5 Things I Learned Working as a Short-Order Chef

I was once in a workshop for senior managers at a major UK media company. Nobody really wanted to go and the workshop was flat as a pancake, but then the organiser asked one question that turned things around — ‘What was the best learning experience you’ve ever had?’

You can imagine the scene — a room of media executives asked to reflect and given the chance to humblebrag. One person said they learned the most on a scuba-diving holiday in the Maldives. For someone else, it was a ridiculously exclusive MBA school. Then the most senior person in the room dropped the name of their mentor, one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, and leant back in their chair. Game over.

As I was the least important person in the room, I went first. I didn’t really understand the game. Instead of using it as a chance to show status, I was thinking about the first job I had, working as a short-order chef in a provincial Bar and Grill. It wasn’t glamorous or powerful, but the things I learnt there were still some of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever had. So here they are for you — 5 Things I Learned Working as a Short Order Chef.

1 — Preparation is everything

Everybody knows this, but most of us still don’t do enough prep. If you’re going into a meeting with a client, and you’re relatively smart, you can normally wing it a bit. If you’re about to cook over 200 meals on a hot grill during a 5 hour shift, you just can’t wing it. Preparation is the single biggest factor in whether you’re about to have a great shift or a shit one. I used to love the prep time before the restaurant opened — we’d have a list of stuff to do, and methodically work through it, chopping vegetables, making sauces and dressing, putting meats in the smoker. Every minute put into prep saved about 15 minutes during the shift at the grill.

2 — The unit of delivery is the team

This title is nicked from the awesome Russell Davies when he worked at GDS. But it’s something I learned working in restaurants. Everyone had a specific role, from front of house to dishwasher, and a great night with lots of happy punters was the product of *everyone* doing their job right. Particularly in the kind of (definitely not Michelin-starred) restaurants I worked in, there was no hero chef — I might be on the grill one day, on starters the next, and washing up after that. We all needed to know what we had to do, and to trust everyone else to do their jobs well. Good teams are hard to build, but they’re the only way to do really great work. Restaurants never advertise for ‘ninja’ short-order cooks. There’s a good reason why they don’t.

3 — The only way to be good at something is to do it a lot

This was the reason I talked about being a chef in that workshop full of media execs. If you’re working as a short-order chef, you’re likely to cook the same dish dozens of times a night. If you do a couple of shifts a week, you can end up cooking the same dish hundreds or even thousands of times a year. I’ve probably cooked more hot dinners than you’ve had hot dinners. If you cook a recipe once at home, you might know how to cook it correctly. If you cook it a thousand times, you know 999 ways in which it might go slightly wrong.

4 — Instincts and habits are more important than skills

When I started working as a chef, I’d mainly use my eyes. I’d be watching stuff like a hawk, worrying that it was going to burn or boil over and I’d have to start again. As I got more experienced, I ended up using my ears and nose way more than my eyes. If you have multiple orders cooking at the same time, you can’t afford to stand still and watch them. You learn what a pan sounds like when it’s too hot, or the smell of onions just before they’re about to catch and char. You build habits and instincts that make it possible for you to do a dozen things at once. These make their way back into your prep, and over time make you much better at your job.

These aren’t ‘skills’ in the way people normally think of them — you don’t get certificates for them, and people don’t make youtube videos teaching you how to do them. They’re the context-specific hacks and lessons that you learn from doing something a lot. Skills show you could potentially be good at your job, but instincts and habits that you learn through experience mean you *are* good at your job. They’re also the biggest difference between a good leader and a bad one — a good leader teaches you about their instincts, a bad leader shows you their skills.

5 — Every job is just a step on the way to the next gig.

In the hospitality industry, staff turnover is ridiculously high. It’s incredibly rare for someone to stay in a job more than a couple of years, and for many employees (like me) working in restaurants is not a career move, but some way to earn hard cash whilst you’re at university or working out what you want to do with the rest of your life. This is just accepted as part of the challenge of running a restaurant. You’ll spend time recruiting and training people, and expect them to leave you after a couple of years and go to work somewhere else.

It’s surprising how this changes the way you think about your company — knowing you’re just a stepping stone between gigs has its problems (it makes exploitation easier, for example) but it also means that companies don’t try and make the workplace the answer for every need and ambition in their staff’s lives. There are a surprising number of creative and tech companies who try to blur the boundaries between work and life until their staff can’t tell the difference, and any activity outside of the cultural bubble of the office is almost frowned upon. Working at a restaurant takes up a huge amount of your time, but when you leave work, work stops. You go out and have a beer, or go to a club. You don’t get an email from your boss at 3am asking you to make them a burger right now. They know you are probably going to leave in a year or two, and you know that too. It’s in everyone’s interest to help you do the best job you can whilst you’re there, but there’s no expectation that this is going to be the place you spend the rest of your career.

This feels healthier to me, somehow. How would you build your team if you expected them to leave in a couple of years? How can you create a company that is a fantastic place for people to work before they go on and do something even more awesome?