Who’s doing it right, and how?

Every so often a journalist discovers the concept of the ‘family meal’ and approaches the subject with breathy reverence and fascination. A room full of skilled chefs! Cooking for their peers, freed from the demands of customers and the fetters of the menu! An opportunity to express their imagination and their love for their fellow crew! The inevitable articles and books follow, fetishising the staff meal as the truest embodiment of the hospitality that is at the heart of the operation.

But how true is any of this? Away from the romanticisation, how are busy chefs able to generously express their care for the team within the often brutally limited constraints of time and budget? In a recent Instagram survey we were surprised to find that 21% of respondents reported no provision of staff food at all, or food only available if paid for – albeit at a discounted rate. And we heard from owners who reported that the finances were too tight, or the dietaries too complicated, or the sense of entitlement was too high.

But then there were the 79% who do get meals on shift. Business owners who know that it’s absolutely fundamental to staff morale and productivity – and, more than that, who know that it’s the right thing to do. Along with the horror stories, there was an outpouring of delight and gratitude for the people who are doing staff food really, really well. We reached out to those people to give us all a lesson on how it’s done. The common threads? They acknowledge that it’s an expense – but one that is repaid a thousand times through the effect it has on your team and your workplace culture. And the time issue? You structure your working day around the staff meal as a priority. In other words, if you want to make it work then you can, and everyone reaps the rewards. If you don’t, then you can’t.

Legare, Bubala and e5 Bakehouse were all singled out – along with Happy Endings, The River Café, Forza Win, Wild By Tart and many others. You’ll hear from the first three this week, followed by Happy Endings and Forza in the coming weeks. Of all the business types who do not serve staff food, we were puzzled to see that the highest number of reports came from bakeries, so we are particularly pleased to have input from e5.

And if you’re one of the 21%, we strongly recommend that you forward this to your boss. Let’s ensure that every hospitality business sees both the value and the achievability of this vital provision.

How do staff meals work within the structure of the working day? In a time-pressured environment how do you make time for the cooking, and for the eating?

BUBALA:  We have staff meals twice a day, one for breakfast and one for dinner, with the whole team on site. Front of house, back of house and head office all sit down together and catch up. Actually we’ve had members of the team who were in the area who pop in and have staff food! All work talk is put to one side and the team engages on a personal level for 20 – 25 minutes. There’s no tight timeframe or clock watching during this time.

In-terms of the structure of the working day, it’s not an addition or an afterthought. It is a part of the working day. Breakfast is normally something that is either egg or tofu centred – some of the creations that the team come up with are incredible, not only in taste but in sustenance and nutrition – but don’t get me wrong, there’s still room for our version of a hash brown (fried latke trim) here and there. I think one thing that we love to see is how the FOH team also contribute to staff breakfast by preparing overnight oats, coffees and freshly pressed juices for everyone.

Dinner is where the chefs really get a chance to show their creativity and experience. Dishes can range in terms of style and cuisines and I honestly can’t think of many experiences of bad staff food. If there’s anything left over the team is free to box up and take home. The team from the morning often stick around and join for staff dinner, we don’t have any rules in place like “staff food only for those on shift”. We want to ensure that the team has this accessibility around staff food. We also do end of night snacks which tend to be bread and dips from our menu.

E5: Everyone gets a sit down lunch break, most teams discuss together when the time is right to sit down together for lunch depending on their production and order food through our in-house order system. Sitting down all together is not possible for our front of house team, they have a daily lunch break schedule and will join anyone else that’s on lunch break.

There will always be bread and butter/olive oil or other spreads around to have a quick nibble if staff is hungry outside of the allocated lunch-break. A little trip to our pastry team who will have a ’special’ bowl where all the cake off-cuts, items that didn’t make the cut for the display, or where test bakes go to rest is a well known route for many staff in the bakery to strategically pass the pastry arch at regular times of the day…

LEGARE: Firstly I think it’s important to state that staff meal comes at a considerable cost to the business, so while it’s absolutely an integral part of morale, staff also need to understand that it costs a small business like Legare anywhere from £10-£20k a year if not more. Add staff drinks and coffee to that and you’re looking way north of £30k per year.

That being said, at Legare, we put up food for both breakfast and dinner. That way, if you’re working a double, you have two decent meals to get you through the day. We are also able to do this because we close the restaurant between 3-6pm which gives us a chance to reset for the evening, send staff on breaks, and prepare staff meal. Restaurants that run all day service may find this particularly tricky.

How do you make it work financially? What budget do you set aside for it, and how do you ensure that the team are fed well within that cost?

LEGARE: It depends – we don’t have a set budget. Some days it’s a little more generous and other days a little simpler. We may have a Greek salad one day, and steak and chips another. If the team have had a great financial week, we’ll open a bottle or two of wine… it just depends on how busy everyone is, and what everyone feels like. Matt will often ask the kitchen and FOH what they feel like, and then we rotate which chef cooks. If I’m working a double, I also like to cook, just to show the staff I care, but I appreciate that’s not always possible for every restaurant. Time constraints amongst other things might make staff meal tricky. If we’re strapped for time and making pasta (the go to staff meal for every restaurant), we’ll always try to make it a delicious pasta with effort.

On Saturdays, we’ve somehow built a tradition of having spaghetti with garlic, chilli, anchovies and parsley. Not sure where it came from but it’s been going strong for a few years now. Lastly, if we’re transitioning menus and some stock is left over from the previous menus, we’ll staff it.

BUBALA: I’ve worked in an environment in which tight budgets around staff food are in place and ultimately with those restrictions, some rather disappointing meals have taken place. We don’t have a budget when it comes to staff food, we let the team order and execute what they want. Sure there have been times where we’ve had to maybe guide the team in making more optimised decisions around staff food but generally speaking everyone is pretty respectful in terms of cost.

