With the hospitality management one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 restrictions, restaurants are still barred from keeping their full capacity. For most dining establishments, pivoting to the food takeout service has allowed them to survive. In this first part of the discussion, Melanie Parish talks to John Forcier and Jerrett Young of Equal Parts about the strategies and challenges of balancing a full restaurant service and a reliable takeout service, all without losing their original branding. They talk about the process of finding the right packaging design and materials, how they see takeout service moving forward, and how they handled laying off people in the most acceptable manner. John and Jerrett also share how they keep their restaurants diverse and inclusive at all times, not only for their employees but also for their customers. 

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Listen to the podcast here

How To Successfully Transition Into The Food Takeout Service With John Forcier And Jerrett Young 

I want to tell you a little story. It was early in the pandemic. My daughter is a chef at a restaurant called The French. They were lovely when they had to lay everyone off because of the pandemic. I went to pick up a staff meal for her because of an allergy she had. She couldn’t go in. When I was there, I dropped off two of my books, The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators, for their CEO and their executive chef. As 2021 has progressed, I’ve watched them experimenting extraordinarily well. 

They’ve tried things and some of the things have worked better than others, but I kept having this feeling that I wanted to bring them onto my show. I wanted to talk to them about what it’s been like this year from a business point of view and from a food point of view. I wanted them on together and I wanted to have a dialogue. It’s a little different for me. I wanted to try something new on my show. I brought them on to talk about that. I’m so excited about having them. I can’t wait to hear how they’ve been experimenting. 

I’m here with Jerrett Young and John Forcier of Equal Parts. Jerrett Young has devoted his education and his career to the hospitality industry. He owns his own consulting company and an investor in the long-standing Toronto staffing agency, The Butler Did It, where he continues to search for ways to combat the labor, diversity and inclusion obstacles that face our industry. In a fifteen-year-old tenure at acclaimed Oliver & Bonacini as the Vice President of Operations, Jerrett and his business partner, Jason Cassis founded Equal Parts Hospitality, a restaurant group and hospitality management company in Hamilton. They own and operate two golf courses, three restaurants and work with a variety of other partners. He enjoys home cooking, exercising and exploring the Niagara area with his husband, Henry. 

John Forcier is the Director of Culinary Operations for Equal Parts Hospitality. He’s responsible for shaping the culinary voice for all the properties. John also spends a lot of time working closely with local producers and purveyors to ensure the restaurants are getting the highest-quality ingredients possible. After graduating from George Brown College for Culinary Management, John worked in several restaurants before spending almost five years at Oliver & Bonacini’s Canoe Restaurant. While a Sous Chef at Canoe, he began to realize the importance of not only the finished dish but also who produces and prepares the food that goes onto that plate. John lives in Downtown Hamilton with his wife and son. I’m so excited to have these guys on my show. 

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John and Jerrett, I am excited to have you on my show. 

We’re excited to be here. 

I want to dive right in and ask you what it’s been like leading 2020. It’s been an unusual year. I noticed in my calendar, it’s been a year since I raced home from a trip because they were closing the Canadian border. What’s it been like for you? 

It’s ever-changing. I still remember early late February in 2020, fourteen of us were sitting in our head office, which would never happen now. No masks, no anything, talking about how Jerrett had been a general manager in Toronto through SARS and that experience was going to see us through this two–week blip, and then we would all be back to normal. Jerrett has gone through this before. That could not have been further from the truth. Jerrett has helped see us through that. We were right about that, but it has challenged not just the two of us, but all the leaders in the company to think differently, to work differently, to change the nature of what we do. I would say we have far more openness to things than we’ve ever had before. We’ve always been quite cautious in new ideas, new promotions, and let’s try this and the rules came out in 2021. Anything that seemed like a good idea, we tried for better or worse. 

Walk me through what you tried. I’ve watched some of it happen, but I’m such a fan of the Equal Parts restaurants. What did you try? 

