2nd Edition

When the Old Playbook Stops Working

The workforce has changed. The job still matters. Leadership must know which parts of the old way protect the standard and which parts simply survived because nobody challenged them

I’ve seen several frustrated posts recently about hiring, about retention, the increase in labour, paying higher wages than ever before and had lots of conversations over the years about the future of staffing restaurants. Lots of those conversations have started something like:

“Kids these days.”

“They don’t make them like they used to.”

“Imagine if we had done that back in our day?”

Admittedly I have said some version of all three in my time as a chef. Usually after a frustrating shift, a failed training attempt, or another job posting sitting unanswered. As a momentary vent, fine, fair enough. As an explanation for why restaurants are actually struggling to hire, develop, and keep people, it does not get us very far.

There are for sure young workers who are lazy, entitled, avoidant, or equipped with the emotional durability of a wet napkin. There truth is there always have been. When I was coming up through the ranks they had names like “Eeyore”, “Mildew” or “Organ Donor” and we let poison the room for years because nobody wanted to deal with them or pay the money to fire them. I’m sure my chefs had the same co-workers, with potentially even more colourful names.

The mistake here is taking the worst examples and turning them into a theory about an entire generation. It gives leaders a satisfying villain and removes any obligation to examine the operation. Once the problem has been named “young people,” every resignation, missed standard, or failed training relationship can be filed under the same heading.

That is definitely convenient, but it is rarely useful.

The complaint keeps changing uniforms

Every generation of restaurant leaders eventually reaches the age where the people coming up behind them seem softer, stranger, and less committed. (At 42, I am there) The generation before us said it about us. Their bosses said it about them. Apparently, the restaurant industry has been in a continuous decline since the first apprentice asked whether being hit with a copper pan was really necessary.

The people entering restaurants now are different from the people who entered twenty or thirty years ago. They have access to wage information (and are more likely to talk about it), workplace reviews, employment standards, online training, and thousands of people publicly comparing experiences. They have language for burnout, anxiety, harassment, boundaries, and bad management. Many of us could only describe the same conditions as, “I guess this is what restaurants are like.”

Many were raised by Gen X and Millennial parents who spent years trying to break cycles they barely knew how to name. When people complain about participation trophies, it is worth remembering that children did not order them. The adults in the room decided what to reward and what lessons to pass along. Blaming the kids for those same lessons seems a bit backwards no?

That context does not however, make every demand reasonable. It does explain why silent endurance no longer carries the same moral weight. Younger employees are more willing to question suffering that appears disconnected from the actual work. Sometimes the question is annoying. Sometimes it exposes something leadership should have fixed years ago. On paper the choice to make here is simple. In practice, the choice is something that will separate restaurants increasingly moving forward. I’ve seen lots of successful restaurants and restaurant companies working on this. But increasingly I have seen others who appear to be getting more and more set in their ways and suffering the results.

Standards and methods are different things

The standard still matters. Food must be safe. Plates must be accurate. Stations must be clean. People need to arrive ready and on time, communicate under pressure, take feedback, and do their share. Guests should always receive the experience they were promised. A modern workplace does not and should never excuse weak execution.

The method is how people are prepared, coached, corrected, and supported so they can meet that standard. Methods should be allowed to change when they stop producing the result.

Maybe a new cook learns a station faster with a short video beside the written recipe. Maybe a server retains menu knowledge better through smaller checks during training instead of one giant test. Maybe a digital checklist catches more missed details than a laminated sheet covered in old marker. That sticky binder that nobody ever opens is not a standard. It is an artifact of a systemic breakdown and the dust it has collected should serve as a call to action to change.

Technology does not need to replace coaching, and every workplace tool does not need to become an app. The point is willingness. When the people in front of us learn differently, communicate differently, or need more context than the people we trained fifteen years ago, leaders need to adjust the delivery without changing the expectation.

Survival is evidence that something was endured. It is not proof that the method was effective.

The translation problem

This is where conversations between generations often fall apart. A worker asks for clearer training, more context, or a different way of receiving feedback. The leader hears a request for lower expectations. Someone says they are overwhelmed. The leader hears that they cannot handle pressure. Someone questions a procedure. The leader hears disrespect.

Sometimes that interpretation is correct. Some employees resist any discomfort, reject accountability, or expect the job to reorganize itself around them. Part of leadership is recognizing when the role and the person do not fit. That will never change.

The harder part is staying curious long enough to rule out the other possibilities. Was the expectation properly explained? Did two managers teach two different versions? Is the employee resisting the feedback, or reacting to the way the correction was delivered? Are they asking to avoid hard work, or asking why the hard work is organized badly?

A brittle culture has one explanation for all resistance. An adaptable culture investigates before it decides.

That does not require a committee meeting every time someone dislikes a task. It requires enough confidence to explain the reason, enough humility to notice when the reason is weak, and enough discipline to correct the system when the same confusion keeps showing up in different people.

