The Garnish: A Podcast for Restaurant People

Ashish Alfred is the chef-owner of three restaurants in the Baltimore area: Duck Duck Goose Baltimore, Duck Duck Goose Bethesda, and George’s Chophouse. He’s also over five years sober and extremely open about his lifelong struggle with mental health. 

We chatted about sobriety in the industry, how he manages 65 staff members across three restaurants, how he strives for an outstanding guest experience, and what he’d advise a friend...

Today on The Garnish, we’re talking about restaurant renovations. We spoke to Dala Al-Fuwaires, a restaurant designer at FJI Design, about how to renovate a restaurant on a budget, and how to build your restaurant brand. Then, we also chatted with two restaurateurs — Alex Garcia and Steven Darwin —  who’ve recently built out new locations of their restaurants and have some lessons to share. 

This episode is brought to you by Toast ...

Irene Li, the founder of Mei Mei in Boston, MA, incorporates constant training into the jobs at Mei Mei: staff learn the finances behind the restaurant thanks to open-book management, they run peer trainings on everything from herbs to pronouns, and they also get external trainings, like one on service for those with alzheimers and dementia. She invests in her staff by teaching them everything she knows, and encouraging them to tea...

This episode is a rebroadcast of our February interview with Erin Wade, founder of Homeroom in Oakland, CA, interviewed by Allie Van Duyne and Tamara Portman. Wade got famous in the industry for how she and her staff created a system to deal with harassment, but Wade is also know for her  commitment to making Homeroom a truly diverse work environment: more than 70% of the company’s leaders are women and people of color.

The audio s...

Steven Darwin is the co-founder of Darwin’s, a four-location cafe in Cambridge, MA. He opened the first location 27 years ago with his wife and co-founder, Isabel, and since then, Darwin and his team of managers have learned a lot about hiring. He says that you can train someone to do just about any job in a cafe, but you can’t train personality — and you can usually tell within a few minutes if someone is right for the job.

Thanks...

Leslie Ciccone is the owner of (swah-rey), a two-location (soon to be four location) dessert bar in St Petersburg, Florida. Her whole business model is centered around kindness, and she aims to create a work environment for young women that’s supportive and challenging, and that sets a standard of how they should let themselves be treated by an employer.  

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Logan Hostettler is the owner of 1894 Lodge in New Washington, Indiana, a town of around 700 people. Hostettler heavily cross-trains his kitchen staff so that everyone knows how to do everything, which really helps on a small team. He also told me about how talking about mental health openly is crucial to the success of his team, and how he’s been able to watch a lot of young people on his staff rise to the occasion when given new ...

This episode is a rebroadcast of our June interview with Ryan Egozi, director of operations at SuViche restaurant group in Miami, FL. He told us about how he and his team realized that it’s best to hire people whose values align to that of your team, and then train them to do the work well. He also discussed the two different profit-sharing programs at SuViche and other ways they show appreciation to their staff.

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How do you keep your staff happy? How do you create a work environment that your staff want to stay in? Is there a new way to hire, train, and retain your staff that works better than the status quo?

The Garnish Staff Series is (almost!) here to answer those pressing questions. It's made up of seven 15-20 minute episodes, each an interview with a restaurateur, owner, or chef who’s going above and beyond for the happiness of their s...

Today on The Garnish, we sat down with Eric Cacciatore, host of Restaurant Unstoppable. He grew up in his parents’ restaurant, worked in a few more, and then spent some time as a commercial pilot and a winemaker’s assistant. Since 2014, he’s produced over 600 episodes of Restaurant Unstoppable. He aims to find out what makes a restaurant - and a restaurateur - successful. He’s interviewed over 600 restaurant professionals, and he’s...

Nowadays, it seems like everyone wants to open a restaurant. It’s fun to daydream about what you’d put on your menu, how you’d decorate the space, what kind of boss you’d be, and how you’d assemble your dream team.

One big question that people love to ignore when daydreaming is “how will I fund my restaurant?”

When it comes to funding a restaurant, there are many, many different ways to go about procuring capital. In this episode o...

Today on The Garnish we’ve got an episode about being a parent in the restaurant industry. In this episode, three moms and two dads from all over the restaurant industry give their perspectives on one of the greatest challenges to modern work-life balance: restaurant work and parenthood. 

We discuss the toughest parts of being a restaurant industry parent, as well as the unexpected joys that come with it.

Meet our guests:

• Kati...

When designing a restaurant, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of choices to make. All these choices, large and small, contribute to your overall vibe – but some of the decisions you make may be ruining the guest experience for your customers with disabilities.

Today we’ve got an interview with Justin Alpert, a restaurant architect who is passionate about making restaurants more accessible to all customers. His twin brother, a...

Today we’ve got an episode about gratuity-free restaurants.

On two opposite corners of the US, two neighborhood restaurants are currently thriving on a gratuity-free, profit-sharing model. In this episode, we’ll hear all about what it’s like to work at Juliet, in Somerville, MA, and at barcito, in Los Angeles. We’ll dive into the challenges of implementing this model, as well as the joys of gratuity-free work, including stable inc...

Content warning: this episode contains discussions about addiction, substance abuse disorder, alcoholism, and drug use.

Today we’ve got an episode about addiction in the restaurant industry. While alcoholism affects people in every line of work, it’s particularly prevalent in the restaurant world, and the surging opioid crisis has also made its way into the kitchens and dining rooms of our industry.

We spoke to three people who ea...

Danny Meyer came to Boston to give a keynote speech at Toast's company kickoff, and on the same day, Toast CEO Chris Comparato interviewed him for our first episode of Season 2 of The Garnish.

Danny talked about the importance of focusing on how you make your guests feel, why Union Square Hospitality Group hires for empathy, the future of the restaurant industry, the necessary combination of tech and touch, and how his restaurants ...

Live from Food for Thought in New York City, this episode of The Garnish features Bareburger's Paul Zarmati, Tacombi's Luis Berenbau, Mulberry & Vine's Luis Reyes, 16 Handles' Roman Gorbach, and Stephen Van Note of Sarabeth's, Dock's, and Jane Restaurant. These prolific New York restaurateurs speak to the biggest trends they have noticed in the NYC area and how they are spilling out to the rest of the country.

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In this episode, I sit down with renowned restaurant owner Eric Papachristos. Eric has built a career around his love of food, his pride in his Greek heritage, and his education and skilled approach in business. Eric speaks about how his childhood growing up in Greece shaped his passions and how he's able to focus on three unique restaurant concepts to find success.

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