A look at the challenges local chefs and restaurateurs face.
It’s no secret that Raleigh’s become a Mecca for dining out.
In addition to a deep bench of diverse, innovative restaurants, a foodie community that’s collaborative and supportive and a booming population that can sustain concepts both established and fresh, we’ve also got the nation’s reigning James Beard Award winner for outstanding chef in Ashley Christensen.
But still, the job of a restaurateur in this city—a relatively small market without the tourism muscle of places like Charleston, Washington, D.C. or New Orleans—isn’t easy. Bureaucratic red tape, staffing challenges, marketing pressures and rising food and real estate costs can put a strain on even the most seasoned restaurateur. That’s not even to mention the budgeting considerations inherent in paying for a new restaurant space or financing up-fitting for a second generation one, long working hours and the inability to, at least initially, offer benefits or other perks to employees that all new, independent restaurant owners have to deal with.
For our annual Best Restaurants issue, Raleigh Magazine spoke with eight local chefs and restaurant owners about the struggles they face in their line of work. Whether they’re opening a new concept or working to keep bringing customers through their doors night after night or lunch shift after lunch shift, the challenges they face here are real.
Red Tape from the City, County and State
When Scott Crawford’s second restaurant Jolie opens this month (see our story on page 42), it will be six months later—and to the tune of around $750,000 in lost revenues—than Crawford had hoped. The delay, he explains, had to do with an unexpected zoning issue around changing the use of the space in the Person Street building from retail—a long-since-closed shoe shop— to a restaurant.
“Because it is a change of use, it opened a gigantic can of worms for the whole property,” Crawford says. “The whole property had to be brought into 100 percent compliance with every single issue on site. It’s an unrealistic burden for a small business owner who’s trying to improve a neglected spot. And the city is making that almost impossible.”
Chef Scott Crawford of Crawford and Son and Jolie
Crawford says if he didn’t already have his already-successful restaurant Crawford and Son, he may not have been in a position to see Jolie through.
And it’s not just the City restaurateurs have to contend with.
Chef Jason Smith, owner of the 18 Restaurant Group (including 18 Seaboard, which closed this summer) recalls paying thousands of dollars to replace shelving at his venerable restaurant at the direction of county health inspectors. And Tom Cuomo, who recently opened the Italian-Japanese fusion concept Papa Shogun in a second generation space in Seaboard Station, had to deal with yet another bureaucratic hurdle, this time from the state’s ABC Commission, a board that’s legendary in its difficulty to do business with. To obtain a mixed beverage license, Cuomo learned that, to be considered a restaurant, he needed to have 36 seats (Papa Shogun has 28).
“I was baffled by that idea,” Cuomo says. “Who decided 36 seats is the number to be considered a restaurant [rather than a private club]?” Cuomo decided against the expense of petitioning the ABC board for an exception; Papa Shogun serves beer and wine.
Chef Tom Cuomo of Papa Shogun
Staffing Challenges
“The absolute number one challenge for a chef in this county right now is finding solid line cooks,” says Drew Smith, the executive chef at Cary’s ko•an, which will open this month with owner Sean Degnan and the teams behind Raleigh’s (now-closed) bu•ku and so•ca in Cameron Village. “[Line cooks] are just not here and I don’t know where they are. I’ve had an ad out for a week and a half and I’ve gotten zero candidates.”
Kristen Baughman Taber, owner and founder of Tabletop Media Group which helps several local restaurants and bars with their marketing strategies, says hiring is what she sees her clients struggle with most across the board.
“Sometimes the quality of the candidate might not be right for the restaurant,” Taber says. “Or you think you’re opening in August and it gets pushed back to October. You don’t want to hire too soon and the timing has to be just right for cash flow purposes.”
Raleigh restaurants, especially for front-of-house positions, tend to draw from a pool of college students who aren’t necessarily looking for careers in food service whereas in larger markets—think New York City and Chicago—there are more career professionals to choose from.
But Taber gives props to Wake Tech and its culinary program and groups like the NC Restaurant and Lodging Association that encourage young people to make careers out of cooking and hospitality by pairing them with mentors or helping them to secure internships. And chefs such as Crawford and Christensen, and establishments including Trophy Brewing, A Place at the Table, Carroll’s Kitchen and others, are finding non-traditional ways to find, hire and train staff—by taking them on as volunteers initially, for instance, and working with local nonprofits such as Healing Transitions.
“We’re creating new avenues,” says so-ca/ko-an owner Sean Degnan. “But it’s going to take a lot of effort to encourage kids going to Wake Tech to find higher end restaurant jobs.”
“But we’re always open to teaching,” adds Anh-Tuan Tran, who starts this month as chef de cuisine at ko•an. “We’re looking for people who have that motivation and drive to learn.”
Cash is King
In 2006, when Jason Smith opened 18 Seaboard (which became famous for its seafood), salmon cost less than $4 a pound. Now, it can ring in at just under $8 a pound. Though the price of the product has doubled, Smith says, salmon hasn’t gone from $17 a portion to $35 on the menu; it’s increased by just a few dollars, because that is what Raleigh diners will pay for.