We being full–service restaurants have tried takeout delivery, which is the obvious answer. We’ve tried to figure out how our brand and our values fit in a takeout and delivery model. We have tried to figure out how our guests interact with us during special occasions. We have tried to figure out how to stay connected with 120 people that we’ve laid off throughout the year. We’ve tried to figure out a way to continue to develop our leaders through this pandemic. We’ve tried to figure out how we keep them at their full salaries. 

When I think about what we’ve tried, we’ve certainly tried a lot of things that other restaurant groups have tried, but it goes deeper than that when you start thinking about how do I try to ensure that these leaders are with us in twelve months because we will need them? How do I ensure that over twelve months, people want to return to the company? How do we try to ensure that our guests know that they’re still important to us when we don’t see their faces and all they see is a takeout container? What does that feel like and look like? If I was to whiteboard this, it would be full of, “I tried this,” or “We tried that,” and a ton of stuff from operation to HR stuff. 

I’m curious because experimental leader and all that, how did you know things were working or not? 

We didn’t. We have gained confidence over the last twelve months in what works and what doesn’t work. I will use the very first Mother’s Day or Easter three–meal thing we’ve tried. It was a colossal disaster. 

Tell me more. How did it go? 

Mother’s Day, when we bit off more than we could chew. I was driving to get bagels at 7:00 in the morning. We had all these variations of food. It was raining and guests were lined up outside to wait for their meals. We had food everywhere. It was like, we did this and people were very appreciative but did we learn a lot from that? We learned how to do it better and better. 

Can you tell me quickly what were some of the things that you learned from the failure specifically? John, you can jump in here. What on the ground did you go, “I’m not driving to get bagels?” What did you learn from that? 

We spent the first three months trying to be as much of a full–service restaurant via takeout as possible. Easter 2020, we were a bit conservative. You could have a choice of two salads, choice of three proteins, add on a pie, but there were very little choices because we were new. We looked at ourselves and said, “If we did that, let’s do more.” Mother’s Day, we tried to emulate if you were coming into the restaurant. You can have 2, 4 or 6 scones. You can have all sweet, all savory or half and half. They’ve all like the sweets get jam and the savories get butter. You can have a large salad or a small salad of three different salads and 4 or 5 different main course options, but large and a small. I won’t put any blame on Jerrett for this. I underestimated how much work that was going to be. We’ve learned since. You helped us with this revelation. More choice is not always better especially in a takeout format. We did ourselves no favors by complicating it so much. I don’t think we did our guests any favors by making them go through that many mental hoops, deciding probably over 100 combinations did they want. 

I’ve been doing a lot of work around funnels and sales marketing messages. Giving people one option and a yes or a no, and a credit card is the most efficient in marketing generally. In a restaurant, you want choice because that’s one of the beautiful things about a restaurant. If I’m sitting there, I can have exactly what I want so can my husband and my kids. In a takeout, it’s like, “I want yes or no.” I want to be able to look and go, “That’s a great idea,” or “No, that’s not what I want.” That makes so much sense when you go to an online marketing model, then all of a sudden, you’ve got a best practice that hasn’t been applied to food. 

It came right down to if you want a mimosa kit, that’s great, but choose 2 out of these 4 juices for your mimosa kit, and they’re all versions of orange. We’ve got a lineup at the door. I’m trying to read these labels of this one’s pineapple, but it’s the same color as this orange, which is the same color as this passion fruit. I want to make sure I get the right two bottles of juice. 

Mother’s Day is coming up again. How’s it going to be different in 2021? What am I getting for Mother’s Day? 

You’re getting one thing, that’s it. 

Food Takeout Service: Restaurants must realize that it is okay to pivot these days without taking out their core values and original brand.

You don’t have to tell me the menu now. You’re offering one thing now for the holiday meals. 

