Happy Thursday

This week, Deirdre Auld came on the podcast. She is the CEO of Coda Restaurant Group in Boston. She came back to the restaurant industry after some time spent facilitating leadership development and executive coaching in the finance space, then co-founding a management company specializing in those things. Now back at her old stomping ground, Coda Restaurant Group, she has taken on the role of CEO and is helping them grow and evolve the business.  

The conversation started with Celine Dion and Poutine, you'll have to check out the episode to hear why.

Data has been the word of the day, every day for the past few weeks for me.  I have been on countless calls with customer hearing more about what challenges they have and how we can solve them.

Something that has been crystalizing for me is how critically important it is to not only be able to provide meaningful output of data to customers (e.g. if you put data into a system, the data that comes out should be exponentially more valuable), but also in the age of AI, it is imperative that you open up that data to allow customers to use it in their disparate systems as well as package it up for them in a way that makes it easy for them to get answers quickly.  

We've been rolling out a new meez intelligence platform in beta, and the reactions have been incredible.  That said, one of the biggest insights I've gleaned lately that we are now quickly enhancing is that every customer wants something slightly different.  Different variations of metrics, reports, notifications, analysis.

Every restaurant has similar data, generally speaking.

Ingredients, purchases, recipes, menu item costs, margins, sales, performance, etc. Metadata like nutrition, allergens, labor, production. But more often than not, each group wants a slightly different view of this data and a slightly different process, value engineering, and analysis they want to run on the data.

Historically, what operators have had is a standard list of reports and metrics and a few ways to customize them. But wouldn't it be much easier if we simply allow customers to express exactly what they want to see, how to display it, and what adjustments they'd like to be able to make with it, however works best for them?

If this sounds like something you've been thinking about, my team would love to hear from you!

Somewhat random recipe this week, but it's hot out, and I love grilling veggies and fish over an open fire in the summer, so sharing a Romesco Sauce that goes great with that if you're into it.

🤔🌶️ Hot Take

Skill Thinning Is Real, and AI Is Pouring Gas on It

Deirdre Auld shared her thoughts on skill thinning in a panel we did together in the spring on AI and restaurants.  Interestingly, on the same trip I spent time visiting a handful of customers up in Boston, and I heard the same sentiment from each of them.  New staff members starting with less and less skill than the ones before them.  Whether that be wine knowledge, service skills, knife skills, technical cooking chops, people skills, etc.  Moreover, many of them said there was also less desire to learn.  The wine classes they used to run for their team members are also thinning in participation, fewer cooks excited to learn new stations.  

I don't know if it has anything at all to do with AI, or rather a growing sentiment around the desire to work in restaurants.  That said, with over 267k jobs being slashed from big tech companies like Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, Meta, etc. over the past 2 years, I imagine there will be an increase in demand for the hospitality industry.                      

Another posit: Post-COVID, we lost a ton of people, middle management got hollowed out, and a lot of folks got promoted into GM and exec chef roles with way less time developing than they'd have gotten five years ago.

Very curious if this is something any of you are experiencing?

Either way, AI is certainly making the motivated people more motivated, and the unmotived even less motivated.

👉 Watch the clip on Instagram or LinkedIn

🎙️ The meez Podcast

Deirdre Auld on Leading With Curiosity, Not Fixing

Deirdre Auld runs Coda Restaurant Group in Boston (SRV, The Salty Pig, and Celine opening in Fort Point) and co-founded Tableside, a leadership-development company built specifically for restaurant managers.

She coaches the way she operates: default to questions, not answers. We got into what skill thinning is doing to the industry, why the best leaders resist the urge to fix, and why she tells tech vendors to call restaurants clients, not partners.

• What skill thinning is and how to fight it
• Leading with curiosity instead of jumping in to fix
• Building Tableside for restaurant managers
• Why a PIP can actually be a coaching tool
• Taking your opening team on the road to learn
• "Call us clients, not partners" and the vendor power problem

👉 Watch the full episode

Recipe:

Romesco Sauce

Romesco Sauce is a great example of why recipes are always unique to each kitchen.  And in the spirit of preventing skill thinning, this sauce has some great techniques within it that will keep you on your toes.

The sauce originated in Tarragona, on the Catalan coast, and it started with fishermen. Before it was the almond-and-pepper sauce everyone knows now, romesco was closer to a fish stew, the thing the fishermen threw together with the day's catch. It's unclear exactly what the sauce was or 'should be' exactly, and nobody knows what the word "romesco" means. (This is not a Ron Burgundy reference, seriously, I don't know where the word came from, if you know I'd love to hear, but I know it's not a whale's private part).

I do know that historically the sauce was made with Ñora chilies which are hard to come by. I've found the best comp for them are Mexican cascabel chilies. That said, I don't use either of those in this recipe, instead opting for piquillo peppers.

You'll also often see toasted bread included to thicken the sauce, but I don't find it's necessary, but I like to keep a little texture to the sauce with the nuts by not pureeing it too smooth.

It's a perfect summertime sauce btw. It goes fantastic with grilled vegetables and grilled fish. There is a similar sauce called salvitxada that is served with Calcots, a Spanish-style leek that is cooked over the fire, that people often confuse with romesco. That said, it's similar enough that I like to emulate it by poaching then charring leeks over the fire and serving with romesco. But classically, romesco would be served with fish.

👉 Get the recipe

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