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George H.W. oval office posted:Could you make the GBS goon coffee shop idea a success? I already loving suggested they partner with the turd crystal shop, the ball is in their court.
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Dec 19, 2019 20:41
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Good stuff, I’ll give it a look.
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Dec 19, 2019 20:46
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:The opposite, actually! We get some of the absolute lowest quality candidates I have seen in my entire career. For every 20 applicants we get, 10 are worth calling (the rest have experience as maids or office workers), 4 show up for the interview, 2 pass the background check, and 1 quits in the first week. Good, culinary minded cooks usually can't pass background and drug screening, and don't want to be hosed to jump through the hoops needed to work here. Staffing is a constant issue here. You're drug testing?? You're trying to hire cooks that don't do coke and busboys that don't do weed? I'm surprised it isn't just you on your own there.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:05
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:The opposite, actually! We get some of the absolute lowest quality candidates I have seen in my entire career. For every 20 applicants we get, 10 are worth calling (the rest have experience as maids or office workers), 4 show up for the interview, 2 pass the background check, and 1 quits in the first week. Good, culinary minded cooks usually can't pass background and drug screening, and don't want to be hosed to jump through the hoops needed to work here. Staffing is a constant issue here. Related to this, I was going to ask if you had to pay staff more than the rate outside the airport to keep them since I imagine going from hire to start takes a bit longer because of the BG checks. Is this even anything that you have input on? The hiring pipeline must really suck.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:05
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:One Flew South is in ATL and are an excellent legit fine dining restaurant. This is 100% true. I fly a LOT for work and have been known to choose a connection at ORD because Tortas Fronteras is pretty wonderful. OP is your place at MCO or the other Orlando airport?
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Dec 19, 2019 23:07
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Shut up Meg posted:You're drug testing?? loving tell me about it. It's a corporate thing, but we don't give a poo poo. We straight up tell people during interviews that we don't care if they smoke or whatever, and will give them however long they need to clean up before we test. We don't do random testing or anything. Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Dec 19, 2019 |
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Dec 19, 2019 23:10
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greazeball posted:Related to this, I was going to ask if you had to pay staff more than the rate outside the airport to keep them since I imagine going from hire to start takes a bit longer because of the BG checks. Is this even anything that you have input on? The hiring pipeline must really suck. We don't have to pay more, and in fact, when we opened we paid comparable rates to the surround garbage eateries. However, earlier this year I worked with my GM and made an agreement with the money people to let us rescale our pay structure restaurant wide to improve wages and make them competitive. All of my back of house staff saw raises ranging from 2 to 5 bucks an hour. The company even hired an outside firm afterwards to monitor industry pay rates in the markets they are active in to make sure they don't underpay people again, it loving ruled. I'd like to do better for my people, but we at least now pay as good as or better than anywhere else on our level in the area.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:12
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drgitlin posted:This is 100% true. MCO, Southwest Airlines terminal.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:13
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Gotcha. Don’t tend to fly SWA but next time I’m there I’ll do my best.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:17
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Is there any specific reason why airport food in the US so bad and expensive compared to other countries? I fly a lot, and there are other countries with bad food at airports, but the gap in cost and quality between the airport and the city it serves is hugely wider in the US than in any other place I have visited.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:32
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:We don't have to pay more, and in fact, when we opened we paid comparable rates to the surround garbage eateries. However, earlier this year I worked with my GM and made an agreement with the money people to let us rescale our pay structure restaurant wide to improve wages and make them competitive. All of my back of house staff saw raises ranging from 2 to 5 bucks an hour. The company even hired an outside firm afterwards to monitor industry pay rates in the markets they are active in to make sure they don't underpay people again, it loving ruled. I'd like to do better for my people, but we at least now pay as good as or better than anywhere else on our level in the area. fuckin a dude! 
