Reentering the job market for entrepreneurs
Reentering the work market after owning your own restaurant:
Owning a restaurant is harder than it looks. So is reentering the labor pool after having been an owner. The longer a chef has owned a restaurant, the more challenging the reentry.
The classic chef owner biography after ownership has two or three jobs of eight or fewer months before a suitable fit is found. There are a host of reasons for this. Among them are:
- Most ex-owners think they know better than the person they work for, often with right. They are often poor at hiding it.
- Being the boss for a while weakens the ability to respond to supervision.
- The entrepreneurial urge – to fix all problems with swift decisions and to take responsibility for everything in the operation does not work well with a group of people who may feel their territories are not being respected. It is difficult to judge the level of political and territorial complexity of the staff on someone else’s restaurant.
- It's hard not to have the last word.
- Practices and solutions developed for a restaurant you own often do not work for others.
- Those chefs who enter ownership without having had sufficient preparation will still be insufficiently prepared on selling or leaving.
- Poor habits developed as an owner out of necessity are often hard to break.
- Leaving ownership often accompanies other lifestyle changes or crisis like divorce or family loss, which make focus on a new position more difficult.
- Chef owners had no supervisors who can give more or less objective accounts of their performance.
- You forget why you left the labor pool. It’s harder to work for other people than you remember.
This all appears to be very simple. Swallow your entrepreneurial pride, let someone else do the hard work and take the fall if something goes wrong. Judging from the repeated experience of restaurant owners, many of whom eventually return to ownership, it is not. Relinquishing leadership is apparently a pretty traumatic challenge.
Employers are often aware of this and reluctant to hire previous owners who haven’t proven themselves as employees. We have heard the employers’ side, and they can’t be dismissed. While they don’t apply to all chef owners, all chef owners are still painted with the same brush. “He was always arguing.” “I couldn’t tell her anything,” “I got nothing but complaints from the staff, who were glad to see him go, “He’s just here until he can find investors for a new place of his own,” are some of the comments we hear. We hear them from subordinates, as well.
Employers looking at candidates who were owners invariable ask why they couldn’t make it on their own, if they were that good. It’s not a stupid question.
The pity is that many owners bring a great deal of value and experience, entrepreneurial responsibility, a sense of fiscal prudence, an understanding of the business side of the industry and the dining room, networks of purveyors and realism to name a few. They tend to be decisive, risk takers and responsible. The art of the return is perhaps finding an environment which appreciates these qualities. Choosing the next challenge then means considering the social parameters of the location. Highly controlling independent owners, for instance, may not be the best choice.
When changing status from employer to employee, you need to take a look at the long run, what works. We have no answers, but we do have some suggestions:
The first and most important would be to assess the issues with your restaurant..why did you leave it. What were the issues that forced you to close or moved you to sell. Let’s be clear that this isn’t a guilt issue, but a cause search. This is not a time to beat yourself up, but find the reasons if they are due to any lacks on your side. Did you overestimate your ability to do everything (or underestimate how vast everything can be)? Did you hire or plan poorly? Under capitalization? Poor location? Not enough experience to begin with?
With those you know what not to do. You also have a frank answer to give any potential employer. Frankness, you should know from your own hiring, is thoroughly disarming.
The second would be to choose your next job wisely, and possibly to choose it for a short term to give yourself some time to regroup. Look for something that will give you a credible and successful reentry, which may mean a subordinate position, but within the quality range of your own restaurant.
Realize the challenges facing you and find someone to discuss them with you. You are likely to feel abused, under appreciated or picked on for a bit. You need someone to like you enough to listen and add a little perspective.
Here are a few other points:
- Before you close your property, put together a portfolio of your menus, your press and photos of the restaurant. Take down your web site and have it or at least copies of pages on your desktop (and backed u p). Do not barrage potential employers with the information, but be prepared to present if asked or offer it if appropriate.
- Allow yourself a little time to recover, if it is financially possible. Leaving your own restaurant is hard work, and giving yourself time to settle is a kindness you owe yourself.
- Keep numbers and contact information for all of your employees and management.
- Use your network. You know other owners. Work for/with them while you are working out your next move.
- Divorce yourself from the specific culinary concept of your restaurant will make it easier to not try to override management’s culinary decisions.
- If you went into your own restaurant as a sous chef or less, and did not have it for more than a year or so, don't hesitate to return as a sous chef. You won’t forget what you learned as an owner, which will help you move ahead faster.
- If alcohol or drugs became a problem before you gave up your property, don’t blame them on the property issues. They are usually a main cause (there is rarely just one.) They won’t get better if work for someone else. Address them now and work the job issue around them.
- It's usually easier when people know you. If you had a top restaurant in Cheyenne, Wyoming is the better place for your search than Seattle. People have appreciation for your food and are more likely to want you to do it for them. If you owned a multi star restaurant in New York, on the other hand, the world is your oyster.
- Small corporations are very good venues for reentry into the job market. The rules are clearer and there are fewer political and territorial minefields to conquer. Larger corporations are less flexible, and working with individuals with an emotional stake in an independent restaurant can be quite a challenge after being an owner.
- If you decide to sell because the work was too hard, consider changing direction. Working just the back or front of the house is never as strenuous as doing everything, but you have seen the elephant and it may be time to entertain less prestigious but equally satisfying career directions.
- If necessary make peace with your purveyors. You'll need them going forward. If they didn’t get their commission because you couldn’t pay the bill, you owe them one. It’s hard, but you will all feel better. Do it in person or by phone, if possible. Email is better than nothing.
- Make a list of all the things that you know now that you did not know going into your restaurant. There’s going to be a lot. Listing it will not only make you feel pretty good, it will give you a handle on it for discussion in a job interview. Revel in your creation and look forward to the next one. What you did will make you better at what you do.
- When preparing for a job search remember how you hire. Write your resume and approach employers they way you expected to be approached.
- Be good to yourself. Losing a restaurant is like losing a relative. You don’t just walk away from something like that without a little hurt. You will very possibly have another some day. In the meantime enjoy watching someone else wrestle with the demons of restaurant ownership.
- Not all owners are true owners. If you are parntered without equity and answered to managing partners or a corporate entity, you were not one. You may find it better to make this clear on your resume with the title "non equity partner answering to...." or a similar term.