Liz also bought health insurance, including dental, for their cooks, all of whom are salaried, and many servers, some of whom are—almost unheard of in small chef-owned restaurants. They sent sous-chef Matt “Chatty” Harlan to California for an eight-month stage at the French Laundry. Chatty will be one of the opening chefs at the new Lola. The additional revenue from spokesperson gigs and demos for the Pork Council, a total of about $75,000, came in handy: They bought their first house in 1998, and he occasionally splurged (bought himself a Harley, enjoyed his golf, got himself a really elaborate tattoo from back to shoulder to chest, an Asian-inspired representation of his family, and then, on a whim, had some flying pigs tattooed on the other side of his chest with the ebullient and emphatic words “Got Pork”). But he and Liz didn’t want for anything, and they wouldn’t have a lot of time to spend money even if they suddenly had a lot of it. The reason he was successful in the first place, the reason he got that Food & Wine award, was at least in part because he was at the restaurant all the time.
For Polcyn the situation was not dissimilar, though he paid himself more, 10 percent of sales, which were currently in the $1.5 million range (pretty standard as far as chef compensation goes, and hardly extravagant, especially considering the two college tuitions under way and an expected three more during the next ten years). The breakdown of business expenses at Five Lakes Grill was similar to that of most restaurants and was difficult to change.
Cost of goods, food, and wine at restaurants generally runs 30 to 35 percent of sales, labor is 35 percent, overhead (rent, utilities, linens, maintenance, et cetera) is 20 percent, which leaves a profit of about 10 percent. And that profit almost always has to go right back into the business. The chef-owner increases profit by keeping a tight control on overhead, and/or increasing sales without raising overhead and labor. The cost of goods would always be proportionate to sales. Labor costs fluctuate but only incrementally. And that, in a nutshell, is the restaurant’s profit-and-loss scenario. It varies according to type of restaurant. High-volume places with low food cost have a higher percentage of profits relative to sales. Low-volume places, with high food and overhead costs—the Manhattan four-star restaurant, for instance—can expect considerably less profit for higher sales. But generally, the basic model is difficult to change.
At Lola, Michael Symon had higher food costs than was normal for a restaurant, as much as 37 percent. This was because in his market, he could sell his food for only so much. This wasn’t Chicago. In Chicago, at Blackbird, for instance, a restaurant comparable to Lola, chef Paul Kahan charged up to $16 for an appetizer and $32 for an entrée. Symon’s highest prices were $13 and $28. But Symon paid the same prices for the products he used as Kahan did for his. What compensated for this higher food cost was a lower overhead—Cleveland was a lot cheaper to live in, so things like rent and utilities and services were less expensive.
In the last year it was open, Lola did nearly $2 million in sales, taking in an average of $55 per customer. Opening as Lolita, a much more casual place, he expected to average $35 per person, but he figured its more casual menu would allow for more covers, which would make revenue about the same. When he opened Lola in downtown Cleveland, he would face higher overhead than he’d had at the old Lola, but the restaurant was bigger and so could seat more people (105 seats rather than the current 65) than he could at the original location, which was typically booked six to eight weeks in advance. After eight years, he’d begun to grow the business. He and Liz could expect to double their revenue once the debts taken on for the restaurant had been paid.
What are you to do, though, if you’re Melissa Kelly in Maine and know you’re going to lose money by staying open January, February, and March just to keep your staff? While I was at Primo, she’d gotten a call from Tom Gutow, chef-owner of the Castine Inn, a B&B in nearby Castine, with the news that he couldn’t afford to keep the restaurant going. Forget about the work—work was hard no matter where you were—the restaurant wasn’t making it financially.
Consider Melissa’s personal situation again, in terms of work versus compensation. She arrives at the restaurant at nine A.M. She works all day on her feet, prepping for that night’s dinner, dealing with staff issues, making up a menu, taking calls from the press, running her daily meetings—what most people consider a normal working day. At dinnertime, she really begins to work, works really hard, from six P.M. to eleven P.M., expediting and often cooking as well. For the following hour and a half, she’ll finish up dinner service and clean the kitchen with her staff. Then she’ll head up to the office for an hour, and with any luck be home by two A.M., in bed with a couple of books and a notepad. This is her schedule seven days a week, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, with only July 4th off, and beyond, till the restaurant slows to a five-day service.
