The Secco Wine Bar team enjoys family meal. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
Before dinner service kicks off at 5 p.m., Julie Heins, executive chef of Secco Wine Bar, along with servers, bartenders, kitchen staff, and co-owner and General Manager Dave Martin, gather at a long table loaded with house-made masa tortillas, tender braised short ribs, sauteed mushrooms, a fresh summer salad and a variety of cheeses. Plates are passed, the restaurant's newest rosé offering — along with plans for post-shift — is discussed, and notes are taken. For a fleeting 30 minutes, everyone working that evening (off-the-clock staffers are also welcome) is able to sit down together and feast during family meal.
Family meal is a long-standing tradition in the service industry, though restaurants aren’t required to feed staffers. The practice is centered around camaraderie, shows a devotion to the people it feeds and, similar to any home-cooked meal, is made with a good ol’ dose of love.
Is anyone else having flashbacks of their mom saying, “Make sure you’re home by 6 for dinner?” Similar to the ritual with our own families, in restaurants, setting aside time to eat with one another presents an opportunity for everyone to gather together and strengthens the foundation of their relationships.
“Doing family meal is a way to check in and get everybody to see we’re all in this together,” explains Heins, who prepares family meal, often tacos or grilled cheese sandwiches, daily at Secco.
“Doing family meal is a way to check in and get everybody to see we’re all in this together.” —Julie Heins, executive chef at Secco Wine Bar
The service industry is a different breed of employment. Restaurant workers often miss out on time with their families during holidays when many eateries remain open, work atypical hours that may spill over into the next day and lack the “normalcy” that comes with a 9-to-5 job.
For many, the eccentric lifestyle reinforces the idea that the workplace is a second home, and among co-workers there’s a deeper level of understanding and the feeling of being a united front. The act of sitting and eating together simply emphasizes that the people standing beside them day in and day out are indeed family.
The restaurant team, Heins says, is “just like extended family, and it’s really nice to be able to set that time aside.” She’s worked in restaurants where family meal wasn’t offered, she adds, and the atmosphere simply wasn’t the same. “The [restaurant] culture itself is already very difficult … and if you can change little bits and make it more comfortable, I’m all for that.”
Family meal also serves as a sort of deep breath before the bustle of service begins and the restaurant becomes flooded with patrons — the calm before the storm. It establishes a bond among staff members and aims to dissolve any disconnect between the front of house and back of house.
Most dishes served for family meal are comforting and hearty, often made with ingredients the kitchen already stocks or by-products they don’t serve to guests, such as at Shagbark.
Chef Jordan Selman is in charge of Shagbark’s daily family meal. Selman’s been on board since the Libbie Mill restaurant opened in 2016, and he views the opportunity to feed the restaurant’s 25 to 30 employees as his chance to be creative — although, Shagbark Chef de Cuisine Brandon MacConnell reveals, there’s “a lot of chicken,” and Fridays have been dubbed “focaccia Fridays.”
“When we opened here, that was one of the guaranteed bullet points,” MacConnell says of family meal. “We’ve been doing it from the get-go, and it creates a better vibe from the staff — providing a warm meal, especially when a lot of the cooks don’t eat during the day.”
By the end of the majority of shifts, the kitchen staff is running on fumes. They've prepared possibly hundreds of dishes, and workers have been on their feet for upwards of 12 hours. A slew of food orders flooding their screen from fellow staffers when they are trying to shut down the kitchen for the night is not ideal, and offering family meal at the start of the evening can help to eliminate that scenario.
Alewife Chef de Cuisine Bobo Catoe Jr. has worked in restaurants where family meal was served at the end of the evening, but he says he prefers it to happen earlier. “I like doing it before service because everybody gets on the same page,” he says.
Catoe notes that, often, the crew has already been working in the restaurant for hours prior to the start of dinner service, and the break provides an ideal time to slow down and relax for a moment.
“It’s the best form of a meeting and gives everybody 30 minutes to clear their head — it’s nice to recharge your batteries,” he says. “It puts everybody on one level.”
At Alewife, family meal is typically served once a week in the form of fried chicken, burgers and Korean-style hand pies. Catoe says that despite everyone discussing specials and service aspects while dining, the communal meal serves a much deeper purpose.
“Pre-shift family meal is so important — what it does for the staff and organization and the value of that 30 minutes to joke about your kids or dogs,” he says. “It’s less about eating and more about the social aspect. It’s nice to have everybody there.”
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