The Business of Flavor

Running a restaurant looks sexy from the outside: plates glowing, drinks sweating, servers gliding. But anyone who actually lives this life knows the truth is far uglier, far rawer, and far more expensive than anyone wants to admit. Behind every perfect plate is a spreadsheet that makes you want to drink. Behind every “beautiful” service is a stack of invoices threatening to choke you out. Behind every team-building moment is a conversation you’ve been rehearsing in your head for days because you know it’s going to fucking hurt.

People think restaurants run on passion.
Bullshit.
They run on margins, labor, human chaos, sheer stubbornness, and love. 

But the real battlefield isn’t the money. It’s the people and everything they bring with them.

There is no drug, legal or otherwise, that hits like the moment when someone on your team finally gets it. When the lightbulb goes off in their eyes and you see them step into the version of themselves you’ve always known was there. It’s electric. It’s fucking addictive.

You watch a prep cook who used to shake during service suddenly call out tickets with authority. You see a dishwasher, someone who has never been asked what they think about anything,  points out a better system and they’re right. You see a server who’s been getting in their own way suddenly work a table with confidence instead of fear.

Those moments feel like victory. Not a silent victory. Full-body, goosebumps, holy-shit-we’re-doing-it victory. It’s the pride of watching someone lift themselves. Not because you held their hand, but because you gave them the room to stand on their own.

I live for that shit. Truly.

Then there’s the heartache. Just as high as the highs are, the lows are fucking subterranean.There is nothing worse than watching someone with talent, heart, and potential burn their own life down in front of you. You see them slipping long before they do. The tardiness, the excuses, the defensiveness, the drinking, the anger, the blank stare when you give them feedback.

You try everything: Push. Pull. Encouragement. Confront. Back off. Lean in. Give chances. Give space. Offer mentorship. Offer boundaries. Sometimes none of it matters. Experience is the meanest, cruelest teacher in this business and in life, really. It gives you the test first and the fucking lesson afterwards.

Watching someone implode that you care about? It’s brutal. It’s personal. It hits your chest like a brick. You don’t mourn losing an employee, you mourn losing the future version of them you had already seen in your mind.

Then there’s the crushing weight of hard conversations. People don’t talk about this enough: leadership isn’t just making decisions, it’s carrying them, and tough conversations can feel heavier than a week of double shifts.

The mental back-and-forth before you sit someone down is a torture chamber: Am I making the right call? Am I being reactive instead of proactive? Will this break them? Will this break us? Will they hate me?

And the ugliest one: Am I doing this because I care? Or because I’m tired?

There is no easy way to tell someone they need to step up, or change, or stop fucking up. There’s no handbook for how to talk to someone who reminds you of your younger self. Scared, stubborn, talented, messy and ask them to grow.

Caring too much? Yeah, it’s a real thing. But not caring enough is worse. You can’t do this job meaningfully if you stop giving a shit. Apathy has no business in leadership. None.

Team building isn’t overnight work. It’s a long game. A brutal game. A game where you don’t get to see most of the wins until much later, sometimes years later. You don’t get instant gratification. You get trust built brick by brick. You get resilience learned through fire. You get connections built through mistakes, tears, apologies, and the rare, sacred moment when someone finally grows in front of you.

And that’s the cost of this work. The constant balancing act between holding people to a standard and holding them with care.

Everyone talks about the food. No one talks about the un-shiny shit:

• Margins tighter than your jeans after staff meal
• Investors who want champagne results on a beer budget
• Payroll that makes you cry
• Labor laws that make you paranoid
• Food costs that make you nauseous
• The constant fear of disappointing the people counting on you

This is the business of flavor: A tug-of-war between the art you want to make and the reality you have to fund. Between the community you want to nurture and the business you have to keep alive.

Love doesn’t pay rent, passion doesn’t cover payroll and purpose doesn’t lower our produce costs.

It takes systems, transparency, humility, ruthless honesty, and sometimes the courage to make a call that breaks your heart but saves the restaurant.

La Ofrenda: Hard-Truths in a Restaurant (from someone who’s fucked up enough to learn them the hard way):

1. Cash flow is king, queen, god, and gravity. If the money dies, the mission dies.
2. Transparency builds trust. Even when the truth is ugly. Show your team the numbers. Let them understand the stakes.
3. Sustainability always beats ego-driven decisions. If the system fails, the people suffer.
4. You can’t care too much.  Only care without boundaries. Love your team, but don’t bleed out for them.
5. Let people fail safely. Failure isn’t the enemy, secrecy is.

In the end, the business of flavor is a cruel, beautiful contradiction. It’s equal parts heartbreak and triumph. It’s building people while building a business and praying both survive. It’s the rawest, realest work I’ve ever done and the only work that still feels worth every scar.