Christin Marvin: 0:08

If you are a chef or restaurateur that is curious about how to turn your restaurant into a well-oiled machine, this episode is for you. Today we are talking with Simon Zatyrka, the culinary mechanic, about transforming your restaurant into a street and wine operation, nurturing your team's growth through effective teaching, and how to go from burnout to entrepreneur. Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant leaders to help them overcome burnout, increase retention, reignite their passion and drive successful businesses.

Christin Marvin: 0:58

This podcast is sponsored by ScheduleFly. Schedulefly provides a simple, web-based and app-based restaurant employee scheduling software backed by legendary customer service. If you're using pen paper, excel or a fancy scheduling software with tons and bells of whistles that you don't use, schedulefly is perfect for your business. When I was a regional manager handling seven locations, schedulefly was our go-to for scheduling. It's, hands down, the easiest platform I've ever worked with and their employee communication tool awesome for shooting out mass messages about crucial restaurant updates. Visit ScheduleFly. com and mention no Hesitations podcast to get 10% off. Simon has spent the last three decades in the kitchen and is now on a mission to help chefs grow their leadership and restaurant tours to improve their culture, systems and profit with the help of his company, culinary Mechanic. Simon, I'm so excited to welcome you to the show today. I can't wait to share your story with our listeners, as well as share some of the exciting things that you've been working on over the last year, because I know it's been a busy, busy year for you, so welcome.

Simon Zatyrka: 2:14

Well, thank you Christin. I really appreciate being here. I'm pretty excited to just dive in and get going.

Christin Marvin: 2:21

Absolutely. I'd love to start with the name Culinary Mechanic. Where did that come from?

Simon Zatyrka: 2:28

You know, funny thing, chefs have been like the chef as hero, chef as celebrity has just been rising for the last 20 years and at some point it became really evident to me that it could almost be a dirty word. And so, maybe 10 years ago, I started thinking about restaurants and chefs as sort of the machines. And what do you do with the machine? You tune it, you work on it, you refine the mechanism. And so I really focused on ah, what am I? Okay, it's a culinary mechanism. So I wanted to be a culinary mechanic.

Simon Zatyrka: 3:10

And then, at the point that I kind of decided to pivot out of operations, I was looking around and I was starting to talk to people and coach people and I thought, gosh, what am I going to call this? I want to be legit, want to be grown up. You know, when I have a company, it needs a name. What am I going to call this? Oh, my God. And one day I went oh my God, of course, there it is, it's culinary mechanic.

Simon Zatyrka: 3:38

And I think that for me it's becoming almost an ethos.

Simon Zatyrka: 3:42

It's how do we remove some of the for lack of a better term the hullabaloo, how do we make it nuts and bolts?

Simon Zatyrka: 3:50

Where, like you understand that you got to buy the, you got to be organized enough to store the food, you got to buy the food, you got to prep it and then it's all got to go out in a timely fashion and it's all machine. So I think for me it's just being humble enough to say we're taking the machine that is the restaurant and we're tuning it up and making it go as fast and as smooth as possible. And so you know, it's just, it's kind of a mind, it's been my mindset of just how do I, how do I optimize a machine, how do I help people to do that? And so I just it helps me break big processes down into little ones when you start to think about what each piece does. So it's a mindset, it's a way of life, it's all that great stuff and it's the name of my company, which has become a virtual restaurant advisory firm. Right, you know, we're straddling the line between consultant and coach and just trying to trying to help people operate a little better.

Christin Marvin: 4:57

I love it and you I know the listeners can't see this, but your logo is an awesome, awesome gear, which you can see a lot on LinkedIn. But I love that Tuning up the nuts and bolts and turning it into a well oiled machine. That's everyone loves to work in a restaurant. That's a well oiled machine, don't they?

Simon Zatyrka: 5:14

So much more fun, so much more fun.

Christin Marvin: 5:17

So you've been in, you've been in kitchens for 30 years. Where did you learn?

Simon Zatyrka: 5:22

And a little more yeah.

Christin Marvin: 5:23

Okay.

Simon Zatyrka: 5:24

Where did you?

Christin Marvin: 5:25

learn about this well oiled machine.

