Quality personnel: the key to unlocking successful future - Publisher's Perspective - Column

What's the most important single ingredient in a foodservice operation's success? Some of you may answer location, menu, decor, ambience, price, kitchen design, advertising, food production systems or even accounting controls.

While all of those elements are very important and plays a role in the success of a foodservice operation, the key to success in the foodservice business in people. Anyone can buy a great location, design a beautiful dining room and state-of-the-art kitchen, devise an exciting menu, produce food efficiently and effectively, and have a POS system and accounting controls that count every half-cent. We see it all the time. Then we ask why that restaurant failed. Because of the people.

The future success of your business, whether you're an independent or a multiunit foodservice operator, and the success of our industry depends on high-quality, motivated, committed and trained personnel. We've come a long way these past few decades in the consumer's mind in terms of how people who have careers in foodservice are perceived. Today we have celebrity chefs who get the notoriety of show business personalities.

Consumer media devote reams of pages and pictures and airtime to the restaurant business and the people in it. Many of our more flamboyant, independent entrepreneurial restaurateurs set lifestyle design and food trends through their restaurants and personalities. And many second- and and third-generation restaurateurs are proving successful with running the family business as well as with venturing out on their own.

We have several multiunit chain executives who are sought out as leaders and spokesmen for American industry today and are also spokesmen for many worthwhile social issues.

Yes, we can be proud as an industry for the position we now hold in the consumer's mind regarding careers in foodservice and the impact we've made on American life.

But how about the future? Where are we going to find the leaders of tomorrow, and how are we going to educate them? What do we do locally and nationally to generate young people's interest in a foodservice career? How many highschool career days are devoted to foodservice? How much recruiting is done on college and culinary campuses? Not much, I'm afraid.

If what we read is true, education throughout America is in decline. On the other hand, education in foodservice is still somewhat of a mystery. But America today has the largest number and best group of college and university culinary hospitality and management programs in the world.

Most of us don't really spend much time thinking about such programs even if we are aware of them. Some of us even have a negative view. We want only people who have rock-hard experience.

Yet through the years some very dedicated people have worked hard and diligently with the mission of teaching and building outstanding foodservice educational institutions. They've achieved that goal without a lot of support from our industry and, in many cases, without much support from their parent institution's management. These pioneer educators deserve our thanks and, more important, our support.

What a pleasure it is to visit a hotel, a restaurant, an executive dining room or other foodservice operation and meet the chef and manager and find that he or she is a graduate of a foodservice college or culinary school. Graduates are out there in great numbers, and their ranks are growing each year.

Look elsewhere in our industry and you will find the foodservice management and chef graduates holding positions with manufacturers in the test kitchen and sales departments. You will see them in the ranks of distributor sales teams and managing country and city clubs around America as well as tourist programs.

Here are a few suggestions:

(1) If you find a bright, highly energized young person, talk to him or her about a career in foodservice.

(2) Visit your local high-school career day and present foodservice oppotunities.

(3) Start a scholarship program for your employees and your employees' children.

(4) Support the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation and the IFMA Educational Foundation.

(5) Make a contribution to a foodservice college, university or culinary school program.

(6) Volunteer to sit on their boards.

(7) Volunteer to be a guest lecturer. You will have fun and maybe even learn something, too.

(8) Endow a chair.

(9) Donate the funds for construction of a building.

(10) Get to know the professors and instructors. There is not a more enthusiastic, energized and dedicated group on a campus anywhere in the world. They need your guidance, support and friendship.

Our future as an industry is in the next generation. Huge dividends will come today and tomorrow if we support these excellent educational programs.

COPYRIGHT 1991 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group