Transcript: Episode 223: Tasting Catastrophe
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 223. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/223.
[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.
[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Born and raised in France, Franck Desplechin left school at 15 to begin a culinary apprenticeship. After more than a decade at Michelin-starred kitchens, he moved on to luxury hotels around the world like the St. Regis in Bora Bora, which is most people's bucket list hotel, before stepping into property leadership as a director of food and beverage. After a pandemic-era tour in Sedona, where he and his now wife quite literally ran the house together, Frank relocated to Connecticut. From there, he launched a hospitality consultancy and task force operation that deploys talent nationwide and began codifying his chef mindset approach to leadership into a book. Today, we are going to talk about building healthy luxury food and beverage cultures and the realities of task force. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.
Call button rings…
The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at (850) 404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Amy, and Amy asks, what can hospitality pros learn in school that they won't pick up on the job? I thought because you did an apprenticeship as the start of your career, this might be a good turn it on its head question for you, what do you think?
[00:02:15] Franck Desplechin: So usually they ask, what do you learn in hospitality that you don't learn at school? So that's a pretty twisted question, but I like it. I say probably the school system will probably teach you to become a student of hospitality. I don't think you really learn that in the workplace. I think by the time you are in the workplace, you are expected to be able to perform. You're expected to know. If you don't know, then you're expected to find out. I think learning to be an actual student, which means learning, which is understanding, which is going to the logical step of learning something new. Therefore, you have to be a little bit more disciplined. You have to apply yourself, you have to do some of the homework and I believe that's what school probably would teach you. So paying attention at school for that and learning to be a student, hospitality as a way of making you a student of hospitality even 30 years after you were in the business.
[00:03:20] Susan Barry: I love that answer, and I think you're exactly right. Well, speaking of learning, what did you learn in your 15 years old earliest kitchens that still shows up in how you lead today?
[00:03:34] Franck Desplechin: I would say that the first lessons that I've learned was that you are not protected in a way that you don't one who has to come on time, nobody else. You don't one who has to apply yourself, nobody else. You have to be the one that knows how to do things and being coachable, being reliable, all of those things is what you're learning very early on. By the time you're 20, it's a bit too late to learn. You've probably been written up a few times. You've probably been in trouble a few times. So I think this is something that you had to learn from early on and you don't really know why you're learning this, you just apply yourself. If you discipline enough, you apply yourself, but you realize that even when you're a director, you still have to be on time. You still have to be coachable because there's always a boss above you and that's gonna ask and expect you to do something for them. So I would say that would be the lesson to learn there.
[00:04:31] Susan Barry: You and your wife ran Sedona together, so you were food and beverage leader. She was room's leader living under one roof. What did that season teach you about partnership, both at work and at home? Like to me, trying to think about my husband and me doing that, no way. But then my sister and her husband have always worked together since the day they met.
[00:04:55] Franck Desplechin: I guess I would say that when we've met at work. So we stayed in a hotel at the St. Regis, San Francisco. So when we moved into Sedona, I don't think we knew anything any better. We just knew that this is the way it is. And it's funny because we could go throughout an entire day. It's a very spread-out property in Sedona, L'Auberge Sedona. And we could go an entire day without seeing each other because I was busy on my side, she was busy on her side. And then at the end of the day, when we find ourselves at home, if I didn't have to work dinner service, we would go walk the dog together. And then we were just kind of talking about the day. And obviously, you're talking crap about other people. You say, “This is what went well”. You cannot believe this, what it did today. And you kind of going over and you find yourself oftentimes laughing about a similar guest experience with the exact same guest that she had to deal with early in the morning. And me in the dinner in the restaurant. And so there is that part, after there is a second part where you actually a team. Therefore, when your the highest authority in the rooms division and I am the one in food and beverage, we tend to be able to see eye to eye when it comes to, let's say a guest coming here and she say, “Hey, this guest came here for the 30 years anniversary. They're the most lovely couple that you would ever met. Can you just flag them for the restaurant?” And boom, it goes into them receiving that kind of care when they come into restaurant. So that's the beautiful aspect of working together when you understand live and breathe luxury in the way we were. And the last part is not so amazing part is when we're in disagreement because I see things a certain way, she see things another way and we have to learn to agree to disagree. And in the work setting it's always very complicated 'cause our experiences come a very different background. And I don't think nobody is wrong, but we both trying to get our point across and convince the other one that I'm the right one. So it tends to bring an unnecessary argument into the couple that you would not have if it was just a coworker.