“For high-end restaurants in Raleigh, that’s a hurdle,” Smith says. Another hurdle? Real estate.
“The cost of starting a restaurant now is so astronomical, compared to when I started out,” Smith says. “The idea of paying $35-$40 a square foot, you really have to have some big sales numbers to make that work.”
Jason Smith of 18 Restaurant Group
Drew Smith of ko•an says that, though it’s ideal in many cases, it can be challenging to balance buying locally as much as possible with buying affordably.
“Strip steak from Iowa is half the cost of steak from North Carolina, but that portion has to be the same for people to think they’re getting the value,” he says. “Vegetables are the same way. We have amazing local produce here but it’s twice the cost as grown in other places.”
And now, with the rise of social media, most local restaurants have to find room in their budgets to hire someone to do their marketing for them or risk being left behind.
“Most places are working with somebody or have a designated person in-house,” says Tabletop’s Taber. “Even if they’re just running social media, it is important to have someone doing that for you. Especially where the market is quite saturated like in downtown Raleigh, it is so important to have that marketing component.”
“PR is as important as paying your water bill,” says ko•an’s Drew Smith. “You have to do it but none of us have time to sit on our phones and computers and do all this stuff.”
But it’s no replacement for in-person interaction, says 18 Restaurant Group’s Jason Smith.
“The phone and the restaurant business are very integrated, social media, how’s that dish going to look,” 18’s Smith says. “But the part I love the most, greeting and talking to the customers, that’s so important. And in order to be a chef, to be good at it, you have to enjoy it.”
A Culture of Collaboration
Despite the challenges, local restaurateurs we spoke to all say they have a common source of support they draw upon, one that’s unique to Raleigh and likely doesn’t exist to the same extent in larger markets where the industry can be more cutthroat: the benefit of each other.
“Tons of people are so creative, left and right,” says Amanda Haisley, the former executive chef at bu•ku and pastry chef at upcoming ko•an. “It’s been cool talking to people from other restaurants. It’s a lot less egotistical and competitive and much more of a community vibe these days.”
Amanda Haisley of ko•an
“[The amount of talent in Raleigh] is an advantage for everyone,” says Taber. “What I love about Raleigh and the Triangle in general is how collaborative it is. We’re always doing charity dinners, raising money for nonprofits, hurricane benefit dinners. It’s amazing how our culinary community comes together to do some really phenomenal things.”
In February, Caroline Morrison looked into the dining room of her crowded restaurant on a Sunday afternoon and asked herself a question that would surprise many small business owners: Where else could she send all these customers?
Morrison is the head chef and co-owner of Fiction Kitchen, the ever-approachable and soulful vegan and vegetarian eatery tucked inside a shotgun storefront in downtown Raleigh. It was Sunday brunch, and, for the second time in a matter of weeks, customers were setting new sales records. But the space had reached its capacity, she realized, and Morrison knew the same was likely true for the other brunch destinations around the city.
“We have to cut off our wait at brunch, because we’re running out of food or people are going to be waiting past the time that we’re open,” says Morrison. “That’s not fair to the people that are waiting, but we just don’t have enough food. So, I was thinking to myself, ‘We really need more options.’”
If the so-called “Brunch Bill,” which would allow restaurants to serve alcohol on Sundays as early as 10 a.m. rather than noon finds its way to the governor’s desk (SB155 was filed last month), the need may soon grow bigger.Help is on the way, at least.
This spring, brunch will return to Poole’s—the flagship of chef Ashley Christensen—after a four-year hiatus. Fayetteville Street’s new Pizza La Stella will soon launch brunch with the help of waffles. Vidrio, a lavish Mediterranean restaurant on Glenwood Avenue, is preparing to start its own brunch, while Soca, the South American sister restaurant of global hotspot Buku, will boast brunch, too. H-Street Kitchen has even launched a Sunday biscuit bar across from N.C. State.
“It’s become one of those favorite meal periods, especially after going out the night before. And it’s a good opportunity for a restaurant as a business, because most cooks don’t want to be up that early,” says Nunzio Scordo, the chef at the popular Lafayette Village restaurant Driftwood Southern Kitchen. “We’re packed every single Sunday from open to close.”
Despite those cramped conditions, the business of brunch is, in no ways, a surefire bet. Scordo, for instance, must plot the menu carefully, so that expensive items don’t eat into profit margins and cheap items don’t make customers feel shortchanged by the $16.95 price tag. “It’s a matter of balance,” he says of the menu, which includes eggs and biscuits, mac and cheese, salads, desserts and more.
Sean Degnan and his staff at Buku, which commandeers a corner of the Red Hat building downtown, spent four years working to perfect their buffet. The $21.95 spread is now one of the city’s most popular, loaded as it is with generous salads and carving stations, Southern standards and fusion specialties, custom omelets and generous desserts. They often sport a two-hour wait before noon and, Degnan says, turn people away every week. But it wasn’t always so lucrative.