It’s a lot less choice. Chef John raised a good point. After that experience or a few other experiences, we came to the realization that we were not a full–service restaurant to anybody anymore. We had to be okay with that. We had to figure out how we take our values and our brand, and make sure that people know that it’s still us, but it’s different and that’s okay. How do we say that to your guests? How do we say that to our GMs and chefs that it’s still us. We’re still here but we have to do it differently. That was a valuable lesson that changed the course of the last several months for us as a company for sure. 

If you think of holding onto those values and delivering, I love these specific examples because it helps people think about when you’re experimenting, what are you trying? How did you make your packaging, for example? How did you decide about what packaging to use and how that was a symbol of your brand? I love the packaging that you guys use. I love how it comes. 

That’s been an evolution. Easter was the first time we did anything big. Up until then, whatever we had was good enough because we’re dealing with so many other things that that’s not a priority. Every big thing we have slowly been evolving our takeout. The brown fold-up cardboard things work for some things but not for others. Let’s find what those don’t work for and find something to replace it. The next piece that we do, the prime label would look better in something else. It slowly morphs. The latest iteration is we’ve done away with anything non-recyclable. We used a lot of black plastic trays. We’ve switched over to entirely either compostable or recyclable containers. That was a big switch. Jerrett’s been fine–tuning our decorative packaging. 

For me, one of the priorities was how do you create experience in a takeout bag? We have done things for our guests, like links to our Spotify playlist. You’re eating your food while you’re listening to music that you would be listening to at the restaurant. On New Year’s Eve, there were balloons tied to every bag, reheating instructions, and then we evolved into a message from the chef and GM about the food and thanking them. Chef John, kudos to him, we did Beef Wellington. We had no idea how it was going to travel and whatnot. He made one first and took it home in the package that we were going to be doing on Valentine’s Day. We let it sit there for a while. Trying to experience it through the guests’ eyes before they even experience it themselves has led to some good creative ways to have our guests feel like they are still connected to our dining room experiences. 

All of those are great. I’m exactly your target market and all those things are delightful to me. I do think that it’s interesting to try to scale up a new vertical. I know lots of businesses have been doing that. Were you guys doing much takeout before the pandemic? 

No. We had tried at the Diplomat and it had gotten no traction. 

Do you remember even several months ago when we had the odd takeout order, it would be like, “Do we have a bag to put this in? Do we have a cup to put this in? Do we do takeout soup?” 

I remember working at The French in the early days. Our GM would come over with the phone on hold and goes, “Jeff, do we do takeout?” “We‘re not too busy right now. How many people is it?” “It’s six people?” “No, we can’t do that.” “It’s only two people.” “We do take out for two people.” 

That leads me to the future. Part of being a leader is to speculate guests. How will you think about takeout in the future? 

I can’t speak for Chef John, but with anything that we’ve tried now, takeout, delivered cocktail kits, virtual cooking classes, we have to figure out and incorporate what we’ve learned to the future. We have had an opportunity these last several months to be as successful as we could. To put that behind us because we’re back to normal is very short-sighted. We’ve tapped into a different revenue stream. We’ve tapped into a different way to celebrate holidays. We know that guests want that. I’ve changed my way of thinking on that stuff. It’s not either/or for me at this point, it’s and. We will have to figure out a way when we have full restaurants on a Saturday to do takeout. 

That may be coming from a different kitchen or whatever the case may be. It’s daunting and exciting when you say “and” because now we’re going to be doing 200 takeout meals for New Year’s Eve and have full restaurants. We’re experiencing a little bit of that now that we are allowed to have people in our restaurants for dining because we now are allowed ten guests. There are two experiences going on simultaneously. There’s the takeout experience, but then there’s the dining experience. Those things can be at odds with each other. There will be a point of tension where we’re going to have to figure out how we can have the best of both of those things. 

I know that you’ve had to lay people off. I want to talk about staff and how you’ve thought about that as leaders. I don’t know exactly what questions to ask. I’d love to leave it open for you to talk about what that journey has been like for you. 

