The awesomely named Ethel Hammer of The National Culinary Review—who really needs to begin starring in a detective series tout de suite—has penned a piece examining the role of menu consultants in the modern restaurant environment.
The piece does a solid job of elaborating on what consultants do at their finest: sorting through menus to identify clinkers, moneymakers, and sentimental anchors, or adapting a restaurant’s beloved standards to non–totally bastardized airplane-food equivalents. But it does little to explore the inevitable darker side of the profession. Good consultants in any field can bring powerful positive change to a business, but bad consultants can bury a struggling business or simply act as a cosmetic mask for an owner’s harebrained ideas.
The story also looks at a consultant technique that’s euphemistically called “the trickle-down effect.” This is also known as “eating at wd-50 and selling their ideas to restaurants in Cleveland.”
In the past few years, I’ve been with restaurants in NYC that brought in “consultants” who:
1) have never heard of a three-person waitstaff team
2) suggested that we simply find out the 100 best selling wines from his friend’s wine shop (located in rural Connecticut) and that would be our wine list
3) suggested menu items like smoked salmon pizza that were “new” 15 or 20 years earlier
4) spent 3 hours every day bussing tables (I’m not making this up!), even when we had a good busser staff
5) thought that each and every dish, side, condiment, sauce, etc. in a wine bar HAD to have wine in it. Everything.
6) Suggested having a “silent” waitstaff. Wanted to bring a friend who was a mime to train the staff to communicate with customers without speaking
7) had ownes three restaurants and had run each of them into the ground… but said that his failures were a positive thing because we could learn from his mistakes. If we hired a successful restaurauteur, we would not have the same perspective.
8) wanted the cooks and the waiters to switch jobs for a week. Right.
I could write more, but these memories have me laughing too hard. Those who can, do. Those who can’t become consultants and get paid by those who won’t.
there must be those who can, who don’t, yet do;
the ideal consultant is ultimately practical.