Can Michelin really include a restaurants culture in it's gradings?

It is always hard to watch a restaurant receive worldwide recognition for its food when the people delivering it are broken. But can we actually measure good culture?

All the nay sayers say ‘it’s too difficult to measure’. Which is true in a way, it is extremely difficult to measure good culture. And this Substack I feel, will get a lot of stick. Which I accept when you talk about something divisive. As I mentioned in a recent Substack, ‘good culture is in the eye of the beholder’, so therefore, IS difficult to measure. Surely, we can agree you can’t just use team turnover, or the opinions of cheesed off ex-employees, to measure a restaurants culture... You can’t even use the big newspapers ‘Best companies to work for’ method of collating data either as I have witnessed first-hand how some of those winners have ‘won’.

I guess, the key measures you could use are things like anonymous team ‘happiness’ surveys, employer NPS scores within the team (as in how likely they are to recommend it as a workplace) or maybe measuring the level of internal career progression. All of these are good indicators but cannot honestly hold any weight in the big world of ‘serious car tyre man grading’ that everyone holds in such high regard. Also, it can be very dangerous to start measuring management on things such as team turnover or internal progression, as this can end in a resentment towards leavers, or over promoting people, amongst many other issues... So, let’s leave those as non-options for now. You could count perks such as gym membership, family meals, days off on your birthday, cost price wine, free massages, health insurance, staff discount, (which are all incredible) but can sometimes mask underlying culture issues.

Realistically, there will never be a Michelin star for how people are treated, it is completely uninteresting to the public. But, I suppose, the green Michelin star has shown that there is an interest in measuring the ethicises of a restaurant and people do absolutely fall within that.

As someone who has the privilege of talking to many excellent people across industry both back and front of house, there is no doubt that the world of fine dining is the hardest, the most outdated, the sector where people are most overworked and also where the expectation is the greatest. For Michelin, it is a minefield, with little to no desire to highlight these issues, I am sure. BUT if they did fancy putting as much weight behind the sustainability of a restaurants team as they do evaluating the quality of their produce then they could look to use the following as points to potentially PREVENT a restaurant receiving a star, even if the food was seriously good:

· Hours worked each week by the team, on average - without opt outs signed

· Breaks not taken by the team, quantity on average - without opt outs signed

· Unpaid hours worked by the team, quantity on average

· Gap in hours between shifts, on average - without opt outs signed

Controversial? Maybe, maybe not. But it is measurable, black and white, easy to track and crucially, the opt out aspect allows for anyone who likes to work more/have no break/work a late and then an early etc. to not be included in that restaurant's statistics.

You might read this and think that number of hours don’t make a bad culture, and I agree, but it is a start to regulating and looking after the people who love to work in high end environments.

We have an issue with overworking our teams still, especially in the quest for accolades. This could be a solution for this sector of the industry.