Consistency is my love language

This past weekend I was covering at our Carroll Gardens location for someone who had to attend a funeral. I saw a lot of regulars which I always love. A young couple that’s been coming for a few years had their first baby. There’s something deliciously sweet about witnessing people’s lives develop and change as time goes on. Another couple that we have befriended came in and they noticed the butters on top of the cakes were square instead of round– hi Sara! Without getting into everything I’m about to share below in regards to operations, I said I preferred it this way and she said something along the lines of I’m sure the change makes sense but you guys are so consistent that any little change is noticeable. Consistency is a hallmark of a great restaurant so I took this as a huge compliment and it got me thinking about how we achieve it.

SYSTEMS

One of the main things that distinguishes a good chef from a very good home cook or a recipe developer is that they can distill their creation into a formula that other people can understand, execute correctly and replicate at scale and with speed. More steps + more ingredients = more room for error. A classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. A large part of the reason our restaurants are consistent from coast to coast is because we have created fool proof systems that are simple and easy to follow. This takes time, lots of trial and error and honestly it’s something that we will always continue to work on. When you’re so used to doing something a certain way sometimes it’s hard to even recognize that another way is possible! It’s happened on multiple occasions where one of us makes a micro change that seems so f*cking obvious after the fact. We usually both start cracking up and wonder why we ever did it the old way, sometimes even did it that way for years.

If you want to have a successful restaurant or a successful anything really you must have systems in place. Your team should be there to execute, not to create new things on the fly. It’s beautiful when someone contributes a meaningful creation but the day to day role of your staff for the health of the business should be successfully executing the systems you’ve ...