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Dec 19, 2019 23:34
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Mr Enderby posted:Is there any specific reason why airport food in the US so bad and expensive compared to other countries? I fly a lot, and there are other countries with bad food at airports, but the gap in cost and quality between the airport and the city it serves is hugely wider in the US than in any other place I have visited. I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that the US is a hypercapitalist nightmare state, and airport concessions companies will do everything they can to abuse and exploit what they view as a completely captive audience. The winds are changing though, slow as it may be.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:34
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Mr Enderby posted:Is there any specific reason why airport food in the US so bad and expensive compared to other countries? I fly a lot, and there are other countries with bad food at airports, but the gap in cost and quality between the airport and the city it serves is hugely wider in the US than in any other place I have visited. 
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Dec 19, 2019 23:38
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Our primary customer base is families leaving their vacation, so you can imagine the kinds of fuckers we get here. People already expect to get awful food and worse service at the airport, and it does color the experience a lot of people have; frustrations unrelated to the restaurant spill over and result in perfectly normal, likely friendly people treating our staff like dirt and complaining about whatever they can think of. As a solo business flyer there is no reason for this poo poo. Especially loving someone over on a tip. It comes out of my companies pocket, not mine. No reason not to be generous.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:44
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:MCO, Southwest Airlines terminal. I would have stopped there last Sunday but you put tomato in your shrimp and grits (doctor-diagnosed-if-not-life-threatening allergy).
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Dec 19, 2019 23:45
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Thomamelas posted:As a solo business flyer there is no reason for this poo poo. Especially loving someone over on a tip. It comes out of my companies pocket, not mine. No reason not to be generous. Sure there is. You're a giant loving rear end in a top hat that we will never see again. That said, not EVERY solo business traveler is dogshit, but the worst people that come through here are. Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 19, 2019 |
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Dec 19, 2019 23:48
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that the US is a hypercapitalist nightmare state, and airport concessions companies will do everything they can to abuse and exploit what they view as a completely captive audience. The winds are changing though, slow as it may be. The bad news is that all other countries are also hypercapitalist nightmare states, apart from the few that are socialist nightmare states, but you are doing God's work either way. If anyone cares, Spain and Germany (excluding Berlin Tegel) are the most fun airports to spend time in (lots of good wine and ham/beer and sausage). Singapore has the best food. If you put some of the cheap food hall food from Singapore airport in most western countries, people would travel to eat it. Hong Kong has the most underwhelming food. Denver is jawdroppingly bad. As in, I couldn't believe how bad the food was. I threw away a thirty dollar meal, because I could't bring myself to eat, then got a twenty dollar burrito that I could barely choke down. Coors banquet is a fun beer though.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:49
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ulmont posted:I would have stopped there last Sunday but you put tomato in your shrimp and grits (doctor-diagnosed-if-not-life-threatening allergy). We actually take a lot of pride in accommodating allergies and diet restrictions. There is always an actual chef in the restaurant that you can speak with to get something that works for you. Come through next time, we'll take care of you.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:49
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Sure there is. You're a giant loving rear end in a top hat. Most UK companies cover up to a 10% tip, I think a lot of other European companies don't even do that. I make up the difference in personal cash, because I'm not an arsehole, but that's the reason.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:51
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I walked by your restaurant a week and a half ago on my honeymoon, and I'm sorely disappointed we didn't stop and grab a bite to eat. I worked in a smaller airport up north for a few months in 2010, and folks don't realize how much of a nightmare the security behind the scenes is as well. How hard would it be to order something off your menu for someone with a severe milk (casein) allergy? For that matter, how hard is it to accomodate special orders given the sharp time constraints most of your customers are under?
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Dec 19, 2019 23:53
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Sure there is. You're a giant loving rear end in a top hat. I don't doubt you. I see my other business travellers and their assholery regularly. It's just dumb and counter productive.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:54
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SageNytell posted:I walked by your restaurant a week and a half ago on my honeymoon, and I'm sorely disappointed we didn't stop and grab a bite to eat. There's always next time! As I posted above, we take a lot of pride in our ability to accommodate allergy and diet restrictions; we've even been recognized and spoken about on some online vacation travel pages because of it. I specifically don't have peanuts anywhere in the restaurant, and we have comprehensive lists of all ingredients and allergens in everything we make. We stock a few types of gluten free bread for celiacs, as well. Just ask for the chef if you come through and we will take care of it.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:58
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:That is a loving metal wire that is bolted to the chef knife on that station. All of our knives have to be locked down on tethers, and we keep a daily log for them. Who's in charge of sanitizing the lockdown wire though? Mr Enderby posted:Is there any specific reason why airport food in the US so bad and expensive compared to other countries? I fly a lot, and there are other countries with bad food at airports, but the gap in cost and quality between the airport and the city it serves is hugely wider in the US than in any other place I have visited. I was about to ask about pay for cooks that can pass background screens and drug tests, but someone beat me to the punch. INstead, i'm curious how you accomplished this? What were the steps taken, how did you measure competitiveness, are cost of living adjustments part of the 'not falling behind' initiative, and what was the overall result or impact? Were there any positions you were surprised to see a bigger bump than expected? Mostly just curious how it went down! Was it a long, grueling process or fairly easy once you got people on board?