Simon Zatyrka: 5:28

You know, I learned I feel like so many, like so many others a lot of where I learned about great running restaurants was by working for part of the expression. But shitholes. I worked in places that were just that I am so proud to have been a part of, but oh my God were they dysfunctional and they, they weren't organized and there was chaos and you know, and there was just like this din of loud clanging and all this stuff would happen. I started cooking in New Mexico in 1990, 89, somewhere in that little area, and I was in a place that had 400 seats and I didn't know anybody. I didn't know that that was big or small. It was a restaurant, right, it was local and it was New Mexican food and it was just go, go, go, go, go go all the time. And I probably worked for them off and on for like four or five years I'd go. I went to college for a year, came back, worked for a while and just like, got out. It was always my fall back until it wasn't, until I was ready to move to the sort of the next level, and then I got into a hotel kitchen and that was amazing, because now there's order, right, like now there's a brigade, there's a chef and a sous chef and a banquet chef over here and there's a whole like area of like, like it's own big prep kitchen for banquets, and there's two restaurant lines that were side by side and everything was big and stainless steel and everybody had a purpose. You know big, huge walk ins that led into big, huge walk in freezers. It was just so crazy. And then just keep going forward, right, like just boom, boom, boom. All of a sudden one day I said I'm going to leave New Mexico and I went to Florida and I found myself in another hotel and just one after the other just kept moving.

Simon Zatyrka: 7:19

You know, I did a small stint in Provincetown, massachusetts, in 1997, where I was the chef of the restaurant. What a joke, oh my goodness. I was 23 years old. I was not ready to be the chef. I didn't really even know what that meant, other than I had creative control and I had a couple of specials every day. But like I learned what didn't work, I learned how I started to learn, like, oh, I am not ready, right, like I just. And so I pulled back and I went back to cooking and I went back to Florida for a while. And so as much as, as much as I learned I find the early days, as much as I learned about good. I learned about oh, not so great, you know.

Simon Zatyrka: 8:03

And then I I moved to California and I feel like when I moved to California, the let like the knob went from nine to 10, and maybe even 10 and a half, and all of a sudden the professional level just went up. And now I'm in kitchens where they're yelling and screaming and but things, amazing things are happening. Chefs are on the line and they're they're pumping out food, and I was in LA, so you know, just, celebrities everywhere, and you know, via, everybody's a VIP, oh, there's a VIP. And the chef would scream Everybody's a fucking VIP. You know it's like, oh, okay, everybody's VIP, so everything's got to be great and it's just. And I think that was where I really started to see that the folks, the chefs that I worked for, that were the most successful, were the ones that leverage their people. They knew how to to garner influence, they knew how to make connections, you know, and they use those connections at the same time to also, like, really keep an eye on things.

Simon Zatyrka: 9:07

And you know, I worked for a guy that you know he'd go around and I thought it was a nifty thing that he said good morning to everybody. But what I learned was not only was he saying good morning to everybody, he was also looking over their shoulders seeing what their station looked like. He was looking them in the eye and going, oh, jimmy's got to hang over. This is going to be a rough day on saute, you know. And he pulled the suit, chef, and go, go sit on, jimmy, he's going to, he's going to burn up, you know, or gosh, we had a slow night. There's a lot of prep on the line. Let's really make sure that freshness is everything, but learning wearing those little things right.

Simon Zatyrka: 9:46

I worked for a chef and he would spend it 45 minutes before he ever really talked to anybody in the walk in and I was like, what is he doing? And he would touch everything, he would walk through and he would just put his hand on a bin of lettuce and he'd look at it and he put it back up and he just square everything up. So when he walked out of the walk in it was in perfect shape. But that wasn't the thing that he was doing. What he was doing was taking visual inventory, yeah, right, and so again it's, it's starting to learn, like these great habits that start to make the gears move, you know, and so Continuing all along that sort of mindset was like, again, it's the people, right, the guy who yells, he gets results for a couple days, the guy who calms down and just remembers to meter his speech and speak clearly, people are just like, oh wow, that's amazing, he's so calm and everything's crazy.

Simon Zatyrka: 10:41

And you know, it's like understanding the people aspect. Yeah, and that's what I really tried to do as I got, as I started to understand that yelling wasn't going to work, even though I that was modeled for me for probably 15 years, and then, like, starting to go, how am I going to get from being a great worker to a good manager, you know? And so that was. I think that was a lot of how I formed what I, what eventually became culinary mechanic, and what I, what I teach now and now like. And so one of my, my own personal mantra is they just want to be led Right. And I think that you talk all about listening. I listen to this podcast and I read your content and it's about leadership and it's, and it's so funny to me that, like we all, there's all this stuff and there's all these great things, but at the end of the day, I think if you just lead, if you just like were to lead by example, things would get 30% better.