“We knew we wanted to be open for Easter brunch and Mother’s Day brunch that first year, so we practiced a couple of times. And when we opened, we opened with a menu,” remembers Degnan. “We did 79 people for our Easter brunch, and we went down in flames. We were trying to be pretty fancy with our brunch, but it didn’t work.”
Before Mother’s Day arrived back in 2010, Degnan gathered the managers and shifted to a brunch buffet, something many of them had actually suffered through at previous gigs. They gave it a chance, and, slowly, it grew into a favorite. Buku now serves between 300 and 500 people each Sunday. Degnan admits Buku took its lumps in reaching those numbers.
“When we were doing less than 150 guests, we were way over-prepped and overstaffed because we expected more,” he remembers. “We didn’t have any use for all of that food. We reached out to homeless shelters, but they don’t want prepared food. Mostly, that food went to our staff to take home, and they ate it for the next day or two.”
At Fiction Kitchen, which is much too small for a buffet brunch, Morrison has her own menu considerations for ensuring profitability. During dinner service, entrees average $13 or so, but only two brunch items surpass the $10 mark. Tables need to move more quickly, then, so that her limited seating can serve more customers in less time. That means the items, from the rotating “Funday Quiche” to the heaping grits bowl, need to be made and served fast. Otherwise, that means more customers waiting and potentially being turned away.
But Morrison is careful to balance that expediency with atmosphere. Fiction Kitchen began as a brunch operation, after all, hosting pop-up meals in bars and breweries across the Triangle. She wants to maintain that meal-among-friends feeling even as she tries to feed as many customers as possible.
“Brunch is a whole different experience than dinner,” she says. “It’s hard for restaurants to make brunch, first, profitable and, two, enjoyable for their customers.”
The best brunches balance those two considerations—welcoming guests for a generous Sunday meal but sending them away swiftly, stuffed and satisfied.
The first time Buku Executive Chef Amanda Haisley cooked solo, she almost set the kitchen on fire.
“My sister was babysitting and my parents were out of the house,” she says. “My mom had this Sophia Loren cookbook and there was a recipe for Neapolitan pizza. I made the dough myself and cranked the oven up to 500 degrees, which of course made it smoke the whole house out…but the pizza turned out really great.”
Haisley, 27, never truly considered another occupation, though she flirted with the idea of studying art or math education. She cooked in several kitchens throughout high school and, in 2007, began classes at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. The curriculum included working in the school’s restaurants and studying a variety of subjects beyond cooking, like business, economics and psychology, which she says has been helpful in learning to manage a restaurant.
While in school, she took a whirlwind trip across Italy sampling wine and food, connecting on a deeper level to the cuisine on which she was raised. She grew up in Lancaster, NY, watching her mother, a third generation Italian-American, cook traditional dishes.
“Her grandmother was from Calabria in Southern Italy, and obviously [the recipes] go through a filter each generation, but my mom made a good amount of Italian food, and it was always very simple…lots of fish, lots of garlic, lots of fresh herbs,” she says.
This early introduction to fresh, straightforward food influenced her cooking philosophy. “I am very simple and hands-off almost, about food,” she says. “I have a soft spot in my heart for gorgeous food, really fresh produce and well-raised animals. I just believe in letting the product do its thing, not messing with it too much. It’s pretty awesome as it is. I really enjoy the interesting flavors we have here at Buku; it’s keeping things simple, but with a twist.”
Haisley followed her parents and sister to Raleigh soon after her graduation from culinary school and started working at Buku as a sous chef in 2011. She was promoted to executive chef in the spring of 2014, and considers her early years at the restaurant an extension of her education.
“The owners, Tony [Hopkins] and Sean [Degnan] are great. I’ve become very close with them and been able to pick their brains and see the innards of how a business works,” she says. “I’m highly influenced by the people I work with. We’re a great team, and we all learn from each other.”
Buku bills itself as “global street food.” The menu, full of big flavors from other continents, pays upscale homage to humble food cart items from around the world: Vietnamese pho, duck larb and Korean barbecue bibimbap coexist with Argentinean short rib, Hawaiian tuna poke and roasted sweet potato pierogies.
“We wanted to examine all the unique little niches around the world, the kind of Anthony Bourdain-type stuff that people don’t usually get to try when they’re tourists,” she says. “Little by little we are pushing the limits [of] our food, and I’d like to keep seeing that progress…not just for this place, but with the whole city. It will be interesting to see how our food scene grows.”
Lately, she has been part of the team developing the concept and menu for Soca, Buku’s new Caribbean and Latin American-inspired sister restaurant, set to open January 17 in Cameron Village, but she will be staying at the helm of Buku downtown.
“It’s important to cook from your heart,” she says. “You’re trying to make somebody happy at the end of the day, making something they are really going to enjoy, maybe make them think of a memory. Maybe they’ll remember that they had a really wonderful dish while they were at Buku.”
The first time