Show Me The Money
Show Me The Money
How open book management can change a restaurant's fortunes in more ways than one. Plus alum Kirsten Kirby Shoot on indigenous food sovereignty, and some news New Yorkers and Minnesotans can use
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For a long time, Irene Shiang Li didn’t pay much attention to the numbers. As the chef and co-founder of Mei Mei in Boston, she was far too busy making sure her suppliers showed up on time and the dumplings got made to really go deep on her business’s accounts. But about five years after opening, and just at the point when Mei Mei was morphing from a food truck to a brick and mortar restaurant, something changed. “As a chef-owner, there's so much going on that as long as people's paychecks aren't bouncing, the financials fall by the wayside,” she says. “It’s not until it's time for growth, that you get a chance to take a step back, and be like, ‘okay, how do we improve?’
When that moment arrived for Li in 2017, she decided to do something that, to many in the industry, may seem radical. She didn’t just educate herself in her company’s financials; she opened the books to her entire team—managers, cooks, servers, dishwashers—and not only educated them in what the numbers meant, but created a system where everyone understood and took responsibility for how their day-to-day decisions affected the company’s financial health.
That approach is called open book management (or OBM for short). It’s not new–way back in the 1990s, a guy with the mellifluous name of Jack Stack wrote a book about how he used it to turn his failing manufacturing company around. But for a small but growing number of restaurants, OBM is proving an invaluable tool not only for improving profits and sales but also for boosting staff engagement, motivation, and retention. And as we here at MAD learned during this year’s Academy, it can also help foster the broader kind of culture that progressive-minded leaders want to create. As Li puts it, “it aligns the employee’s success with the business’s success.”
On the surface, open book management does just what it says: it opens a business’s financial books to everyone on staff, regardless of position. In restaurants, where financial information is often more closely guarded than the recipe for the signature dish, that kind of transparency in itself is radical. But OBM goes even further: practitioners don’t just show their team members the numbers, they also teach them what they mean, and then, create opportunities for them to take responsibility for them.
In the US, many restaurateurs first learned about OBM through Zingtrain, the training branch of Zingerman’s, a multi-pronged hospitality business based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As the company’s founder and chief philosopher, Ari Weinzweig was drawn to the practice because it exemplifies some of the values he tries to inculcate throughout his business. “It’s based on the belief that everybody can contribute, that everyone is smart, and that together we can do more than anyone can alone,” he says. “It's helping everybody get to greatness, because the reality of human existence is that people need to know how to use money.”
After learning about OBM on a Zingtrain course, Ian Gurfield was compelled by staff issues to begin using it at his restaurant, Ian’s Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin. “Some employees thought we were making insane amounts of money and getting rich off it, and other people thought we were making no money and were about to go out of business,” he says. “We were not on the same page.”
The problem was compounded when food costs ticked up by several points. When Gurfield asked the kitchen staff to bring them under control, no one, he realized, knew how to start. That was his eureka moment. “We were a closed book company at that point, so how could they? They had no context. We needed a scoreboard.”
ACADEMY ALUMNI
5 Questions with Kirsten Kirby Shoote
Kirsten Kirby Shoote doesn't feel like an activist, but they are all about changing the status quo, whether it's pushing for cultural responsibility or bending farming laws in the name of sustainability. As an urban farmer, seed keeper, and member of the Tlingit Nation, Kirsten works to uplift indigenous food and ensure its long-term preservation. This month, they talked to us about food sovereignty, their recent “emboldening” experience at Academy, and how the trip to Copenhagen sparked some surprising connections to explore back home in Detroit, Michigan.
What exactly is food sovereignty and what does it mean to be a food sovereignty activist?
It’s the ability to determine one's food, where it comes from, and the relevance it has to a specific community. In North America, Indigenous food sovereignty comes down to regionality and a tribe's ability to determine their own food sources and how those sources are cared for. So, in essence, how our land, waterways, and even the air we breathe are taken care of – all of this interweaves into food sovereignty.
I don't necessarily consider myself an activist – it's funny that anything rebelling against the norm is considered activism. But I do think the growing and making of food is a radical act that’s extremely spiritual and loving. And I like to see myself as a steward of this act that allows us to take care of one another.
NEWS & EVENTS
MAD Monday x NYC
This one is for the New Yorkers: On June 24, MAD and YETI™ will be teaming up in Brooklyn for a spirited conversation about a topic on a lot of our minds: is it possible for restaurants to be profitable businesses while also taking good care of their people and the planet?
In a MAD Monday that promises to be both thought-provoking and inspiring, writer Mark Bittman will introduce his plans for the non-profit Community Kitchen, then will join restaurateur Erin Wade of Homeroom and co-author of the influential Color Code of Conduct and chef Edward Lee of 610 Magnolia and The Lee Initiative in a lively debate about how––and whether ––restaurants can do well and do good at the same time. Jamila Robinson, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit, will moderate the discussion, and legendary Danish bartender Søren Krogh will provide the custom cocktails.
You won’t want to miss this one. Get your tickets here.
Alumni Event: Guest Chef Pop-up at Myriel
Three talented chefs who met at MAD Academy are joining forces to pay it forward. On June 25 and 26, alums Jae Bang, from Melbourne’s Freyja; Alejandra Espinosa, from Quito’s Somos; and Karyn Tomlinson will reunite at Karyn’s restaurant Myriel, in St Paul, Minnesota for a memorable dinner that will raise funds to provide scholarships for other talented hospitality professionals to attend Academy. Tickets available here.
