Roland G. Henin

by Susan Crowther

  —Kevin Doherty

  Over a hundred years ago, on the corner of Delaware Avenue and North Street, in Buffalo, New York, a young business is born. From its humble beginnings grew a humble giant.

  It all began with a simple idea based on a foundation of service. In 1915, brothers Marvin, Charles, and Louis Jacobs took the first step toward realizing the American dream of their immigrant parents by establishing a modest popcorn and peanuts vending business in Buffalo, N.Y.

  Through hard work, dedication, and innovative thinking, that small business has grown into one of the largest and most successful hospitality companies in the world. The arc of our story spans generations and industries, but threaded throughout has been the kind of insight that’s allowed us to see into what fans crave, travelers need, and people desire. It’s been a century, in other words, of anticipating the next big thing.

  At 100 years, Delaware North now celebrates a three billion-a-year industry, spanning the globe from the United States and Canada, England, Australia, Singapore, and beyond. The legacy endures today through Chairman Jeremy Jacobs—a son of one of the founding Jacobs brothers—and his three sons, Jerry, Lou, and Charlie, who are all company chief executive officers. In 2015, we celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of the Jacobs family and ushered in the next century of dynamic growth and success.1

  After eighty years, Delaware North (DN) executives decided it was time to make a major change. They invited Roland Henin to interview for the position of corporate chef. He was met with some resistance. Why hire a French chef, some big shot CMC? Who needs that crap? People don’t pay attention to the food. They’re here to watch the game, roll the dice, or hike a canyon. Who cares if the food is gourmet standard or classically prepared?

  This was 1997, and back then, they may have had a valid point … but it turns out, people do care, and they do pay attention. Food is emotional; it anchors an experience. One of the Jacobs sons, Jerry, saw the future mission: bring the company up. The face of foodservice in these organizations—sports arenas, casinos, airports, and national parks and resorts—was changing, and Henin was hired to make that change.

  When Chef Henin was hired to revolutionize the foodservice industry at DN, he understood the resistance, and he also understood that change was worth the fight. This sentiment was summed up with Henin’s trademark wit and candor (and butchered English) in his home run comment to Jerry Jacobs: Jerry, I don’t want to help keep knocking on door to get business. I want them to knock on my door. Bringing this concept to DN was not revolutionary to Henin; it was business as usual. He was the man who would shepherd in Jerry Jacobs’s mission.

  “I thought when we hired him that he was an excellent choice, but Roland has proved to be flat-out the best chef I’ve ever worked with,” said Bruce Fears, DN president in 2003. “With Chef Roland, it is all about the food, not about him or his attitude. I know it sounds clichéd, but he has taken our company to the next level.”

  Chef Henin’s mission was to establish a foundation: develop the fundamentals of classical techniques and make sure DN executive chefs knew how to cook and how to teach cooking. The vision behind the mission was to instill a value—have chefs and cooks care about the mission. This was a much tougher sell. The culture of high volume and shortcuts begins at the bottom rung and pervades. In order to achieve his mission and vision, Chef Henin had to infiltrate their kitchens, into the nooks and crannies of each soul.

  Sounds romantic, but how does one do that? One must travel a lot and constantly and be with one’s people. That is what Roland Henin has done for the past twenty years. Until recently, Henin traveled over two hundred days per year visiting each facility and collaborating with not only each executive chef, but also their brigade. The advantage to this methodical approach is to have access to his mentees. These chefs, in turn, become the mentors for the next generation. The vision is about more than training chefs; it is about creating values. Culinary arts will be the next wave! Chef Henin believes if you invest in employees and invest in cuisine, you invest in your own future.

  When faced with expansion and promotion, DN chooses to hire internally. Investing from the inside has pros and cons. It may be more difficult to develop chefs for certification, but in the long run it benefits the company. Executive chefs know their staff’s strengths and limitations. The staff knows company culture, so there is less of a learning curve. Hopefully they repay the investment with loyalty and remain with DN, but if they do choose to leave, they have DN to thank. This good extends into their next venture.