[00:07:08] Susan Barry: So see, that's what I think would happen. I think for the things that we agreed on, no problem. But I think that if my husband and I worked together and we disagreed about something, we wouldn't be able to leave it at work. It would continue on.
[00:07:20] Franck Desplechin: And believe me, it did quite a few times. And it just what would've sparked a much longer argument. But it is the name of the game. It is what we chose and I think if we are to redo it again, we'll probably do the same exact thing.
[00:07:35] Susan Barry: COVID hit while your wife was pregnant, and so you were sometimes sleeping at the hotel to keep everyone safe. What did that period change in you? What was rewired in you as a leader? Or was anything?
[00:07:53] Franck Desplechin: No, it was the first pregnancy that we were going through. And obviously, you don't know what you don't know. You're just discovering. And that was at the time when you have an outbreak on property 'cause the property is still open. And suddenly everyone has to quarantine 'cause the vaccine was not even a conversation at the time. So you quarantine, you go get tested. By the time you get tested, it was taking 14 to 21 days to just receive the results. And so in the meantime, you don't want to obviously expose anyone. And so I think it happened maybe two or three times throughout that period of time when she was going to pregnancy. And the pregnancy went as good as it could have gone. But obviously, the add-on of the pandemic and the uncertainty and the news and the media and how they were talking about this. There was a level of fear that were constant living in it. So, you have to protect your family. You have to protect the unborn child. So when there was an outbreak at work, which she knew because that was the same job. That she had my bag ready. I just coming home in the garage, pick up my bag and go back to the hotel for 14 days. And it's a tough time because obviously, she needs the support while going through pregnancy for the first time. I wanted to be there to support, but at the same time, you are kind of having to deal with the responsibility that now your entire team is on quarantine. You are on quarantine and you still have to operate a hotel. So, I don't think it rewards anything as a leader from a work perspective, I think he rewards a lot of me and my priority. I had been a workaholic, obsessed with work for the longest time, and now having a family to care for and an unborn child to care for. I think that's what rewarded me a little bit more. It was not easy because I had found myself, I had defined my identity for the longest time with work. And so becoming a father for the first time was probably that something I've never felt, something I never knew. And you don't know any better and you don't know what you don't know. So you're just kind of going through the process of this and my wife was guiding me, this is where you need to be, this is what you need to do, and this is what I need. So, all of those things helped me navigating that definitely. So it re-rewarded me and reshaped my priorities from a family and a director rather than just being a director.
[00:10:28] Susan Barry: A lot of people talk about opening restaurants or opening hotels like giving birth to a child. I wonder if you feel the same way, especially now that you know you have kids. What's a favorite story from opening or a favorite lesson that you learned that you would share?
[00:10:51] Franck Desplechin: Oh, I would say there's a funny one. When I was at The St. Regis, San Francisco, when I was brought on board in 2017, probably. 2017, when I was brought on board was for a specific reason. We had a restaurant on the bottom floor of The St. Regis, San Francisco, that was a partnership with a famous chef that was in the Bay Area. And they were at the end of their 10-year contract, they were about to move on. And now we were brought on board as a director of F&B and myself to help redefining a concept that could be applicable for other St. Regis. And so big projects and so we went through several tasting, finding out the USNE, finding out the concept, finding out everything we work on many, many times, the money over and over. And as we were getting closer to that due date, Marriott merged with Starwood. That was the news of hospitality, the biggest news that ever happened in hospitality. And so when that happened, the Board of Starwood pretty much got dismissed, a majority of the board got dismissed, including the people that were involved into us making this restaurant a pilot program for the St. Regis. So we got put on standby, but so we started putting this partnership with this famous chef on a month-to-month basis. And so every month we were wondering, is it gonna be the months? Is it gonna be the months? And suddenly they got pretty much removed out of this. They didn't wanna do partnership anymore, so they said, “We need to open a restaurant,” and I said, “Okay. Oh, how long do we have?” and he said, “They gave us about three, four days to open a restaurant”.