Christin Marvin: 11:40

It's certainly.

Christin Marvin: 11:41

Yeah, I want to go back to start to interrupt you, but you, there's so many important points here that you you've made and and I want to touch on a couple of them here when it comes to culture and development, developing people you had mentioned early on that.

Christin Marvin: 11:56

You know, when you started out as a young chef, you thought it was all about the creative freedom and all about the menu and I've experienced that a lot in my career to promoting chefs from within line cook ready to be come as soon it's. It's hard because it's not all about the menu, right, it's not all about playing with food. It's about par levels and ordering and inventory and and time management and motivating the line and showing up every day Right, rested and and focus and ready to go and being curious about how to work on your equipment and you know when things Right, being able to work on every single aspect of the line and to dig out your team and break your team when you need to recover shifts. How did you cultivate those younger chefs when you were in the kitchen? How did you grow them? How did you develop them?

Simon Zatyrka: 12:47

I think I started by going, hey, I need this, I need that. Then I started to realize, if I asked rather than told, first of all, things are going to get easier. I developed this idea of managing in or managing out, and I never wanted to be managing out, because managing out was always at arms length For me. It was like for lack of a better term it was like a big hug. I always wanted to pull everybody in so that we're all working on the same thing and all working together.

Simon Zatyrka: 13:20

I would explain to people that if they listen to me, their job is going to get easier, because I'm not interested in making it harder. At no point am I going to go hey, I'm going to make your life tougher. My goal is to teach so that you get better. Then at some point I realize, gosh, the more I teach and they get better, the more I get better. That just became a big circle for me. I would teach people to move up, and then, of course, it's like all right, so you're the dishwasher, but now you can prep. I'll pay you a little more if you prep more. Then how about if you go find a buddy and bring them in and then they'll wash dishes and you can prep. At that point it's wash, rinse, repeat and just get more people and oftentimes sometimes to the benefit, sometimes to the detriment I'd have seven friends or seven family members because they'd all bring their people. Sometimes that was great, sometimes that was, oh my God. The family went on vacation. What do I?

Christin Marvin: 14:23

do now Every time they go on vacation. You know it's coming too. You know it's coming. You know it's coming, it sounds like you, really were excited about teaching and providing opportunities for people, but showing them that in order for those opportunities to exist, they had to kind of help for lack of a better term help fill their position, find their replacement so that they can position themselves for something else. Love that.

Simon Zatyrka: 14:46

I mean, I remember being in a kitchen in Santa Barbara, california, and it was a four-seasons of all things and the chef there was so rough on me, oh my God. But he had this thing where he'd be like, if it's so slow that you can do what you're doing and stop, then you should be learning what's happening next to you. So there should never be a moment where you're not doing something. So if you're not doing your learning, he goes, because at some point that guy is gonna screw you and you're not gonna know how to do it unless you've figured out. Now you know, and you just so all of a sudden it's like, okay, I've only got two steaks on the grill. What are you doing? Oh, you're searing halibut. Sweet, how do you do that? Great, oh, not too much oil. Oh, make sure you season it.

Simon Zatyrka: 15:36

You know, and I was always the younger guy for years. Just, I was always the youngest in the kitchen. I'm always trying. So I'm working with these salty, salty cooks and sometimes they teach me. Sometimes they wouldn't, but I learned like pay attention to what's next. And so I instilled that in my cooks in as many kitchens as I could. It's like, hey, pay attention to what's next to you, because you never know what's gonna happen and you don't wanna look stupid right Like you have to find their pride too. Nobody wants to look stupid. And guess what, if you can work every station on the line, you probably get to pick A, what station, b, what schedule, and then, beyond that, like, who do you? I work best with that guy, so if you're the best, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna promote your wellbeing over somebody else who's not taking care of me nearly as well, and it becomes this meritocracy over and over and over, and so I just always tried to like give people something to strive towards.

Christin Marvin: 16:44

Love it, I love it. They could see what was in front of them. That's great. What was the highlight of your career?