  SUSAN: Why are there so few Certified Master Chefs (and Certified Master Pastry Chefs)?

  RGH: No one in the system is investing much in their preparation. In this business, you are always a teacher. You teach, coach, and groom your people. When I taught, I did okay. I was rough around the edge and demanding, but this is what you do in your daily life—constantly teach people. DN is privately owned. This company is one of the best to invest in its people to prepare chefs for certification. This exists very little in our business. Most want a quick return on their investment. As far as I know, there is no other company, organization, restaurant, other than DN, who offers this kind of preparation, Practicals, and events for chefs. Even the CIA doesn’t do that [for their chefs]. They may offer the certification tuition and ACF membership fees. If you pass the tests, you will proctor in the future. DN gets it back—an investment in themselves.

  The industry is notorious for not doing much. When you ask somebody to pay for your ACF membership or to go to the conventions, they bark, “BLLALAAAYAYAYAYYYAAHHH!!!” DN is a model that should be used more often. If our industry did, we’d have more Master Chefs. Everyone would be teaching, from left to right.

  SUSAN: Were you the catalyst for DN?

  RGH: I think, to a certain extent, yes. I was with DN for twenty years. At the time I came, people thought, What, a Master Chef? What do we need a Master Chef? And, a French one, at that! We are popcorn! We are peanuts! Yes, it was a popcorn-pretzel-beer company. But since then, the face of foodservice in these venues has changed tremendously. In the last ten years, the customer wants good food. In the park, they want healthy food. They go there for the pure air and the exercise, and they don’t want to put garbage in their body. We’ve moved to more local, sustainable, organic … more what’s good for you.

  There are a lot of things we’ve changed in the past twenty years, and it wasn’t that easy. Don’t get me wrong, it was a constant battle, but I could take it. I had wide shoulder and thick spine and hard head and I didn’t quit. I didn’t lie down when I was beat up by all those people who wanted the short time, the short-term vision of we want the return today, we want the number today—this week, this month. We don’t care what’s going to happen in a few years; we want it now. You can’t blame middle management—they are paid to protect the “bottom line,” and in fact, they receive bonuses for saving money, so it’s in their best interest to not invest in the long-term development. Sure, it’s been a battle with the middle management, but the top people are always behind me and supportive. The big guys upstairs running the show realize that in the foodservice, they have to come up to snuff to what is happening in the rest of the world. That is why, twenty years ago, somebody hired me to realize, hey, we’re going to need that kind of help, if we want to be ruling to where we want to be.

  I developed a culinary council. The food and beverage departments from every area would get together and discuss our food programs and our challenges. How can we unify? Their food was just terrible, so we improved that. We eliminated the free lobster and crab legs, which are expensive. It doesn’t do much. We made better food.

  I developed some regional chefs, administered mandatory training and then, certification. The first thing I did was to develop sanitation class. In these restaurants, we had the food-borne illness … visitors got that everywhere, all the time, my God. We held sanitation class for four hours at a time. We had to pay the chefs and cooks for thei
r time in class. We also needed people to fill their shifts—extra labor. I had people against me because this would cost. The general manager, the president of Yosemite, came to me and said, “What’s the return on the investment?!”

  I said, “I can’t tell you until you tell me how much the return is when we have somebody who is sick, and we have to take them to the hospital, or we have to comp them food and lodging. What is the suffering of those people worth? I mean, it’s not pretty. It’s not nice, and it’s painful!” These people don’t deserve to be treated this way! They deserve to have good healthy food.

  What’s the return on the investment? It’s true, it cost money to educate … we’d have to pay those people for mandatory training, so we had thirty hours by twenty-nine chefs in the first training session on sanitation. Calculate thirty hours by twenty-nine people … that’s nine hundred hours at whatever they made, fifteen to twenty-five bucks an hour. That was a lot of money over a period of time. What’s the return on the investment?