[00:12:37] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh. Are you serious?
[00:12:39] Franck Desplechin: Yes. Three, four days to come up with a concept. That was not the concept that we had designed, because we didn't receive anything. We never got the green light for everything. And so, three, four days, the easiest concept to come through was a grill restaurant. So luxury grill steakhouse, so you're just putting your piece of meat on the grill, some sides and stuff like that. And so we created recipes. We trained the team, retrained the team on a brand new menu. The director of F&B was just trying to figure it out, the furniture in the restaurant because the restaurant that we had was an Asian fusion restaurant and we're becoming an American luxury steakhouse.
[00:13:13] Susan Barry: That's a very big change.
[00:13:15] Franck Desplechin: Very big change. Like we had a wall at the reception desk with a lot of, how do you call this? The Asian drinks, the wine drinks made out of rice. I can't recall the name. So anyway, we have all those bottles of alcohol on the wall and we spend the overnight to remove this wine. Saki. Yes. So we had a bottle of saki all over a wall, part of the decor, and we went to replace them with bottle of wine. And so we flipped the entire restaurant and there was no soft opening. We just opened, and obviously there was a very little marketing, but at the same time we wanted to make a buzz out of it. So we filled up the restaurant. We did a good as we could, but it was the craziest opening. I do mention it, a little bit in my book, of this craziness, but it was quite the experience.
[00:14:10] Susan Barry: That is insane. Well, talk a little bit more about your book. What's the core premise? Who did you write it for?
[00:14:16] Franck Desplechin: Yes. So the book, the core premise of the book is I found myself over the years having a leadership style that resonated with a lot of people. I have people that was seeking me out for guidance even though we're not working together for years after, they were still finding value into me, guiding them into their own journey. So that was the first step. The second step is when I started move from my career, I had people that just say, “Frank, anytime that if you have an open position, I'd love to come back”. And so I have people that was following me from job to job. And they're the one that made me realize that I might have a unique perspective into leadership. What is something that resonates? And so I was trying to find a way to help the next generation of leaders, the people that are currently in hospitality, Corona, CIA, Providence, all these amazing hospitality program within the country. I was trying to find how are they gonna be able to have access to something that resonate within the industry when nobody knows about me. I'm not big, I'm not just the guy that just has succeeded from that side. And so I just say the best way of doing this is probably to write a book that people can just have access to. And so that was the first promise, was ready to write for the student of hospitality, the different generations that are trying to find how to navigate in one of the most demanding industries. So this student of hospitality was my first audience, and I shifted a little bit with a background, writing process for the employee that becomes a manager tomorrow. The one that doesn't know how to transition to be a manager. Now I'm managing people. What am I supposed to know? What am I supposed to learn? And then last one is the most senior executive that's been on the job for 15 years and they're just going through the motion. They just lost that Spark. I was trying to reignite their desire and make them realize that now that you have 20 years of experience, I believe you have a moral duty and responsibility to teach the next generation. So that's where you can kind of find fulfillment.
[00:16:34] Susan Barry: That makes a lot of sense. Well, I know Chef mindset is an important concept for you. Can you explain what that is? How does that translate into leadership behaviors?
[00:16:44] Franck Desplechin: Yeah, absolutely. I think the chef mindset, it's probably one of the few jobs when you have a lot of very high and a lot of very low. I think by design, you're going into adversities. By design, you're being rejected. By design, you fail over and over and over. By design, you receive the pressure of excellence. So all of this by design, I think you're getting access and you're being exposed with so much authenticity about who you are within the job. And so I found myself extracting all those lessons and realizing that older chefs that I've hired, or the kids that came to work, was in my kitchen, that they were just like, some of them never faced adversities. They were coming from a good background. They've been taken care of. But then, as soon as they come in the kitchen, first Saturday nights, 120 covers, they're just breaking down in pieces.