That has been mentally the most challenging thing we’ve had to deal with in 2020. Late nights and long hours are one thing. That’s just physical work. Having to think about and navigate near 150 employees that have gotten laid off like that. At the time, that was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. In hindsight, it was one of the easier parts. It was easy to say we have no work. The world is shut down. We have no choice but navigating, bringing people back. It’s like, “Do people feel comfortable coming back or would they like to go back on infectious disease leave because cases are going up?” That’s been very difficult as well. What I’ve tried to keep in the front of my brain in 2020. We cannot be perfect. No one can be perfect. How can we do right by the most people? 

When we first laid everybody off, first of all, we had a ton of leftover food and no one was working. With Jerrett’s blessing, I launched into staff meals. To start with, we were doing 4 or 5 days a week or something. That was the most good we could do for the most people in our opinion. Things got busier and it became a bit unmanageable. We did two days a week, but we tried to do more food two days a week and less food four days a week. I’d had to go down to one day a week and we got busy with patios. We had to eliminate that. That’s where we’re not perfect but we try. 

Food Takeout Service: Kitchens are not historically diverse places.

Working with the staff as well, the number of people who have come back and laid back off, come back again, everyone’s in a different situation. What I’ve tried to do and what all of our managers have tried to do is what’s best for them right now. How do we navigate EI? How do we navigate CERB? When we first started bringing people back, you could make $1,000 every four weeks and still collect CERB. How do we make this work when employee four can only work $998 every 4 weeks? I would love to have them work $1,500 a month because that makes my life easier, but I’m robbing them of $1,500. Trying to meet people where they are and do the most good for everybody. We haven’t been perfect but we have certainly tried. 

CERB was right around $2,000 a month. Have you found that people would rather work than get CERB or that they’d rather get CERB than work? 

Depending on their situation, the people who were more financially stable, they were happy to come back. If it’s only $1,200 or $1,500 a month, great. Most people who get into this industry do it because they enjoy the work they do. If they have an opportunity to do more of that, they will. What we figured out was you could make $3,000 between your paycheck and CERB. It’s great that I can give you $1,500 worth of work this month, but now you’re not making $3,000, you’re making half of that. Are you in a financial position to give up half of your maximum paycheck right now? I don’t have $3,000 a month for you in this world of takeout only and ten people at a time. It was very individual. It also had a lot to do with people’s comfort level. I would love to come back. I don’t feel comfortable being in the restaurants. It was the discussion with certain people. 

This is an area that you guys have done extraordinarily well. I don’t think you ever had a rule like, “You have to come back. You have to do this. You have to do that.” It’s one of the places that I have watched and been impressed by the leadership because it wasn’t one size fits all. There is huge privilege in living in Canada and having CERB. You guys have walked that line well with allowing that government support to keep people and move them in and out as we’ve been open and closed. Jerrett, do you want to weigh in here? You may be one step removed from those day-to-day conversations about staffing, but I wonder how you’ve thought about people during this time. 

I don’t think I am one step removed. There was a period of time where it was just Chef John and I. We would be doing takeout and delivery out of the Tavern. We slowly brought people back. First and foremost, the chefs and GMs. I have always tried to think about the people in this company and how they interact with the company short-term, mid-term, and long-term. I wanted to make sure that regardless of what it meant for a company financially, that the chefs and GMs were brought back and integrated as quickly as possible into the company. 

We need these people in these leaders when restaurants reopen, and to not bring those people back first was very shortsighted. I also wanted people to feel safe as well. We never once stopped anyone’s benefits. They had benefits throughout the time period. There was a period of time where I had to transfer the benefits to my personal bank account just so we could make sure that people still had access to what they needed. As the patio season came and this and that, bringing people back and giving them room to work as much as they wanted, but also giving them the space to talk about how difficult some of the guests may have been or their experiences is also important. We are supposed to be hospitable, warm, friendly in an environment and circumstances that don’t always allow us to do that. Based on the person, there have been people who have struggled with, how do I provide hospitality in a meaningful way when some guests don’t believe that this is the thing, or are making fun of the rules or whatever the case maybe? 

