Chef tackles staff meals: no more snacking every day

Oh, the irony: chefs create the most fantastic dishes, the front-of-house team delivers one work of art after another to guests, but the staff themselves have to fill their bellies with lukewarm bitterballen in the pass. That can be done differently! Ed Scheppink, with twenty years of experience as a chef, is tackling staff meals head-on.

Everyone with experience in the hospitality industry knows the problem: staff meals. When the staff are hungry, the guests are hungry too, so it’s rush hour just as your stomach starts growling. The staff meal put on the table at four in the afternoon is often no more than a stack of toasted sandwiches or a mountain of fries with frikandellen – and when it’s busy, you don’t really have time to sit down and eat quietly. Has a dish been ordered incorrectly? Like flies buzzing around a horse dropping, everyone heads to the empty-bottle storage, where, out of sight of the guests, you quickly, quickly wolf down that sea bass with saffron risotto and spring vegetables, sometimes even with your hands, because, hello, HUNGER!

Tastier than fried food

Chef Ed Scheppink had had e-nough. ‘Every time it’s the same old story: who’s going to make it? Nobody feels like it, there’s no budget and no time, and yet we all need to eat well, because otherwise you can’t keep up the work.’ The problem: what goes on the staff menu? Solved, because Ed wrote the book ‘Staff Meals in the Hospitality Industry’, with 365 dishes that can be put together as staff meals in no time. On his menu: a Thai beef salad, barbecue brisket or spaghetti puttanesca. Sounds good! ‘Fresh vegetables, delicious flavours, good meals. That works a lot better than a schnitzel or something from the fryer every day.’

A matter of planning

At the restaurant where Ed calls the shots, fresh food is cooked every day for all colleagues. At the moment that’s only about six people, but when everything can run at full capacity again, something tasty will need to be on the table for at least ten people. ‘It’s a matter of planning. You can simply put a stew in the oven the night before, and it cooks while the restaurant is closed. How much work is that, really?’

Drinking all evening

So there’s a schedule on the fridge: what are we eating today? Ed plans it two or three weeks in advance and divides the tasks among all the chefs, including the trainees. Colleagues head straight to the schedule when their shift starts to see what’s on the menu. ‘The front-of-house team would rather not eat chilli con carne, because then they spend the whole evening drinking. And they don’t love anything with lots of garlic sauce either; then they’re standing at the guests’ tables with smelly breath. I usually take that into account, but the chefs do remain in charge of the food. If we gave the front-of-house team everything they wanted, we’d never get anything on the table: someone is always allergic, or they don’t like it.’

Preferably rice

Ed’s favourite staff meals? ‘A good hamburger with curly fries is hugely popular, but a tasty meatball also goes down well with everyone. If you manage the budget smartly, you can also splash out now and then: côte de boeuf for everyone, for example. Why not?’ The experienced chef recently had to adjust his staff-meal menu a little, because he works in the kitchen with a few new chefs from Asia. They don’t seem particularly keen on his mashed lamb’s lettuce with bacon and a boiled egg, for example. ‘One of those new colleagues still brings his own container of rice every day. But just wait, I’m sure that after a while he’ll happily eat along with us too.’

Title: Staff Meals in the Hospitality Industry
Author: Ed Scheppink
Price: €19.95

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