[00:17:46] Susan Barry: Crash and burn.
[00:17:47] Franck Desplechin: And you're just looking at them and say, I thought you had it all together, and then, and now you realize that not only you have to be sensitive into what they've never faced. But at the same time, you also realize that might not be for them. And you have to be able to coach them to persevere within this industry if that's what they want. So I think that will be the biggest lesson of a chef mindset.
[00:18:11] Susan Barry: This thing that you said about it being by design is so interesting to me because I have a lot of thoughts about everything all the time. And one of them is this idea that some of the things in our industry that people complain about are, think need to be solved, are actually built in by design. For example, the tension between sales and operations. That is on purpose. And it's good for the hotel because if one or the other has more say or more power, you either have no top line or you have no profit. It's the same thing. It's like that by design tension that is never resolved and people mistakenly come into the business and think they need to solve that. And it's part of the secret sauce, in my opinion.
[00:19:08] Franck Desplechin: Of course, it is. It’s funny you mentioned that, but yet you have designed silos within your team and you have to almost daily trying to work on the relationship. The relationship is what's gonna be able to bridge that gap. But there is the silos that are by design. You're gonna have a salesperson, their job is to sell. That's the agenda. Let's sell. And then you have on the operation, they're getting completely overwhelmed with the amount of current business. And here we are, salesperson says, “By the way, I just booked another group of 30 top that's coming on Saturday”. I say, “Are you crazy? How am I not be able to do this?” And so if you don't work those relationship, you almost get a level of resentment. It's like, do you even understand what I'm doing here on Saturday night? I don't have room for 30 top. And then you're gonna be at home and during your weekend while I'm here working.
[00:20:06] Susan Barry: Right. But on the other hand, that person will get fired if she doesn't book the 30 top.
[00:20:10] Franck Desplechin: Absolutely. And I think it comes to understanding each other's agenda and creating those relationship. So you get to be educated into each other's role in order to understand how you can be part of that bigger picture.
[00:20:25] Susan Barry: I think this is sort of related. Some brands are really good at delivering an amazing guest experience, but maybe not so much an amazing employee experience. Do you think that there are signs that a culture is upside down like that? Like, the emphasis is too heavy on guest experience or maybe just not heavy enough on employee experience?
[00:20:52] Franck Desplechin: I don't know if I would use the word upside down, even though I've probably experienced what you're talking about, but I would say mostly I would almost refer it as an imbalance. I think you have to find the right balance of your employee and your guest. Why are they being treated differently? It's not because there is a lack of transaction and money coming in from the employee. They are giving you an emotional transaction. They are giving you a dedicated transaction. So all of those currency are being provided by the employee. And it's funny because I've worked in two hotels where the sentence that was coming often up in the ops meeting is, we have job because we have guests. And I'm just like, this is such a weird way of looking at it 'cause I don't believe in that. In my head, I'm not wired that way. For me, it's like if we don't have employee aid and there's no reason there's guests 'cause we can serve them. So there's gonna be people that's gonna look into we need to get good employees, we need to train them well, we need to provide them the tools to do their job. Therefore, when a guest comes in, we actually able to provide them what they want or the other school is like, we have guests and if we want to keep having guests in this hotel, then we need to do a good job. So it's almost like, kind of cause a consequences. And I am one from the school of culture-driven leadership. I'm gonna take care of my employee.
[00:22:20] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with specific and tangible things they can try either in their businesses, their hotels, or in their personal lives. I am someone who has done a lot of task force. If I tried to count it up, I would probably be embarrassed. So I mean, like a lot of task force. And so for the listeners who aren't familiar, what is it and what do high-performing task force consultants do differently than the garden variety version?
[00:22:55] Franck Desplechin: Of course. So task force is I would say would be an interim support. So let's say that you have your director of food and beverage that resigns, and we know it's a very hard market and it's gonna take some amount of time in order to hire someone if you want to find the right candidate. So let's say that the director of food and beverage just give us two weeks notice. So now, we are gonna be able, with my company, to provide a director of food and beverage. He's a contractor. He works for himself, but is someone that has done a career in hospitality and decided to work for themself. You will place them over there. Hopefully, you can place them either before the current director of food and beverage is moving on, or literally the day after they leave, if you don't want to pass on whatever they are, they're stuck. It really depends. And so you're putting them there for x amount of weeks, it can be four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, sometimes it can go up to six months. I have one that's breaking a record right now, is on the task force at the same property for 14 months.