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Dec 19, 2019 23:58
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that the US is a hypercapitalist nightmare state, and airport concessions companies will do everything they can to abuse and exploit what they view as a completely captive audience. The winds are changing though, slow as it may be. Don't forget the part you mentioned earlier about how experienced people have no interest in jumping through a bunch of hoops for a job when they can find one that doesn't require all of that. And then the wages suck on top of that (your joint excepted).
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Dec 19, 2019 23:59
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:One Flew South is in ATL and are an excellent legit fine dining restaurant. drgitlin posted:This is 100% true. I enjoyed it, but wasn’t blown away. Way better sushi than you’d expect at an airport. Is there a menu item that’s their specialty? I was in a hurry and wasn’t able to chat with the server like I normally would.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:02
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Warbird posted:Also, what’s the deal with airline food? This one I have a bit of insight into! Heston Blumental did a fairly good show about how airline food is made and shipped and gets on a plane. Fairly sure its still on youtube, and you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_25JzvDQw The short version is: Altitute mucks with your pallete, to compensate you need to make the food umami as gently caress Also the heating units are gosh awful and basically overloaded toaster ovens with warm and warmer, not bake. I think its a bit dated at this point, but its still a good watch if you're interested. I'd be curious to know how (or if) the things pointed out in that video resulted in any changes to the industry practices or improved things overall. Are there any 'known considerations' that are a pain and have to be compensated for?
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Dec 20, 2019 00:05
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Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, if you are killing time at a UK airport head to the 'spoons. There is literally nothing else in there worth your consideration, including the Gordon Ramsey at Heathrow.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:05
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:loving tell me about it. It's a corporate thing, but we don't give a poo poo. We straight up tell people during interviews that we don't care if they smoke or whatever, and will give them however long they need to clean up before we test. We don't do random testing or anything.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:11
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TheParadigm posted:Who's in charge of sanitizing the lockdown wire though? The cook on the station. The wire itself never comes up on the station, and they sanitize it between every rush. quote:I was about to ask about pay for cooks that can pass background screens and drug tests, but someone beat me to the punch. INstead, i'm curious how you accomplished this? What were the steps taken, how did you measure competitiveness, are cost of living adjustments part of the 'not falling behind' initiative, and what was the overall result or impact? So I contacted all my industry friends in the area to ask about pay rates, as well as contacted other restaurants in higher priced areas (tourist areas). We did the labor cost calculations based on the increases proposed, which were based on time spent working for us so far, to keep it is as fair as possible. The card I played was that our overtime was massive because of our high turnover, and convinced corporate that I could drop overtime drastically if they put these changes through. The labor cost hit was negligible, and still kept us well under the industry standard of 30% cost. It took them a couple weeks of hemming and hawing before they approved the increases, on the condition that we drop overtime by a certain percentage. We have dropped the overtime like we promised, and haven't lost a single person over pay since. Our turnover massively dropped, and staff morale shot up. I made sure the staff knew exactly who got it done, too lol Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 00:12
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Coasterphreak posted:Don't forget the part you mentioned earlier about how experienced people have no interest in jumping through a bunch of hoops for a job when they can find one that doesn't require all of that. And then the wages suck on top of that (your joint excepted). Basically this too, yeah. The majority of the people who work in the airport are as close to braindead as you can get and still be allowed to drive. Real bottom of the barrel of the hiring pool. Finding culinary professionals for this environment is uh, hard. Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 00:13
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TheParadigm posted:This one I have a bit of insight into! Heston Blumental did a fairly good show about how airline food is made and shipped and gets on a plane. This is entirely outside my area of knowledge. I don't provide food to airlines.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:14
