By George Taylor
I’ve had this conversation with several of my peers, and it seems we all share a common internal conflict—the battle between the businessperson and the chef that lives within each of us.
I’d like to say I know the right answer: Let the businessperson win. That might sound short-sighted, but the truth is, without the businessperson, the chef doesn’t exist.
We all want to make amazing food. We love to experiment, push boundaries and create the next best thing. But at the end of the day, we have to pay the bills—and that’s where the businessperson must prevail.
Making great food is merely the price of entry into the restaurant business today. Everyone is using high-quality, farm-to-table ingredients, sourcing locally, and putting a unique spin on classic dishes. That’s expected now. It’s no longer what sets us apart—it’s what gets us in the door.
The businessperson’s job is to make sure the numbers work: to keep the lights on, the staff paid, and the restaurant alive. That means making tough calls that the chef might not like. We can’t put filet mignon on pizza, no matter how incredible it tastes, because no one will pay what we’d need to charge. Sure, it might win a competition—but it won’t win on a Tuesday night with everyday guests.
We all feel the urge to wow our customers. That’s natural. Yet the businessperson has to charge appropriately and decide what stays on the menu and what goes. Sometimes that means letting go of a chef’s favorite dish because it isn’t profitable. That’s not a knock on creativity; it’s a decision made for the restaurant’s survival and growth.
There once was a time when we simply called ourselves pizza makers, and—as John Arena says—that’s enough. Back then, the focus was on the craft. We weren’t worried about margins, food cost percentages or online reviews. It was about dough, sauce, cheese and passion.
But things have changed. Today, more and more people want the title chef—a term that carries a certain level of prestige. Even if we haven’t gone to culinary school, we feel the need to validate what we do with a fancier title. At the same time, many people entering the pizza or restaurant business today have been classically trained. They’ve attended culinary schools, taken courses and earned the right to call themselves chefs. Still, even for them, the lesson remains the same:
The businessperson has to come out on top.
The businessperson’s plate holds far more than a brilliant recipe. They’re responsible for the rent, the utilities, the payroll, the insurance—every expense required to deliver the experience our guests expect. And those expenses are growing. Labor costs, credit card processing fees, packaging, even the cost of to-go containers—it all adds up.
So whenever you’re tempted to elevate a dish or overhaul a menu, make sure the businessperson is part of the conversation, because they will live with the consequences.
The layout of your kitchen, the equipment you choose, the vendors you purchase from—each of those are critical decisions. The chef might want a wood-fired oven, but can your space accommodate it? Is there a return on investment in three years—or 10? That’s a business decision.
You might fall in love with a rare imported ingredient, but if it costs $4 per portion and you need to triple that on the plate, will it sell? Will your guests understand it? Appreciate it? Come back for it?
In theory, collaboration should be easy when the chef and the businessperson live in the same head. But that’s the problem—it’s often a civil war in there. The chef wants to innovate; the businessperson wants to stay alive. Letting the businessperson win isn’t always simple, especially when the creative part of you believes you’re settling or “selling out.”
But you’re not. You’re surviving. And survival gives you the chance to fight another day, to maybe bring that crazy idea to life in a competition setting or as a limited-time special—once the business can support the risk.
Remember that struggle the next time you want to introduce an item that’s more complicated than your station can handle, pricier than the market will bear, or likely to create waste. Ask whether the dish truly enhances the guest experience or whether a simpler classic would achieve the same goal within the confines of your line.
Not every dish needs to be a masterpiece. Sometimes, a perfectly executed pepperoni pizza, hot out of the oven, is exactly what the customer wants—and it hits the margin targets too.
The key is balance. The businessperson and the chef must work in harmony for the restaurant to run smoothly, efficiently and profitably. When they’re in sync, the restaurant not only survives—it grows. It thrives. It becomes the kind of place where you can experiment a little, where you can afford to make that wild special for a weekend crowd, where the chef gets to play now and then because the businessperson has built the runway for it.
That’s the goal. Not a business that crushes creativity, but one that supports it. A restaurant where both parts of you—businessperson and chef—are respected, heard and aligned.
Because when those two can work together, that’s when the magic really happens.
George Taylor is a veteran pizzeria owner/operator and co-owns Taylors’ Pizza House in Endwell, New York, with his wife, Patti. The Taylors founded Taylors’ Pizza House initially as a takeout-only pizzeria in 2017 before moving to a larger space in 2022 and transitioning to a full-service operation. George is a member of the U.S. Pizza Team and author of A Pizza My Life, available here on Amazon.com