[00:24:01] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh. That's too long.
[00:24:05] Franck Desplechin: That's way too long, it’s part of the walls. And funny enough, he actually won a manager of the quarter last quarter as a task force. I should have made a post about this 'cause it's just very unique. But, yeah. So, you place that task force?
[00:24:18] Susan Barry: So why don't they just hire that person? Like, why didn't he just stay?
[00:24:21] Franck Desplechin: They've been trying to hire him. I just think that he loves that freedom to be able to say, “You know what, I'm sorry. I cannot,” instead of saying, “Can I be on vacation?” “Sorry, I cannot be here.” And so you get to have all the amazing perks of hospitality without having to ask. You run the show technically.
[00:24:39] Susan Barry: Listen, I remember it well. I very rarely said no about anything but the power to say no made all the difference in the world.
[00:24:49] Franck Desplechin: Oh, definitely. I totally agree with that. So yeah, so we placing a task force for each amount of weeks and when you have hired a new director of F&B, you now have an endover between my person that is moving forward and then the task force and the new person that's arriving. So what does it do? It's really to provide continuity to the current staff on property because losing a leader is already hard enough that you have to figure things out and suddenly you have a gap. And it often happens, industry-wide. It happens after the directors have received their bonus. So it comes to spring, they receive their bonus. I'm moving on to my new gig. It happens when it's in high season, they're just done. They don't want to do another high season anymore. And suddenly they call me and they say “Frank, I need someone like yesterday.” I say, “Oh my goodness.” And so that would be what a task force does. Now, as far as what are skills that they offer, not every leader is meant to be task force. Okay? It takes a certain skills, it takes for you to learn two things. The first one to learn is as soon as you hit the floor, you need to work. Like when you arrive on property, there is no onboarding process. You are the onboarding, you are working and you're getting hit in all angles 'cause you catching up with the motion of the own ontario operation that's going. So you have to be able to be very quick on your feet and very quick study in order to know how to navigate this. The second part to learn is that while you’re a task force and consultant, especially coming from an outside company, not within the portfolio, you have to learn to help them for what they need, not what you think would help them. It's very important.
[00:26:33] Susan Barry: I feel like you're saying this to me because I always wanted to help people with what they really needed, not what they thought they needed.
[00:26:42] Franck Desplechin: Yes. It's just you can come across and forceful with an agenda that is not theirs. And at the end of the day, if you are an exec chef coming on property and they say, “Frank, I just need you to focus on the breakfast buffet”, but from your experience, you say, “My goodness. Dinner is crazy”. I need to help with dinner. And then every day they say, I really need you to focus on breakfast. And then while you try to focus on breakfast, you also wanna help. You cannot help it. You're professional, you care, you wanna do a good job. You wanna make sure when the contract finished, people have said, “Wow, it was amazing.” I'm finding out over time, doing this and placing people that if the need is for you every day to go mop the floor on the floor number three, and that's what makes them happy. I promise you, at the end of the assignment, they're gonna say was the best task force I ever had. It's important to really kind of becoming humble and not necessarily becoming too forceful about your agenda. You can suggest it if they ask for it, but don't go and tell them what they need to work on. The last thing they want to hear is how good you are. And how better you are than your own leader.
[00:27:45] Susan Barry: I know it's interesting because I think it's a pro and con at the same time, task force consultants have a tendency to have experienced so much more than the local team. And just have tools and things in their toolbox that they can pull that the folks at the hotel may have never heard of or seen before. It's great 'cause you get a lot of bang for the buck, but it's very intimidating to the local team.
[00:28:14] Franck Desplechin: Oh yeah. It's almost like there are people above on the office, like let's say the GM or managing partner. They've decided for you to be here but nobody else has said yes.
[00:28:27] Susan Barry: Exactly.