Allowing people to communicate those has been important. We’ve tried to put people first. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that because we also have to operate so they have a company to come back to. That’s also important as well. It’s top of mind. It’s going to be even more difficult as the rusty wheels start moving again. It’s like how do we introduce new team members to a team when it has been so small and tight? We have to remember that as well. I have grown a relationship with about a dozen people, but that’s a bubble now. We now have to learn how to interact with new people. We have to make sure that our training manuals are up to speed. There has been a lot that has happened these past several months, not only pandemic–wise. We have a lot of work to do on the tail end of this. It’s going to be difficult several months, but for very different reasons. 

What values will you focus as you bring people back? What will be important to you as leaders? 

Training and development for me is up there definitely. We have been working on redesigning and redeveloping all of our training manuals through 2021. We’ve taken the opportunity to finalize our culture book that showcases our culture and the people in it. We have taken the time to develop a policies and procedures book that now incorporates much more about diversity, inclusion, definitions and words. That is very important. We’ve worked in 2021 with a diversity coach to ensure that our culture book is inclusive and uses inclusive language. She’s showing us policies that we should incorporate into. I’m looking at this as a nice reset to get all these things in place and on paper. When somebody joins the company after a year that they’ve had, they look at this culture book and they look at our policies and procedures. They get excited about joining an industry that has been decimated in the last several months. There is a way to do it better and there’s a way for us to do it better. I’m excited to invite people back into this company with some new tools in our toolkit. 

When I think about leadership and I am talking to men in leadership, I always want to ask them to weigh in on women in leadership, people of color in leadership, gender orientation. Kitchens aren’t super liberal places traditionally. They’ve been pretty male and not particularly liberal, at least in my experience years and years ago. How do you guys think about that? 

We’ve talked a lot about that in 2021. As Jerrett said, we’ve worked with some people and we’ve taken some courses, which has certainly helped. I used to say that I choose to not see gender or race or anything like that. I tried to operate colorblind, which I think was my way of removing myself from having to do anything about it. Kitchens are not historically diverse places. If they are diverse places, they still have someone who looks like myself or Jerrett running them. 

Food Takeout Service: If you can base things purely on values, skills, and leadership ability, it would be very difficult not to be inclusive.

What we’re trying to do is look at how we hire, who we hire, where we hire from, who we choose to promote and making it a value–based environment. If you’re able to base things purely off of values, skills and leadership ability, then it would be very difficult to not be inclusive in my mind. We still have a lot of work to do on that, but that’s where I put my focus on. These are the criteria, these are what we value as a company, and try and make sure that anyone who fits in those values and exemplifies those values has room to grow, or has room to just stay where they are, if that’s what they want. Not everyone wants to grow. Some people just love being a line cook. It’s trying to meet people where they are. 

Our three restaurant GMs are women. They are amazing leaders. I believe that women, I’m generalizing, are stronger leaders than men. They have fewer blind spots and biases than we do. In the company as well, in 2020, the city of Hamilton came out with the minimum wage cost of living. We went through every single employee and made sure that they were above that. When you’re in an industry that’s relying on tips and cash, that skews the pay rate for people. As a company, we are aware we have some shortcomings. As Chef John mentioned, we took the time in 2021 to have all the leadership sign up for some courses through the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.  

We have gone through our training manuals and started looking at things such as when a woman guest goes up to the washroom, teaching our staff not to say, “Are you looking for the ladies’ room?” All of those things. As a gay male growing up in this industry, there is a macho, hero complex that happens specifically in the kitchens. Some of the language that is used can be derogatory without people even knowing. Now more than ever, we have the responsibility to not call out but try to understand why people are saying certain phrases and they may not even know. The journey is long. I also know that we are reflective. We are also sensitive. That’s a huge part of learning and apologizing too for making mistakes along the way. 

