The Kids Are Alright

In a recent avalanche of trial shifts, a dishwasher arrived in dress shoes and a business shirt, one waiter used a table napkin to mop up a nearby spill, and another looked genuinely baffled when I explained that every table gets fresh condiments – meaning the parmesan she’d just cleared belonged in the bin. I intercepted the ramekin after she’d emptied it, but before it made its way back among the clean ones.

Gleeson and I are pretty efficient, but we can’t do 100 covers a night by ourselves. When every prospective employee who walks through the door has just turned 21 and never worked in a restaurant, you’ve still got to hire someone. But how best to get these kids up to speed?

At Middle Eastern restaurant Rumi in Melbourne, about one-quarter of the staff are some kind of trainee, many of them are teenagers. “Juniors who know nothing are easier to handle than adults who know nothing,” says owner Joseph Abboud. “And watching a young person turn from having, well, no idea really, into a positive contribution to the team, that’s really something.” 

Abboud took on his first junior in 2006, a sixteen-year-old he paid to polish glasses. “People thought it was strange, to pay someone to do that,” Abboud says. That staff member lives in Vietnam now, where she’s a sommelier for a restaurant group.

I started out this way, too. Back in the dark ages (2000), I was learning how to polish cutlery, run food and set tables from a crew of veterans at Walter’s Wine Bar in Melbourne. Even when I graduated to taking orders, I was terrible until years of practice and mentorship kicked in. Honestly, I can’t believe they ever let me loose on actual customers.

Abboud, who takes on school-based apprentices and work experience kids, sees his investment in training as a long game. “It’s partly from a perspective of need,” he says, “when you can’t get anyone [experienced], you’ve just got to get it done.” 

It also makes economic sense. “Teenagers are cheap! We can put two junior kitchen hands on shift who could never do it by themselves. In two years’ time, they’ll be paid like an adult, and they’ll be able to deliver like an adult, because we’ve given them the confidence to build their skills.” 

“Front of house is a bit more challenging, because the guests are not forgiving with average service,” Abboud says. “We can’t just put an L plate on a kid and send them out there.”  There needs to be a base level of training and wanting to talk to people, because being a waiter means dealing with the public, he says. “That’s the job.”  

Which is why what happens behind the scenes matters just as much. Part of my role is making sure new recruits know we’ve got their backs: “There’s no mistake you can make that I haven’t already made,” I told a nervous junior recently, nudging her towards a waiting table. Have I ever dropped a hot chocolate into a customer’s handbag, accidentally served meat to a vegetarian or tripped while carrying a tray of glasses in the middle of a busy dining room? You bet. 

Hiring kids isn’t for everyone. When I call Timo Van Hest of Soma, a 20-seat wine bar in Queensland’s Hervey Bay, he’s wrapping up interviews for Sandy’s On Queens, a sandwich bar opening soon. 

Cameron Maher is Group Front of House Manager at Andrew McConnell’s Trader House restaurants. The odds are he’s almost always hiring, and “not everyone has to be a highly-trained rockstar,” he says.

“I would say we prioritise hiring junior staff,” Maher says, with dedicated junior roles available across the venues, but longevity is key. “The upfront training to get someone to the required standard takes between six and 12 months. Our goal is to hire people we can work with for a number of years.”  

The restaurant group doesn’t do trial shifts. Instead, it’s a rigorous interview process, plus reference checks and a thorough onboarding, from uniform rules to rosters, before they hit the floor. Supernormal is a great training ground, he says. Due to the volume, there could be six or seven juniors on staff amongst a front of house team of around 50. 

“Even if someone is overwhelmed in the first week, that’s okay. We’re looking for more intangible qualities at that stage, particularly for juniors,” Maher says. Most important are an ability to take feedback, communication skills and a willingness to get stuck in. “Anything else, we can teach,” Maher says.

It’s a tight, highly structured system: new waiters start out stocking stations and setting tables, eventually moving to guest-facing roles like food running or clearing tables, then section training, food training, beverage training. “Before you know it, you have a trained, capable, one-hat section waiter,” Maher says, giving due credit to the perks a top-tier restaurant group can bring. “Our rosters are plump, and we have no shortage of talent in the venues – it is a different reality than most people have.” 

“Two of my boys did work experience at Supernormal,” Abboud says. “They’ve been building a system for a very long time, and the training really is of a high standard. If Rumi ever had to close, I’d probably go and work at Trader House, too.” 

A consummate service professional, Maher, whose first job was washing dishes at a golf club, spends at least three days a week on the floor. In-person training is such a big part of creating restaurant culture, he says. “I think it’s patience and being able to see the big picture. Thinking in months, rather than weeks. If you are consistent with your time and effort, if you can carve out 30 seconds to teach someone ... those moments will reap rewards.” 

Likewise, there’s an onus on the veterans to remember how far we’ve come. “Everyone enters the industry green,” Van Hest says. “We all started from zero. For me, the places I have liked to work the most have been the places where I learned the most. Rather than complaining that there’s no one with experience, you can create that experience, you can be a step in a ladder.”