It’s not a secret that of course staff food is an additional cost and if you are busy those costs can be absorbed easier. Whilst I am a firm believer that ‘additional’ costs such as staff food and maternity pay should be factored into a business model, the reality is that it can be expensive and during the early days of any business, no matter the industry, every penny counts. However that shouldn’t prevent operators from starting somewhere: food can be made at low cost whilst keeping nutrition and flavour in mind and it’s a great exercise for decision makers to get creative and see what’s the best path forward to ultimately meet an achievable goal.

That process can continue to grow and evolve as the business hopefully grows and whilst capturing a ROI can be difficult without tangible results, there’s an element of ambiguity and trust that gestures such as staff food feed into the wider ecosystem of your business. In summary, costs can be overwhelming especially during the early days or tighter months, but look at varying solutions and scenarios and navigate what’s achievable for your business now and establish what the ultimate goal could be.

E5: It’s been e5’s approach from the beginning to ensure staff gets a nourishing hot meal when they come to work. It’s a big part of the daily routine at the bakery. We have a team of bakers, a pastry team, a full kitchen team and quite a few baristas, kitchen porters and an office team.  All these teams contribute to keeping people nourished throughout their shift and clearing up afterwards. We have guidelines for staff to understand that it does take quite some energy to provide extra food and drinks during the day, these guidelines are there to not put too much strain on an already busy shift. We try and refresh the guidelines and put it in our staff hand book.

There are some shifts where the lunch break falls outside of kitchen service hours for this we make exceptions on the offering or put aside portions for later. We have always put aside a budget for this knowing how many people on a daily basis we need to feed. We understand the costing of our dishes and expect to feed about 30-35 staff members a day, 7 days a week, the kitchen team is aware of this and adds these numbers to their prep.

How do you make sure that there is good variety, who is in charge of the menu?

BUBALA: This is collaborative across varying levels of the business. The framework of a hot main, with a salad and carb for dinner has kind of been in place since we started and it has continued since. There have been tweaks here and there with the introduction of overnight oats and occasionally there have been dessert appearances too (the tarte tatin was a show stealer). But within that framework the kitchen management organise with the BOH team a staff food rota and communicate who is on what day but then the chefs making staff food will communicate orders or requirements of what they need back. The FOH have a similar system with oats and juices.

LEGARE: We constantly ask the team what they feel like and put a different person in charge of cooking the meal for that day. We try to keep things healthy and nutritious (chicken and salad etc) and also treat ourselves throughout the week too.

E5: All staff can eat what we serve for lunch daily: a freshly cooked vegetarian hot meal, soup or sandwich of the day. We limit it to these three options, rather than allowing toasties, scrambled eggs or our delicious halloumi bun as this would provide too much extra work for our kitchen team during service.

Our team of creative chefs are responsible for coming up with a varied offering on a daily basis. On the weekend when we serve brunch, there will be a table set up with fresh salads, soup, bread and any other dishes (leftovers from the week, spreads from sandwiches, cheese…) and Sunday is pizza day! The bakers take over and make delicious tray pizza as staff lunch, accompanied with some fresh salads and, you guessed it, bread!

What are your most successful staff meals? The regular favourites, and the special treats

BUBALA: There have been so many to choose from. Since we are two locations we have a staff food appreciation page Workplace (our internal comms platform). This is where the team posts some of their favourite staff foods and we definitely notice some healthy competition between the sites and everyone steps up to plate! We’ve had people conquer their take on a Christmas dinner, we’ve had tarte tatins, breakfast tacos with jackfruit and mushroom, vegetarian sushi bowls, summer salads galore, za’atar fried eggs with warm laffa bread and of course shakshuka always go down a treat with everyone. There are so many to choose from it’s impossible to narrow it down. And as a special treat, we all share a box of Crosstown doughnuts whenever it’s someone’s birthday!

E5: Ah too many! Honestly I have had so many brilliant lunches here as well as afternoon snacks and we all get to participate in tasting when there’s recipe testing going on. There is the occasional birthday cake as well which works a treat.

LEGARE: The list of all our faves: Steak, chips and peppercorn sauce / Fish and chips / Spaghetti with garlic, anchovies, chilli / Chicken Milanese, spaghetti with tomato sauce / Curry – Thai, curry goat, oxtail, chicken etc… / Prawn tacos / Mussels with chips / Thai larb… such good stuff.

What impact do you feel it has on your team, and on the wider business?

E5: I think it truly helps with a general feeling of community to share meals with your colleagues, it’s a moment to savour and not talk work. It’s lovely to see when people from different teams sit together and very good for newbies to be introduced within the wider team! We eat the same dishes our customers are getting, this allows us to give constructive feedback to the chefs on the spot, which is very meaningful for quality control and instant gratification of their work.

In our yearly reviews that we conduct with all staff, one of the most prominent things that gets mentioned is the appreciation of amazing food on a daily basis. Good and healthy food is central to what we do and what we stand for, so it only makes sense to feed our staff in the same way we feed our customers.

LEGARE: It makes such a big difference. You can see when people are excited (or not) for staff food. It’s a time to sit down, chat, relax, have a proper catch up with each other and refuel for the day. In my opinion, it’s absolutely integral to have good staff food because it really improves moral within the team and shows you care! With that being said, I think staff also have to be respectful and understand that having staff food is a staff perk, and to not take it for granted.

BUBALA: It’s a physically and mentally demanding industry, the team are on their feet all day. It’s literally the least and the bare minimum we can do as a business to ensure that the team are fed well on a daily basis. We aren’t looking for tangible outcomes or ROIs, it’s what we feel is necessary as an employer within hospitality and if that means that the team feel appreciated and nurtured through this then we are doing our jobs.