Second Helpings: Front Vs. Back

The experience that a restaurant owner brings to the front of the house (where patrons dine) and the back of the house (where food is prepared) can influence the bottom line, especially when multiple locations are involved.

“One of the big things that people don’t really understand is what we call in the industry ‘back of the house’ driven places and ‘front of the house’ driven places,” said chef Colby Garrelts, co-owner with wife and chef Megan Garrelts of bluestem and rye restaurants.

“Take the gentleman that owns BRGR and Gram & Dun (Bread & Butter Concepts restaurant chain founder Alan Gaylin),” Colby said. “He was trained and worked in the front of the house his entire career, where Megan and I worked in the back of the house.”

Both approaches can be equally successful, the Garreltses said, yet owners oriented to the front of the house may struggle when a chef is replaced and unwanted changes result in how the food tastes.

“Somebody like Alan is big enough, and knows well enough what he’s doing, that he’s got standardized recipes for everything,” Colby said. “So it doesn’t change if he loses key people like that. But a lot of front of the house people sometimes don’t have the knowledge of how to do that.”

“They don’t understand the consistency of chefs,” Megan said. “And how, even if they say, ‘This is how we’ve done something for years,’ and they hire a new chef, we can sit down and taste when there are subtle differences, and go, ‘What’s going on?’”

As restaurant owners who are also elite chefs, the Garreltses say they can “get away” with more flavor changes.

“We are the chefs, and so we can change things and people trust us,” Colby said. “Where, sometimes, when you don’t have that main brand or that chef brand in the back, you’ve got to be really careful about changing things.”