  The return on the investment was that, through education, we basically eliminated food-borne illness on our property. We have one now, one in a blue moon, a mistake … somebody left a sandwich in the back window of their car, and then they ate it, or the altitude or the alcohol got them sick, but not our food. The middle management, they were not receptive. They didn’t think like that. What do you need sanitation class for? Chefs just want to get out of work. They didn’t realize it cost them more to have people sick than it cost to educate. They’d ask, “Can you write policy?”

  I say, “No, I cannot write policy. That’s not going to affect anything like this. We need to educate. We need to teach them to understand what they must do to not make people sick: cool down your stock and sauce; bring back to a boil, when you reheat; wash your hands, and all that kind of stuff.”

  The first month I was in Yosemite, we had suspected food-borne illness at least half a dozen a week. Aaah, God. It was terrible. People were sick. It was sad. We had to change that, and the best way was education. It took some doing … but now, everybody is okay. Everybody is on board.

  SUSAN: Sometimes management will fight all the way but then give in and even later, glorify it!

  RGH: Jerry wanted to advertise the certification, so he could market over the competition: all our salaried and sous-chefs are professionally certified by the ACF. It’s a big deal! Sure it costs money [laughs]: they have to take class; they have to do the Practical. But it’s going to be a big plus when you go to advertise. It took a helluva time for middle management to accept that. It was okay because I was strong … I could kick butt when it was needed. There is still a small remain of that kind of thinking, but gradually, most are seeing the meaning of that. Their numbers are better because they don’t have to spend that money on fixing things that had been done badly: we don’t have to pay all those fees for doctor, flying to a hospital after the park clinic … comping, comping … avoid a lawsuit, all kinds of things. We effectively eliminated all food-borne illnesses in our national park. And now, the chefs and sous-chefs are also becoming better culinarians!

  It took some doing to change the concept. The staff in the park, especially a park like Yosemite, you have all kinds of people. They are not cook, not food people. They are mountain climber, rock climber, or they are trying to escape something or whatever it is. Doesn’t matter. Your staff is not always qualified, so it took some doing to change the concept of getting more professional people. We got better staffing too, instead of just hiring somebody who was driving by or running out of gas. We would hire them because they were handy, but they were not what we needed. When I first implemented the Practical for all the salaried chef positions, HR said I was never satisfied. The test took four hours of cooking, and only two out of five would make it. HR would say, “We can’t get people good enough for you!” What can I say? It’s your job to get them. I test them out, but they say I was too demanding in the Practical. That’s still part of the fighting, you have to go against, in your own town. You know what I am saying … wide shoulder, thick spine. It all worked out okay.

  The Corporate Chef: Delaware North

  If I questioned Chef, “Am I doing it right?” He’d respond, “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  —Chris Matta

  When you have a chance to meet Yoda, you better go and say hi.

  —Peter Afouxinedes

  Even if you’re one of the best, there’s always something that you can learn.

  —David Coombs

  Henin is brutally honest. Honesty is to help you move along. If you don’t want to learn and grow, don’t ask.

  —Mark Mistriner

  Percy Whatley

  Vice President, Food & Beverage, Delaware North Parks & Resorts

  Chef Roland explained that I should proceed with caution; advancement too quickly could be detrimental. Looking back on that part of my career, I was far from ready!

  PERCY: I met Chef Roland in May of 1998. I had just returned to Yosemite after my two-year culinary program at the CIA and a brief few months of employment in Lake Tahoe directly after graduating in October of 1997. I was hired back in Yosemite as junior sous-chef at the Ahwahnee Hotel. I was twenty-nine years old when I met Chef, who had been hired as the corporate chef of Yosemite. I did not know the name, but having recently come from culinary school, I was certainly well aware of what those three letters, “CMC,” at the end of a chef’s name meant.

