Overachieving rebel offers sage advice

Heather White

VANCOUVER­—Heather White of 2020 Communications Inc., a 28-year-old who describes herself as an “overachieving rebel” had some sage advice for BC restaurateurs on how to thrive in a recession.

Take one hundred per cent responsibility, make a plan that positions your restaurant in a niche market, get your staff to champion your company and make strategic alliances.

White was one of a roster of speakers at the BC Hospitality Industry Conference and Exposition held at Vancouver’s Fairmont Waterfront Hotel Nov. 22-24.

David Adjey, a chef who is sometimes known as the Gordon Ramsay of Canada, has divided his time in the restaurant industry between the front and back of the house. In a presentation that was only partly tongue-in-cheek, he talked about his experiences in a 100-year-old California restaurant, where he tried to bridge the gap between the Ferrari-driving front-of-house staff who made $2,500 a week cash, and the kids in the kitchen who made $8.50 per hour and whose priorities were to surf, smoke pot and work, in that order.

Adjey stressed the need for restaurant operators to open up and get the front-of-house staff excited, to bring them in and get to understand everything about the business, and the dollar volumes associated with it.

Jeremy Gutsche

One idea was to bring the chef into the servers’ pre-meal meeting, so that the servers could ask him how to upsell the food items.  They could talk about whether the portion sizes were wrong. For example, if guests didn’t have room for coffee and dessert, that’s bad for the house.

Jeremy Gutsche, right, of Trendhunter.com, 28, rounded out the conference with his interactive presentation on how to exploit today’s market chaos to come up with supercharged ideas.  Disney, CNN, Adobe and other highly successful companies were all created in a time of crisis, he said.

He also gave the example of Smith Corona as a company that failed due to lack of innovation.  “Smith Corona prided itself on being the best typewriter company in the world. Why didn’t they exploit the next best thing? Situational programming dictates the outcome — they needed a broader definition — they had to be in computing.”

Keep in mind that a decent portion of your creations must fail, Gutsche added. “Success leads to complacency and that’s the architecture of your downfall.”

Also at the conference, British Columbia Hotels Association outgoing president Earl Wilde of Victoria Regent Waterfront Hotel & Suites, handed over the reins to Kurt Pyrch, GM of the Best Western Cowichan Valley Inn.