Simon Zatyrka: 16:53

Woo. I mean, I think there was a point in 2009 or 10, and I had Devel, I had two Rockstar sous chefs and then they took one away and that AM sous chef sort of became just my sous chef, like it was just to us, and we kept the same results, right, profits were still going just the way they had been. Customer satisfaction was real high because it was a corporation, so they were measuring all that stuff in there, giving you that feedback. So profits were good, people were happy, guess, satisfaction was happy. It was only him and I and I'd had two in the past and my team sort of rallied to the cause and a couple of guys who were real close. They were just Rockstars but they wanted to be lead. They just did all the little things.

Simon Zatyrka: 17:56

And then I got a knock on the door from one of the regional directors and he said I'm taking your sous chef because he's ready to be a chef.

Simon Zatyrka: 18:03

And I was like at first I thought man, I thought okay, and so we went on the hunt and they gave me a month or two to find a new guy and I found a new guy, we got him in, we got him trained and the results stayed the same right, like the profit was there, the guess, satisfaction was there. I was super proud of the food on a daily basis and I thought to myself huh, I'm leading, I can take out a big piece, and I'm still leading and we're still doing well, and my team is supporting the new piece of the and I thought this is what you're supposed to do. This is like what it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to take out a section of it or a piece, and it still goes. And within a few weeks I mean I'm not gonna say it was perfect, but within a few weeks, few months I was able to get back to my sort of my regular schedule and I go home and like place didn't fall apart, didn't burn down, I felt like I was winning.

Christin Marvin: 19:06

Yeah, I mean, there's such an important lesson here, right, as so many restaurants are still struggling to get staffed, and I think the awesome thing about that story is that you could have looked at that as a low point and said now I'm fucked, I'm short staffed, I've just lost one of my managers. What am I gonna do? How are we going to both work all these hours and maintain these standards? And yet you saw it as an opportunity to rally your team and to excel, and it sounds like that's exactly what happened. And then, of course, your sous chef got promoted, which is the goal right? That's what every great leader wants, even though that transition is always a little sticky.

Simon Zatyrka: 19:45

Because the new guy wasn't nearly as good as the old guy and there was a reason he was getting promoted. But he was good and he listened and what was most important was that he trusted me enough to trust my team. Right, my team wouldn't let him down because they weren't gonna let me down. They were pretty after. At that point they'd been with me for probably four years and it was one of those like okay, here we go, this is the next thing.

Christin Marvin: 20:11

What do you think was the key to retaining your team for four years? That's a long time, so I just wanted to tell this quick story to our awesome guy.

Simon Zatyrka: 20:17

He did this month he told his team that he was doing something. I dumb luck.

Christin Marvin: 20:23

No.

Simon Zatyrka: 20:25

No, no, no, no. I mean, you know, like I could probably tell you some stuff, and some of it is just we pay. We tried to pay a decent rate and I always tried to make it a safe place to go and just rock out. You know, I or somewhere along the way, somebody said to me, you know, like, oh, leave your baggage at the door. And I kind of didn't love that. I was like that's implying some stuff and I don't need to imply anything.

Simon Zatyrka: 20:56

How about this? When you walk into my kitchen, like everything that was bothering you today doesn't have to bother you because you don't have to worry about that Like just come in and this is a good, safe place and we're just going to like bang out some food because this is a busy restaurant. I would say four, four, 50 was an average Thursday evening and it got a little bigger from there on the weekends, and so the teams had to be, you know, they had to be locked in and really ready to rock and roll, um and I. So, I think, because we were busy when other and, mind you, this was like 2008, 2009, 2010 when everybody in the country was like there was red everywhere red in profits, red in customer counts and my customer counts stayed solid, my profits stayed in the black and we just we just kept crushing. You know, um, and we were lucky. I mean you just it felt. It felt like a good mix of luck and just grit and determination. But keeping the people was about making sure that they had what they needed right, and I learned to listen there.

Simon Zatyrka: 22:03

When I first got there, I was nothing short of an asshole on certain days, you know, and I and I and I it was my first real executive chef job but I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. And then I learned real fast. If I just communicated more, if I just used like some magic words, just so you're aware, if I did that, then people knew what was going on and they knew what to expect and it worked. So there's a little bit of luck in there. It's like, okay, I think this is what I've been, this is what I've been training for years for. I'm going to try a couple of things and a couple of things didn't work.

