By Tracy Morin
From scandalous celebrity chefs to megalomaniac owners, the restaurant industry is notorious for creating a toxic workplace culture. Fortunately, as more awareness grows about abuse, high stress, burnout and mental health issues in professional kitchens—and the true cost of such conditions, financial and otherwise—some operators have been quietly working to fix it.
Dan Simons, co-owner of the farmer-owned restaurant group Founding Farmers (with locations in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland) and host of WTOP’s Founding DC, has spent years redesigning restaurant leadership around employee well-being. At a time when many kitchens are still defined by screaming chefs, 16-hour shifts and high burnout, Founding Farmers pushes back against such norms. Instead, it provides free therapy access to every employee across the company as part of its core operating model. Simons believes this is not a perk, but essential for a healthy workplace.
Simons didn’t set out to change the restaurant industry—he just refused to accept the way things had always been done. After years in senior management at large, high-volume restaurants, Dan partnered with mentor Michael Vucurevich to launch Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group (VSAG) in 2004. Their shared belief that hospitality could be better ultimately led to the creation of Farmers Restaurant Group and the first Founding Farmers in 2008.
Today, as co-owner of FRG’s growing portfolio of sustainable, farmer-owned restaurants, Dan is outspoken about the future of food, farming and hospitality. In 2018, Ernst & Young named him Entrepreneur of the Year for the Mid-Atlantic region. He also writes candidly at his blog, Dan Simons Says.
Simons recently spoke to PMQ about how restaurants can move beyond the toxic kitchen stereotype and what it actually takes to build sustainable teams in one of America’s toughest industries. In this interview, he discusses how to develop a healthier workplace culture—and why it’s more needed now than ever before.
PMQ: Why do you think the issue of toxic kitchen culture in restaurants keeps resurfacing, and why is it important for restaurant owners to address right now?
Dan Simons: There are fewer dark corners in which terrible leaders can hide. More cameras, more employees who know their rights and their worth, and more public stories about good work cultures that help people understand when they are in a bad situation. Culture has greater upside and downside than ever when it comes to shaping a restaurant’s trajectory. The more owners are aware of the risk, the more motivated they are to take steps to mitigate—and that’s a good thing for all stakeholders.
PMQ: What led you to make mental health support a core part of your business model rather than just a perk? How do you attract top talent with this focus?
Simons: The combination of my own journey and the journeys of so many of my colleagues over the years. Of course, I want to perform my best at work—that’s how I create the most value—and it was clear to me that physical and mental health are just health, and that to perform optimally at work, we need optimal health.
Investing in resources for myself motivated me to ensure everyone had access to the resources they needed, and it became clear that the payoff for the business is huge. We tell our stories internally and externally. My TEDx talk frames the topic in 13 minutes—and we get people applying for jobs with us because they’ve read and heard how we take care of our people.
PMQ: Some operators might see mental health programs as expensive or unrealistic in a tough-margin industry. What would you say to restaurant owners who think they are impossible or difficult to achieve?
Simons: Reframe the topic as a potential investment. Evaluate the costs of not making the investment and correlate that with the impact of making the investment. What does your turnover cost you? What impact does morale have on food quality, food cost and the guest experience? Set aside the “do you or do you not care about people” question and evaluate the topic through a math lens. The answer becomes clear. And what’s nice is, if you do care about people and are inclined to be helpful, great—you’ll come to the same conclusion.
PMQ: How does a healthier workplace culture (including offerings like therapy access) tangibly and intangibly affect a business’ performance?
Simons: Turnover rates are less than half the industry average; a culture and lore that help surface small problems before they become large ones; diners who absorb the positive vibes from the staff and thus return more frequently; collegial support from teammates to lift each other up when someone is struggling.
PMQ: How do you maintain excellence without creating a toxic, aggressive, punitive or intimidation-based style of management?
Simons: I believe that by investing in people, a business can set high standards, can be demanding, can push through plateaus to reach new levels of performance—the intensity it takes to strive to be great is best received by employees when they know the company actually cares about them, as people, and not just their output or work product. Leaders who use pain, fear or force may get results in the short term, but in the long run, I love competing against those leaders; I’ll take their best people, and eventually I’ll take their best customers, too.
PMQ: How are generational shifts changing the way restaurants have to operate, especially in terms of employee well-being?
Simons: I’m not so on board with the idea that this is just generational. I think people of all ages want to be appreciated, want to feel seen, valued and heard. Maybe the younger folks are less willing to put up with a tyrant, more likely to capture a video of a tyrant and post it on social media, but that isn’t because the older generations didn’t want improved work environments; they just didn’t know they could have them.
PMQ: Burnout and turnover have long been accepted as normal in hospitality. What are the hidden costs of that mindset for restaurants and the industry as a whole?
Simons: I’m pretty sure that you cook as you look, you serve how you feel, you build teams in the image you have of yourself. So the hidden cost of letting your people get burnt out, worn down, ragged—those become the adjectives your guests will end up using about your business. Sure, you can get away with it for a while, even win awards and have things look great, but leaders can’t hide the truth from what they create, and our guests eventually see it, feel it, know it, or read about it or see a video about it.
PMQ: For operators who want to improve their workplace culture but don’t know where to start, what are the first practical steps they can take?
Simons: Think small, create the mindset that this matters, that it’s doable and that it doesn’t need to be a huge lift. Start by asking questions, then truly be silent to really listen to the answers. If answers aren’t coming, then you know people don’t feel safe. Have conversations in smaller groups and seek out those willing to tell you what they need; simple three-question surveys with anonymous responses can yield a goldmine of action steps.
PMQ: Looking ahead, what does the next generation of restaurant leadership need to look like to create a reputation for more hospitable workplaces?
Simons: I love how the next generation looks—first, more than ever, they look like their employees. We’re an industry of immigrants, whether first-, second-, or third-generation. We’re an industry of people who choose this grind, who have hospitality in their DNA. I believe leadership in our industry should be experts in profit architecture, because if we can’t stay in business, nothing else matters. My hope is that leaders are great listeners, understand the alignment between their staff’s needs and the business’ needs, and can invest to magnify and nourish these aligned needs.
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