The restaurant they actually join

The owner, chef, and GM may set the intended culture, but the team teaches the lived one. A new hire meets the official restaurant culture during orientation (or they should). They meet the actual restaurant culture during their first rush.

The sous chef who rolls their eyes at every new procedure is teaching. So is the veteran server who explains a mistake without making the new person feel stupid, the bartender who ignores side work because management never follows up, and the line cook who quietly fixes every problem instead of showing the trainee what went wrong.

People study what earns approval, what gets ignored, and what creates consequences. They notice whether leaders agree, who is allowed to behave badly because they are productive, and whether asking for help leads to coaching or ridicule. Those observations become the true operating manual long before anyone finishes reading “The handbook”.

This is why culture work cannot stop with the senior leadership team. The people with informal influence need to understand what they are reinforcing. Otherwise, the organization keeps announcing one culture while the shift teaches another.

A practical test for old rules

What result is this protecting? If a practice exists for food safety, guest care, consistency, fairness, or operational control, say so plainly. “That is how I came up” is a personal history, not an operating reason.

Does the method still produce that result? A difficult process can be worthwhile. A confusing, inconsistent, or needlessly punishing process deserves another look, especially when it keeps producing the same failures.

Is the problem following the person or following the position? When one employee struggles, it may be the employee. When five people stumble in the same place, the system is waving both arms in the air and leadership is choosing not to see it.

Would we design it this way today? Remove nostalgia and sunk cost for a minute. Given the people, technology, and operating reality in front of us now, would a thoughtful leader build the same process from scratch?

These questions do not automatically lead to change. Sometimes the old rule survives the test because it protects something important and makes sense. The difference is that leadership can now defend it with a reason beyond tenure.

The blind spot inside leadership

Culture is difficult to assess from inside the operation. Leaders see their intentions, the conversations they remember having, and the standards they believe they model. Employees experience the handoffs, contradictions, exceptions, private jokes, inconsistent corrections, and small daily choices that leadership may never witness.

Both versions can feel completely true to the people living them.

That gap is why an outside set of eyes can be useful. A meaningful culture review should go beyond a survey and a refreshed values statement. It should examine how people are trained, how standards move between managers, what happens after mistakes, who carries informal authority, where communication breaks, and which behaviours the operation rewards when pressure arrives.

A neutral person can often hear patterns employees will not raise directly with their boss and notice contradictions insiders have normalized. The aim is to identify where culture is making execution harder, where leadership intent is getting lost, and where a change in method could protect the standard more effectively.

Sometimes the answer is stronger accountability. Sometimes it is clearer training. Sometimes a respected employee has been teaching the opposite of what leadership thinks they are teaching. The value is in making the real problem visible before another round of hiring is expected to solve it.

Why my view changed

My thinking shifted when I became a father. I do not want my son protected from hard work. I want him to learn discipline, accountability, resilience, and how to keep going when something is difficult. I also want him to be taught clearly, corrected fairly, and spared the idea that humiliation is an essential ingredient in character development.

Why would I want anything less for the young people working in my restaurant?

Kitchens were undoubtedly tough when I came up. Chefs could be brutal. Eighteen-hour shifts, screaming, breakdowns, and total devotion to the job were worn as proof that we belonged. Some of that experience made me capable. Some of it gave me habits I later had to unlearn. The industry often bundled those two outcomes together and called the whole package “paying your dues.” For years I held on to the misguided belief that everyone should have to go through those trials. That it built toughness. Only after it was too late did I fully realize that all it really did was start me on a path to burn out.

We can pass along the discipline without preserving the damage. We can teach urgency without panic, precision without humiliation, and demand accountability without making people afraid to admit what they do not know. Especially since they only know what we teach them. I told my son yesterday, during a conversation about coachability and developing skills that he needed to find the courage to admit when he didn’t know how to do something, to not fear looking unintelligent, if he didn’t know how to do something. Imagine a world where that didn’t take courage. Ask anyone who has ever worked in one of my kitchens, but I always say: “I don’t care what you know and what you don’t know. I care that you are confident in what you do know and admit when you don’t” That was one of my biggest learnings as a leader. One that happened slowly.

That takes true leadership skills. Fear is fast. “Because I said so” works in the moment. Building understanding and consistency takes longer, but it creates people who can make good decisions when the chef or GM is not beside them.

Be willing to change the method

The workforce will keep changing. So will technology, economics, education, and what people expect from the places where they spend most of their waking hours. Treating each change as a character failure guarantees that leadership will keep fighting the same battle with new faces.

The lesson is fairly simple, even when the work is not: be willing to adapt. Be agile. Protect the purpose of the standard. Explain it. Teach it in a way the current team can absorb. Correct people when they fall short. Retire the rituals that only exist because previous generations survived them.

The next generation does not need the restaurant to become easier. They need leadership to become more deliberate and be adept at providing context.

Keep the standard. Change the method when the method stops working.