For this, the business pays her about $50,000. Price takes the same. Primo had about the same number of seats as Lola and the same check average. In 2004 Primo did $1,325,000 in sales, 70 percent of it from June through October. Their food cost is normal, 32 percent, and their labor is a little high, 38 percent, though Melissa’s and Price’s salaries are included here, as is the gardener’s. What kills them is their overhead, about 28 percent—that’s the garden, the mortgage on the house, taxes on the land, and three months of very slow business. (In 2004 they lost $140,000 during the slow months—by staying open; in 2005 they closed for three months and lost only $90,000. “We saved fifty thousand dollars by going on vacation!” says Price.) Add up those percentages and you see that they’re left with a 2 percent profit. Moreover, food costs are rising, but they don’t feel they can raise their prices—that is, expenses are increasing, but sales are staying the same—further cutting into that sliver of profit.
“What we need is twenty more seats,” Price says. That would change the whole picture considerably. It would give them thirty more covers a night without substantially raising labor. That would amount to as much as $150,000 more in sales during their peak months. But putting on an addition to the house to create those seats would cost them $300,000, and Price doesn’t need that kind of anxiety—they’re working hard enough as it is.
And forget about saving money for their future.
“That’s the scary part about this business,” Melissa said. “We don’t have a 401(k) plan. That’s why we did the partnership with Marriott.”
In 2002 the Marriott International contacted Melissa and Price to ask them to open a Primo in the Orlando hotel the corporation was opening the following year in conjunction with the Ritz-Carlton, which would include in its space a Norman’s, an outpost of the well-known Miami restaurant created by Norman Van Aken, regarded as the father of New World cuisine.
Hotel chains across the country had begun taking a lesson from Vegas, the country’s megalopolis of celebrity-chef outposts, a movement likely started when a man named Sheldon Gordon lured Wolfgang Puck into the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in 1992. Emeril Lagasse was not long behind Puck. Then a bona fide French fine-dining guy, the late Jean-Louis Palladin, opened Napa in the Rio, and pushing the boulder over the crest of the hill was Steve Wynn, who brought multiple chefs into the Bellagio, and Rob Goldstein, who lured them into the Venetian (Emeril’s Delmonico Steakhouse there did a staggering $18 million last year). The avalanche of chefs, from TV stars to French three-stars, is still pouring in.
It happened in Vegas, so hotel executives no doubt asked why not in Orlando, Seattle, Santa Fe, Atlanta? These cities didn’t have the tourist concentration that Vegas had, but Vegas proved that people wanted to go to name-brand chefs’ restaurants. Todd English is a big name in several cities—he has his signature Boston restaurant, Olives, in the W Hotel in Manhattan, the St. Regis in Aspen, the Bellagio in Vegas, and elsewhere. He opened a restaurant in a Seattle Marriott called the Fish Club. Marriott then asked him to open a place in the new Orlando hotel. But the timing and the place weren’t right. With English out, the Marriott executive chef brought Melissa’s name to the table as the hotel searched for a well-known. Why? He was from Maine and knew her from there. She was a viable contender to the hotel suits because of her frequent appearances in the national food press.
So they called her, Melissa explained to me, told her they wanted her to open a restaurant for them, told her they’d make it worth her while. She told them she didn’t like the idea but had to admit the extra income was appealing. Well then, they said, sensing victory, why don’t you come on down and cook for us, just tell us what you want to cook and we’ll have it here for you.
It rubbed Melissa the wrong way. Look, she said, I don’t even know if I want to do this. Why do you want me to cook for you if you already know you want me to open a restaurant, and if I do cook for you, I’ll bring my own food, how do I know what you’ll get me—my food is the whole point.
She’s a pretty, petite thing—just don’t fuck with her.
She and Price talked it over. She didn’t want to do this—she was working hard enough as it was—but they sure could use that cash. The two restaurants did have alternating seasons—that was a positive. She was worried about losing control, diminishing her reputation, but thinking ahead, they both knew they had no plan for the future. She flew to Orlando, cooked the executives ten courses, and they loved her food. She would ultimately give in to their offer, which was fairly standard for a chef such as Melissa. The big corporation pays the chef a onetime licensing fee for the use of the restaurant name and her name, and for her to set up and staff a restaurant and get it up and running. They also pay her a monthly management fee, which is a percentage of that month’s sales.