[00:28:28] Franck Desplechin: You know what I mean? And you coming and while there's gonna be some team members that's gonna feel grateful that you're here to save the day, because we need help. Or you're lucky that the person that is living and says, “Oh my goodness, we couldn't wait for this person to leave.” So you're coming and you have an opportunity to show off and showing what you're capable. But if someone that they really liked is moving on in their career, you've got big shoes to fill. And you've gotta make sure at that point, you have to be able to pivot and be flexible. What is it that I'm walking into? Am I walking into a broken, disorganized team? Am I walking into a very loyal team? Are they happy or sad that this leader is living? Ask those questions in the discovery call so you know what you're walking into.
[00:29:13] Susan Barry: It makes a lot of sense. My experience was that most of the time that they would be furious when I arrived. Everyone would hate my guts. And then by the time it was over, they were giving me presents and wishing that I would never leave.
[00:29:31] Franck Desplechin: Those are the best compliments.
[00:29:32] Susan Barry: It's like an emotional rollercoaster. But man, is it fun? Like, if anyone's listening to this and you're considering it, highly recommend a couple of years doing taskforce. It's the fastest way to learn. Just all different types of hotels, different types of markets.
[00:29:48] Franck Desplechin: And the network you're getting with this.
[00:29:50] Susan Barry: Yes, and it's fun.
[00:29:51] Franck Desplechin: Oh, it's a lot of fun. You're being treated very well. You get to stay at the hotel, you get to really be a guest for some aspect of this. But I think the networking, if you really believe in the power of relationships within your career, that networking is invaluable.
[00:30:07] Susan Barry: Absolutely. Well, for leaders who are exhausted, they've got staffing gaps, turnover expectations are changing, like things are tough out there right now. I wonder if you've got a suggestion for each of the following. What's a meeting to kill? Stop having this meeting. What's one thing to start and what is one number to keep your eye on? So what's a meeting to kill?
[00:30:36] Franck Desplechin: A meeting to kill. I would start the meeting to kill is the redundant meeting that is on your schedule week after week after week but there is no productivity out of it. It could be any meeting if it's just set up to say, okay, we're gonna meet every week to discuss food costs, and then as time goes by, there are six of us in the meeting. Then some weeks you’re four, some weeks you’re two, some weeks you're four, five, whatever the case is, and then you just go over the same reports, but no call to action is being made. Kill that meeting. It's unnecessary.
[00:31:11] Susan Barry: Everyone can read by themselves, right?
[00:31:13] Franck Desplechin: Yes. At this point, is it necessary to have a meeting that takes me away from the operation where the real need is? What was the second one you had, Susan?
[00:31:22] Susan Barry: The second is, what is a ritual or something to start?
[00:31:28] Franck Desplechin: A ritual, something to start. The one that I've learned, it's probably because of the culture I'm coming from in France is being polite. It's coming every day and saying hello to every single member of your team. It's taking this 15, 20, 30 minutes to just check on your team and having eye contact instead of just walking into your kitchen and say, “Hi everybody.” And then you continue in the restaurant, is you actually go behind the line and you say, “How are you doing?” and do a fist bump, you check hands, whatever the case is. You're just kind of having this personal interaction with that individual, and some of them will allow you throughout the year you're doing those one-on-ones or someone has been sick or someone has some family problems, whatever the case is, you can go every morning and it's one more opportunity. You can go and say, “Hey, how's everything with your son? I know he was sick last week. Is everything good?” And it doesn't have to be a full-on interaction because they're working, but it's more like a show of care into their life and making them realize that this is about you in this moment and nobody else in the environment. I think that would be the ritual that I've been living by ever since I've been working, even today as a consultant. When I go into those places and I come back for a second trip, I will make sure I go say hello to everybody. Just say, “Hey, I'm on the property. How are you guys doing? How has it been during my absence?” And then you just kind of never left. It's like you never left.
[00:32:59] Susan Barry: Okay. What about one metric or one number to keep your eye on?