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Mr Enderby posted:Is there any specific reason why airport food in the US so bad and expensive compared to other countries? I fly a lot, and there are other countries with bad food at airports, but the gap in cost and quality between the airport and the city it serves is hugely wider in the US than in any other place I have visited. but it's also the reason that going to europe or most places, you'll just find an absolute overwhelming wealth of small cafes, restaurants, shops, etc that are small-time mom&pop operations whereas you come back to the states and outside of a few dense urban parts, it's just a wasteland of chains interested in maximum shareholder profits and such. And even in the dense urban parts, it's still not 1/2 the amount you find elsewhere. I was in UK a few weeks ago and it was startling that even in small little villages and stuff you'd find like 5 independent bakeries and cafes on a single block, and even in San Francisco here you don't see anything nearly close to that. Our entire tax, insurance, overwhelmingly expensive rents with no protections set up structure that makes it so it's hard to compete at smaller scale. There's also US airport security is probably a lot more restrictive and makes it a lot harder to run one if you aren't a large corner-cutting exploitative chain interested in huge markups on garbage microwaved food.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:17
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It's not really much harder, it's more that American companies can get away with being corner cutting cocksuckers, so they do.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:25
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Mr Enderby posted:Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, if you are killing time at a UK airport head to the 'spoons. There is literally nothing else in there worth your consideration, including the Gordon Ramsey at Heathrow. I tried having a fish and chips during a Heathrow layover and wow I was really loving impressed by how they managed to gently caress up something as simple as fish and chips (also it took forever). It was extremely bad. Worse than the stuff BA served me on the plane, which I assure you was no prizewinning dish. To OP, congratulations on actually taking pride in your food instead of just serving poo poo and garbage because you can. I wish more places would do that.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:52
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PT6A posted:I tried having a fish and chips during a Heathrow layover and wow I was really loving impressed by how they managed to gently caress up something as simple as fish and chips (also it took forever). Thank you! When we first opened they tried to do the normal airport dogshit, but I dragged them kicking and screaming into the light. The company considers us their flagship property now and uses us as the standard for quality. They fly up from Miami for meetings with prospective partners to show us off. Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 00:58
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Thomamelas posted:As a solo business flyer there is no reason for this poo poo. Especially loving someone over on a tip. It comes out of my companies pocket, not mine. No reason not to be generous. I spent a decade as a solo business traveler and I'm on this same boat. Most salespeople have the same attitude in my experience, we work on commission and understand performance based comp. Executives, maybe not so much. To be fair, the funniest was dealing with reps from other companies. Generally speaking, there is one set of guidelines for meals when eating solo vs with a customer or partner. Any time I was at an airport after a conference there was almost always an IBM or other rep happy to pick up the bill because that meant we could all have a couple drinks.
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Dec 20, 2019 02:13
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I'm willing to believe that most solo business travelers aren't assholes, but that most assholes are solo business travelers. Traveling on business is great, even if I only get to do it once or twice a year. My budget goes up from "whatever I'm willing to pay for things" to "what I get reimbursed for, plus what I'm willing to pay for things," and, well, that's just excellent.
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Dec 20, 2019 04:01
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Oh hey I live right next to MCO can I drop by?
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Dec 20, 2019 04:18
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What's the rent like compared to say a downtown location in Orlando? Or wherever a similar restaurant would be usually located there.
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Dec 20, 2019 04:20
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Can confirm that his restaurant is an awesome restaurant and I frequented it when it was in Winter Park before they went to airport only. Also, OP is a good poster and human being. I’m a solo business traveler and am not an rear end in a top hat, but I’ve seen many that are. As I’ve said so many times in the past, you’re in the wrong terminal. I’m seriously at MCO 2-4 times per week and my per diems should be spent on your food, not eating freebies in the AA lounge. Please come to 30-60! Cacafuego fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 04:28
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