Simon Zatyrka: 22:41

And I think initially I was too far in my own head and once I got out of my head, um, and I really like I listened and and people knew that, like if there was a problem, they could come to me and I I'd say, well, you better go deal with your family. And they'd say, really, chef, and I'm like the guys and I will, will, will, will close the gap, you know, and I'd go work the line for an evening so that somebody could go take care of his little brother, his girlfriend or whatever. That would be Um and and I, and again, I think we just we created in that space and time a good, safe place to go and like earn money and and rock out and not have to worry about the outside world.

Christin Marvin: 23:22

Yeah, I mean, I love it sounds like you were so innovative in 2008, 2009. And we talk about this a lot in in on the LinkedIn world, right, and with our clients, but a lot of the restaurants that are seeing really high turnover don't had, they have not created that safe environment like you did, and they're not remembering that they're hiring the whole human. When they hire somebody, right, you can't but that old school leave your shit at the door. I was brought up in that culture and it doesn't work. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now, and I think you know people that are entering the workforce these days don't want that. They want to be able to show up. However, they're showing up and know that somebody's there to listen to them. And obviously you've always there's got to be a balance, right, you've got to get the work done, but you humanized everything about your team, which is just awesome, so kudos to you.

Simon Zatyrka: 24:21

I, you know, call it being the product of hippie parents, you know.

Christin Marvin: 24:26

I love it. So let's talk a little bit about where this idea for culinary mechanic came from. What was that transition for you out of kitchens into being a solopreneur?

Simon Zatyrka: 24:40

Holy cow, let's see. Well, we had this little thing happen in 2020. And you know, to call it a test of metal would be like for me an understatement. 2020 was okay, right, Like oh gosh, what do we do? Like, I'm laid off, I'm back to work. I'm furloughed, I'm back to work. I think I had two layoffs that year, Going back to work in 2021.

Simon Zatyrka: 25:10

And I happened to be working for a company that had prepared, that had been really ramping up the to go mechanism, and back in 17, 18 and 19, we spent countless hours refining all of the systems that worked for the Uber Eats and the Door Dashes and the Grubhubs and all of that stuff, and we got on with toast and we got everything consolidated and integrated and all those things. And we I mean the company even had a and I'm getting off track, but I promise I'll get back they custom coded a printer that would give you little sticky little things. That went on every single item and it was the system that you're now seeing it commercially available. But back then it was like way ahead of its time and so when we came out of the pandemic or came through it in 2021, we were so busy, but we've lost six or seven chefs out of the total 21. We had seven restaurants, so every restaurant had a chef and two sous chefs, and we were down seven by the end of 2021,. I had trained nine new sous chefs, trained or promoted, and I was running at like the proverbial chicken with my head cut off. My it, just it taxed everything I had physically and mentally.

Simon Zatyrka: 26:42

You know I had I've had less than great knees for 30 years because of youth, and they were just hitting this point where my wife was like really you're, you're really going to keep doing this, and so I kind of had her behind me poking me a little bit going. You know there's, there's got to be a better way for you to make a living. There's got to be a way for you to make a living without being gone from the house for 50, 60, 70 hours a week. There's got to be a way for you to like make a living and not be so depleted, Right. And so you know that, coupled with some some sort of high level staffing changes within the company I was working, I just started seeing that like, okay, I'm heading towards 50.

Simon Zatyrka: 27:32

The body is not loving the current state of the Ram and Jam sort of thing. Uh it's, I'm not having, I'm not having fun. And this is where it really. That's where it really stuck, Because my wife was saying, yeah, you're less than fun to hang around, I'm not having fun at work, and that was always something that was important to me.

Simon Zatyrka: 27:53

For at that point, 32 years, you know like no, I have fun at work, People have fun working for me, this isn't fun. I'm not seeing smiling faces, I'm grinding people. I'm going to make a change and so, finally, I think I just hit a real spot of burnout and I I knew it was there, but I didn't know how, like how many layers of skin I'd burnt Right. So I figured it out, at my wife's urging, but also knowing that it was the right thing for me, and so I took what was it initially going to be? I'll take a month off and then I'll start looking for a job. And then my wife looked at me and said how about if you take two and if that's working and everything's okay with the wallet and the pocketbook?

Christin Marvin: 28:43

then maybe you take a little more. Everybody's jealous of your wife right now.