Anytime you’re in an industry that has a bias in it, it’s hard to look at the people who are senior from other organizations like you can promote from within. If you’re looking at other organizations, the people that were promoted are more likely to be white men. It’s a long journey. You have the best shot at promoting or developing from within because of all that bias that’s in the system already. 

It’s something that has come to light. We love promoting from within, but for several months you have taken your workforce that you have cultivated. Our cultural knowledge of our company has been decimated. We are going to have no choice but bring in other people. Other people from that industry are not going to know how we have done things. We have to retrain them because we’ve lost so much along the way. That’s going to be our biggest challenge. Sometimes employees and guests want us to be perfect. They have romantic ideas about the restaurants that they go to.  

When you have all these new people, it’s something that we need to pay attention to as a leadership team, the work involved and saying to a new manager, “When you see a ring on someone’s finger, don’t ask them what their wife does for a living.” That happened to me. I was in a Zoom call with a group of people. One of them said, “When are our wives going to get together for dinner?” I didn’t know what to say. I got off the call and I said to somebody, “I expect more because now I have to be the one to bring Henry to the wives meeting.” It’s all shades of gross. It is interesting how much that impacted me because we are the company we keep. Who we choose as business partners and who we choose as managers and leaders are a reflection of ourselves. That sent me sideways for a good 48 hours. 

It’s such a great opportunity to talk about that. Somebody would say, “You could’ve just said I’m bringing my husband,” but you have to do so much emotional labor in that moment. You have to decide, “Am I coming out?” I don’t know about you. I hate coming out. It’s not that I want to be in the closet. It’s that I don’t want to come out. I hate that conversation. It makes me other in that moment that I have to be the other. It’s not that they’re getting it wrong. It’s that they’re just so unthoughtful about the possibilities. I love the idea that your training manual is talking about not saying, “Are you looking for the ladies’ room?” “Is this your sister” is the other one that I hear in a hospitality environment. “Are you sisters?” “No, we’re married.” It’s all those leaps that you ask people to hop over.  

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I’ve been talking with Jerrett Young and John Forcier about what it’s like to lead in a pandemic. They’ve had such interesting challenges and I love the way that they’ve been experimenting. I love that they learned that they couldn’t continue to think of themselves as an in-person restaurant that did carry out. They had to develop a whole new line of business. For an organization that never did take out before the pandemic, they’ve pivoted and become a great takeout restaurant. I love that they’re continuing to think about how this will continue after the pandemic. I also heard their heartfelt care for their employees and what it’s been like for them to lead as they had to lay people off and try to find a variety of new normals this year. It was interesting to see how open their hearts are as they consider the needs of each employee. They’ve done such a good job at not creating random rules for how everyone has to come back the same way. I think that’s at the heart of good leadership. It’s been great talking with John and Jerrett. Go experiment.   

Important Links:

• The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators 
• Equal Parts 
• The Butler Did It 
• John Forcier and Jerrett Young 

About Jerrett Young

About John Forcier

As Director of Culinary Operations for Equal Parts Hospitality, John is responsible for guiding and shaping the culinary voice for all of the properties within Equal Parts. Working closely with the chefs and cooks in each restaurant, John focuses on ensuring every guest and member of our teams have satisfying and memorable experiences within our restaurants. John also spends a lot of his time working closely with local producers and purveyors to ensure that our restaurants are getting the highest quality ingredients possible.

After moving to Toronto to attend George Brown College for Culinary Management, John worked in several restaurants before spending almost 5 years at Oliver & Bonacini’s Canoe Restaurant. While Sous Chef at Canoe, he began to realize the importance of not only the finished dish but also who produces and prepares the food that goes onto that plate.

Having grown up in Georgetown, living and working in Toronto, and spending several months working overseas in London England, John has found a home in Hamilton where he lives downtown with his wife and son.

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