  My first kitchen encounter was a few days later. I was serving pork tenderloin for the nightly special with tomatillo verde sauce, sweet potato purée, and sautéed summer squash (why can I still remember this nineteen years later?), and he gave me a quick demo on plate presentation before the staff pre-shift. It was a mellow encounter; he was just doing his mentor thing, and this continued every time he walked into our kitchen. There was always something he could and would show our team, a little nugget of learning, on any given day.

  I was interested in being ACF-certified that first year. He walked me through the process of the application and verified that I had my certification “packet” complete. This was back in the day where all you had to do was apply and take the written exam; there was no cooking practical exam as part of the process. The only level you had to cook for was the CMC. I breezed through the written exam, signed the application, and was good to go as Certified Sous Chef (CSC). He took notice of my desire to continue to learn and grow and move my professional life forward. He gave advice on what it means to develop oneself in a profession. If you needed your car fixed, would you go to the shop that had the sign stating certified mechanic on duty, or would you go to the next shop that had no certifications? The choice is easy.

  Fast-forward a year-and-a-half later, to August 1999. I had the opportunity to take over as the executive chef of the Wawona Hotel, a small, seasonal hotel twenty-five miles to the south of Yosemite Valley, and I seized it. I had my first child on the way and needed to further my career and compensation, as life dictates at times. Chef Roland explained that I should proceed with caution; I was not fully prepared for this step, and I should continue to learn cooking at this stage of my life. Advancement too quickly could be detrimental. I shrugged this off, thinking about my family and money from a promotion. Looking back on that part of my career, I was far from ready, and if I were to run that kitchen now, it would be completely different! I offered fine dining in a place that was not built for it and the guests were not expecting it.

  During this time, I moved to the next step in the certification process, Certified Chef de Cuisine. In 2003, I had the opportunity to return to the Ahwahnee as the executive sous-chef. In 2005, I was honored with the appointment to executive chef. This was another step in having to overcome the “Roland G. Henin hurdle.” He did not want me to take this step … he said I was not ready, again. Our organizational chart does not give him that ability to flatly state the answer “no”; this decision lies in the hands of the property general manager. I was supported by the GM,
but not by Chef Henin. This, again, is another scenario where reflection clarifies. I was not ready, not by a long shot. Those first two years were very, very difficult. I simply worked my ass off to overcome my weaknesses. I took Dale Carnegie classes for leadership. I competed for my first time in 2006. I took classes at the CIA Greystone, and worked hard to achieve the ProChef Level III certification, as well as ACF Certified Executive Chef (CEC). By 2007, I was in much better shape, able to build a great team around me and finally able to get my head above water.

  In late 2007, Chef called me on a random day. He stated that he was given the opportunity to coach the Bocuse d’Or USA team. Gavin Kaysen was a regular guest chef at our Chef’s Holidays, so I had a lead on what this competition was all about. Especially now that chefs Thomas and Daniel were involved, things were going to change in that arena. During this call, Chef Henin encouraged me to apply to compete. He told me I can cook, and I deserve to be a part of this. I was so honored by this compliment and he certainly recognized my journey over the last couple of years. Maybe it was all of the extra effort that I took in developing my skills over the course of the almost ten years we had worked together. In November 2007, I was called by the Bocuse d’Or USA and selected to be a part of this amazing competition. Now is when things get pretty interesting….

  I had three months to prepare for the competition—not much time. Chef Henin came for a couple of practice sessions to observe and offer insight. On the first session, he blasted our performance: fish was overcooked; garnishes were garbage; flavors did not stand out; shitty, shitty, shitty! This was my first experience of an angry Chef Roland. I wasn’t sure how to handle it; all this time we had worked together, this side of him never reared its head before! Next session, the same thing: “No! Not good enough! You have to think about the message you are trying to tell the tasting judges! What is your food trying to say? What cooking are you doing to make the flavors better? You don’t have it right!” And off he goes, without any more words of wisdom. He was not about to answer those questions for you, no spoon-feeding … no sirree. Perplexed is a good description of the emotional reaction, when these encounters occur with Chef Henin. It takes your breath away, and the best medicine is a healthy reflection.