[00:33:04] Franck Desplechin: One metric to keep our eye on. I think all metrics are good metrics. Anything that is being measured is good. Now, I think we need to emphasize some metrics more than others. I don't think the GSI score, the Medallia score with the guest experience should matter more than guests', your employees' satisfaction? I think we should have a ranking. Right now, the employee engagement survey we are doing throughout the industry does not necessarily provide you a number. Like it's gonna give you a score. It's gonna tell you if you did well, if you didn't. This is some feedback and I think those are so valuable for you to be referring to throughout the year. And it shouldn't be a one-year on pre-engagement survey to tell you how you did, because we all know how it works. Usually, two weeks before the on pre-engagement survey, let's get the ice cream, let's do the pizza party. Let's make sure you guys feeling amazing. So we're getting the grade. No, it's a daily choice and it's a daily occurrence. How much do you care about me the other 50 weeks of the year? Because caring for me the last two weeks before the survey, you're gonna have the opposite effect of what the pre-engagement survey is.
[00:34:16] Susan Barry: It would be interesting, guests get their survey when they pay their bill. If employees got a survey every time they got a paycheck. Was this paycheck worth it to you this time? Why or why not?
[00:34:29] Franck Desplechin: Oh, that is brilliant.
[00:34:31] Susan Barry: We have reached the fortune-telling portion of our show, so you have to predict the future and then we'll come back and see if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of luxury food and beverage?
[00:34:43] Franck Desplechin: I would say the future of luxury and food and beverage, I think we are gonna be going back into making great concepts, but fewer less. I think we're way too big of creating the next big hotel with the most outlets there is, with the most partnership there is and providing the variety that the guests want. And primarily, I think over the last 10, 15 years, we've diluted the excellence and the great delivery and execution because we wanted to provide variety. And I already think that most of the new hotels that will be upcoming will have less option. So instead of having seven outlets, they will have three options, three outlets, and they're gonna do them extremely well. And I think we're probably gonna start seeing a little bit less of variety because I think the guests today are fed up with variety. They know what they want. They're choosing a hotel based on what they get out of it, and they're okay going into a hotel that's only a three outlet because they know the breakfast buffet was amazing. The dinner fine dining was amazing. And we also find out that the guests are looking for experiences. Therefore, there are a lot more local spots that they want to experience. They less and less staying in a hotel just because the hotel has everything. Now they want to go and explore outside. They want to eat like a local, they want to be able to mingle with the culture. I think I'm seeing a lot of that with the younger generation.
[00:36:17] Susan Barry: I think people really respond to a hotel that tries to draw a line in the sand and be something. Stand for something. Whether it's we only serve a wall of saki or we're grilled steaks, or whatever the case may be. So I agree with you and I am very eager to see that come to fruition. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how hotel kitchens operate, what would it be?
[00:36:46] Franck Desplechin: One thing kitchen that would change? I would say kitchen has always been one of the highest payrolls in any hotel. It's the most expensive payroll in any hotel. And engineers, once you're starting to get into those moments when you have to, let's go look at our finances and expenses. The kitchen labor is one that's always gonna be looked at first. So, I would say that streamlining the kitchen is not necessarily always the answer. I know it's the way to go most of the time to say, let's trim some fat right away tomorrow. So there's an impact starting at the end of the day. But there is an understanding and logistics. It's not because you're making less guests that suddenly one cook can take over three stations. We gotta be able to look at the menu in order to reduce the menu, in order to provide the right amount of labor to execute that menu perfectly. What tends to happen is, let's cut about those five cooks and now you're actually creating exhaustion, burnout, stress, and pressure out of the cook.
[00:38:00] Susan Barry: And grow food.
[00:38:01] Franck Desplechin: Oh, yeah. You cannot really provide great product and that translates into now the GSI. And the guests are not having an experience, and then you're back to that same meeting and say, “I don't understand what's happening.” So, what do you mean you don't understand? I told you what would happen. I told you what would happen and you chose not to care, so that's fine. But this is where we at. So now I need cooks back who I need to trim down the menu. Well, we gotta provide variety to the guests. I understand that. But you also want to have your expenses down, so you gotta choose. I cannot give you both. So I would say that's one thing I think needs to be looked at is paying attention when you're trying to trim and look at your expenses and understand the logistics of how a kitchen functions. Don't assume and listen to your chef a little bit more, probably.
