A recipe for success
Conference addresses social issues in restaurant service industry
Anthony Falcon took $10,000 and a downright dangerous amount of credit card debt and combined it with the life experience gleaned from an itinerant career and a globetrotter’s upbringing. And in four years he has created one of Pittsburgh’s most successful restaurants, critically and commercially — with lines out the door and $2.7 million in annual sales.
All it took was backbreaking work, respect and kindness to his customers and staff and an unwavering commitment to those principles.
That was Mr. Falcon’s recipe for success. The executive chef and co-owner of Gaucho Parilla Argentina gave the keynote address to close the two-day 86 Conference, held Monday and Tuesday at the Ace Hotel in East Liberty to address a range of issues facing the service industry. (In restaurant lingo, 86 means being out of a product or dish.)
“I choose not to live in the present but rather move and act and be the future that I want to see, that I think and believe should exist,” he said of his approach to running Gaucho.
Behind the scenes at any restaurant or bar exists a tight maze of sensitive ethical, environmental and cultural decisions to navigate, not unlike a server carrying a full tray through a chaotic kitchen to a packed dining room. Addressing many of those topics is the purpose of the conference, cohosted by the Oakland-based Good Peoples Group, a consulting firm that provides diversity training for corporations, small businesses and nonprofit organizations.
“We hear a lot about race and gender issues and inequities, and we have a lot of terms like gentrification and cultural appropriation that are floating around online, but nobody seems to know exactly what they mean always,” said Liana Maneese, co-founder of the Good Peoples Group. “I thought it was important to bridge the gap between social justice and caring for people and the service industry.”
Ms. Maneese noted that the service industry workers are in a unique position because it is entirely based on public interaction, and the slightest missteps can have unintended consequences — such as online reviews that go viral from either news organizations or websites like Yelp.
“These are people who care for people, are in front of everybody, listen to everybody and are dealing with so much heavy stuff that [customers] are bringing into their spaces,” she said.
The panelists and speakers included Troy Hill restaurateur Don Mahaney of Scratch Food & Beverage, who addressed ethical business issues; Pittsburghbased writer Damon Young of the website Very Smart Brothas; Brentin Mock, a Pittsburgh native who writes for CityLab, who addressed issues of gentrification and cultural appropriation, including the brief furor this spring over a sincescrapped plan for a hip-hopthemed fried chicken restaurant in East Liberty; and Jennifer England of 412 Food Rescue, who detailed her organization’s efforts to minimize food waste, and the staggering financial and environmental impact caused by it.
Brian Hammond is a bartender and server at Stagioni on the South Side. A chef by trade, he has worked at top restaurants in Philadelphia and Chicago, previously owned a restaurant in Cranberry and has another under development on the NorthSide.
“The perspectives were very different, but a lot of it was very interesting,” he said. “Right off the bat it woke me up — it really got me. There were things I could relate to and things that weren’t as familiar. For me the main thing was seeing that people cared enough to be there. This was about more than just what you have on your menu.”