But—she would agree to do this only if they agreed to her requests: They had to put in a garden (she was known for her garden), she had to be allowed to purchase as much organic product as she wanted (and not be restricted by Marriott’s protocols, a common gripe among independent chefs within hotels, forced to buy specific products), and the hotel had to have a recycling program.
They agreed, and Melissa was able to install one of her trusted chefs as chef de cuisine, a mother of four who needed the stability of a corporate-controlled restaurant. (I’d worked for a Marriott, and the health insurance alone was almost worth the job.)
“It’s for our retirement,” she explained to me, almost apologetically, it seemed.
Two years after opening, the relationship had proven to be productive. Yes, it was more work, and she was forced to fly down and do cooking benefits, which was especially annoying during the summer months in Maine. But it gave her staff new opportunities for advancement, and she felt good about being the cause of the Marriott’s recycling program and their increasing use of organic farmers. Moreover, it promised some financial security for her and Price’s future. Indeed, the experience proved so good that the following winter, she gave in to Price’s wishes and closed Primo for three months. During this time, they worked in Orlando a bit, then moved to the Southwest, to open a third Primo, this one at JW Marriott’s Starr Pass Resort and Spa in Arizona’s Tucson Valley. And when they reopened in Maine in April 2005, she found that her fears of losing her staff were for naught. She had been able to keep the key players in her kitchen, all but Art, who’d married and returned to his hometown of Rochester, New York. Joe moved into Art’s spot, Aaron became sous-chef, the fair Lindsey had moved up to wood oven, and even Chris, the CIA extern, had graduated and returned to a full-time position, taking Lindsey’s spot on garde manger.
These were all good stories about hard-working chefs in small markets, but what were the broader ramifications of what was happening here? Certainly Michael Symon’s deciding to partner with a friend to run three restaurants in his hometown, to reopen his flagship restaurant in a new location, the owners of which had, in his words, thrown him a bag of cash to build and outfit the restaurant he wanted, requiring him and Liz to take on a personal loan but no investors. They owned their own businesses. His devoted sous-chefs Chatty and Frank could, after eight years, get a much-needed break and change of venue, a brand-new kitchen. Others at Lola would move up to take over for Chatty and Frank. Frankie would move from bartender to beverage manager for the operations. The business was growing—a good thing. Likewise for Melissa and Price. And for Thomas Keller, yes? Growth was hard but good if you did it right—three new restaurants, a bakery, two books, a line of silver, a line of porcelain, and more. Grant Achatz, at age thirty-one, was about to open his own restaurant. Assuming this restaurant is successful, what will the business climate be for him when he’s ready to grow, when his Alinea becomes not just his restaurant but the flagship? Will he want to open clones of his four-star edge cuisine? Will he open more casual restaurants that don’t require his continuous time and attention, ones that he might be able to replicate easily? Would he design products for his unusual style of coo
king, unusual serving pieces, for instance? Would he do books? Would he—BAM!—find his way onto TV? Will he…open in Vegas?
The food world had changed and was changing still, maybe faster now than ever. Opportunities abounded. Who knew where it was going? Often it seemed the possibilities were limited only by a chef’s imagination. This was exactly why Tim Ryan at the CIA all but insisted that incoming students plan to stay for four years, learn how to perform in the business world as well as how to sauté and braise. They weren’t just training broiler cooks anymore—the industry was much bigger than that. The CIA wanted to prepare its graduates for the uncertain, possibility-rich future and to nurture the next Wolfgang Puck, the next culinary innovator, the young man or woman who was not just going to open up the next great American restaurant but who was going to anticipate the next new trend in food and culture, and give her or him all the tools they’d need to ride that wave to the land of milk and honey, fame and fortune, and a place in culinary lore.
In order to guess where that place might be, it’s necessary to understand where the best chefs are now in our culture, what is available to the most successful of them, and what they are choosing to do, given a wealth of ideas (ranging from innovative to harebrained), given an abundance of offers (ranging from noble to lucrative to sketchy), and given their own personal tangle of unarticulated, poorly understood, ghost-itch goals and hungers.
The Reach of a Chef Page 22