[00:38:47] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Frank goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.
Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”
[00:39:02] Susan Barry: Frank, what is a story you would only tell on the loading dock?
[00:39:04] Franck Desplechin: My goodness, there are so many of them. I would say, and I'm gonna call myself out on this. There was one time we had a wedding happening on the property and I was the director of food and beverage of that property. And we had a tasting, so usually in the luxury environments, you're probably familiar with it. Once you have a wedding or an anticipated wedding in a year from now, they're gonna come on the property. Part of the package is you get a free tasting, you get to taste your food, and you come with your parents and you come with your wedding coordinator and whatever. So you have this entire thing that's being pulled out. And I was in a very nice property, it was the Bear's Resort collection. And so you're getting that kind of guest that can afford Bear's Resort collection for a wedding. And I did not necessarily put as much attention to this tasting as I should have. There was way too many things going on, and I did not prioritize that tasting. I thought we nailed it as usual, we were fine. And everything went down, crash and burn. Yes, it went during that tasting and I find out that the only way to get a wedding in our property is you had to hire your own wedding planner. So we had ours and they had to add their own. Okay. And so their wedding planners came and find out, this person was very, very prominent in New York City as a wedding planner. The year prior, she had just was the waiting planner of Sarah now Williams, just to tell you. What game she's playing with. And we ruined the entire tasting and we made her feel like she was not doing the a right job. She called me because I was the one there. She called me in the middle of the lobby of the hotel and she ripped me in pieces. Ripped me in pieces in the middle of the entire lobby with people stopping by watching. And she was just talking to me like I was nothing. You should be embarrassed to work here.
[00:41:16] Susan Barry: What happened? Like, did the food get burned?
[00:41:19] Franck Desplechin: I think there was a lack of decor. We didn't get the flowers that she wanted. The food was a little bit delayed. There was also a lack of service. We were not ready on the wine pairing. So all those little things.
[00:41:33] Susan Barry: Just everything.
[00:41:35] Franck Desplechin: For normal couple that doesn't have huge expectations. They would've just said, “See, that's fine.” I'll wait for five minutes to get the wine. But for someone like this that the expectations are so high and demand, and rightfully so. She has the right to demand. They're about to spend a lot of money. So the expectations were there. And so she ripped me apart in the middle of the lobby. And so she said, “What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do to fix it?” And I'm just saying, “Can you invite them for another test?” And she said, “Well, why would it be inconvenient to my guest? Why do they have to come back out of their schedule to come back here?” And I said, “I don't know what else to offer except to redo. I can do a redo. I can do that.” And she said, “I wanna talk to your general manager.” So the general manager came and she ripped the general manager in front of me the same way she did with me. And we were making very, very small. And she also sent an email to the vice president of sales of the whole company to say that this hotel was not the hotel she was looking for. So, you got a lot of those things.
[00:42:32] Susan Barry: The big deal.
[00:42:34] Franck Desplechin: The big deal. And so we got a chance to redo that tasting. And I was there on every aspect of that wedding tasting. And we conducted that wedding about eight months later and I was the personal butler of that wedding planner. I pull myself into a role when I say I'm gonna be five moves ahead of this person because she's the one we need to make happy. And so I did that and at the end of that wedding, I was completely exhausted for a three-day weekend. They had a buyout of the entire property. So it was a big deal. And at the end of the wedding, I was sitting in the restaurant, we had just finished, it was probably one o'clock in the morning and she just walked in and sat next to me and she said, “I'm tired.” And I said, “Well, I'm tired too.” And she said, “Well, you guys did amazing. And I thank you for it.” So that was a story of making those mistakes. You learn and you kind of need to keep moving forward.
[00:43:31] Susan Barry: Wow. Frank, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners loved hearing your stories and are gonna love reading your book, and I really appreciate you riding with us to the top floor.
[00:43:43] Franck Desplechin: Thank you, Susan, for having me. Was awesome to spend time with.
[00:43:47] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/223. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.
[00:44:23] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.