Simon Zatyrka: 28:52

And so and it's important to note, she was working from home and so took some time off hired a. I actually hired a career transition coach I'll give a shout out to Happy Spectacular and their whole thing is happy at work, spectacular life. And I had a coach and he just helped me kind of like sift through the rubble that was my brain at the time and we talked about what my purpose is and was and how that may have changed over the years and the values that were important to me and I kind of got clear about what I wanted and I started looking for a job and I was aiming towards, like tech Right, I was aiming towards doing some customer success work for a tech company that was parallel or perpendicular to restaurant operations I think restaurant 365, even toast I was looking at. And then, I don't know, the universe just kind of opened up and said here, try this. And I got a phone call from a lady who said I've been talking to her for a couple months. She was actually working for toast but she had a friend and that friend was a consultant and he was looking for somebody to cost a menu. And I got on the phone with him and he's like you come talk to me and maybe we can just get this project taken care of. He goes I'm better with the high level stuff. I don't really. I'm not in the kitchen. He goes. What I hear is you're real good with this stuff. And I said well, I really like the numbers. Let's do a thing.

Simon Zatyrka: 30:33

Got going, started asking questions, you know, looking at the operation, just trying to understand what they were doing and trying to get all the information I needed to cost that menu. And in the process of asking questions, the owner of this company, who it happens to have four units, says you know, you've really hit on some things that are not good about our operation and I really like to work on them. Would you want to be willing to come do some more work with us? And I was like sure, why not? And got going a month or two in Again, universe tapped me on the forehead and said here and it was honest dumb luck Like a guy I know that was a CFO, somebody called him for some advice around you know inventory management systems. And he said you know I don't have any bandwidth to help you right now, but I know a guy who does. So I talked to this guy. Next thing I know I'm working on the guy's POS system because he needed somebody to do that and he had me. He wanted me to look around at his purchasing and look around at some of the other fundamental systems of his organization. And so I did and gave him some answers and asked some questions and kept going. And then another person called and said hey, would you be willing to come and talk to my chef and sous chef? They need some leadership. And I hear you're the guy to do it. And it was just another referral.

Simon Zatyrka: 32:12

And right about that time we're now crossing like December 2022. So I go okay, we're getting to the end, I've collected some money. I'm going to have to figure out a thing Like okay. So I, you know again, it's like, what do I call it? Oh, all right, we're going to call it a culinary mechanic. And so, magically, I entered 2023. And here I am, I've got three clients and I've got a company, and it's a company of one, but it's company nevertheless. Right, I feel official. It says LLC at the end yeah, and you are, yeah.

Christin Marvin: 32:51

I mean, and you are posting incredible, incredible tips and are really just a thought leader in your field. Love what you're posting on LinkedIn. You just launched your podcast. Will you tell us a little bit about that?

Simon Zatyrka: 33:04

Yeah. So when I quit work, I was like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast. One big problem. I know nothing about them. So I started down the road, like you know, and I was like I'm going to be, I'm going to do a podcast. I've listened to maybe two podcasts in my life but it sounds like a good idea. Right, like okay, I got stuff to say you know I'm a chatty guy, so you know, fast forward to I don't know nine months down the road oh, farther I guess and I was like I'm going to be, like I think we're in a great position to be talking about your year, year plus um to just the last couple months where I'm just like, hmm, I was thinking I, maybe, maybe I should pick up that podcast idea.

Simon Zatyrka: 33:52

And I was talking with a guy who I was helping um, just through networking, meeting people, because he's an IT tech guy and he wants to kind of understand how to position himself, and so I feel like I'm getting good at that, having done it right, and so I'm talking about it and it helps, helping him helps me, and he stops me in the middle of this and his name is Joe and Joe says have you ever thought about doing a podcast and I was like, no, why, like whoa, where did that come from? We were just talking about positioning and marketing and he's like you just took this big ball of a problem and a concept and I felt like within seconds we were on the floor building simple blocks. He goes. That was amazing. He goes and the sound you're like you just, and you made it compelling and I wanted to learn how to build blocks with what you had and sit on the floor, he goes. You got to do a podcast and I was like huh, huh, recurring themes, okay, and so I just started to think about it and I started to think about what mattered to me and by this point now I listened probably three, four podcasts a week and I try to just grab as much as I can and I love hearing A, I love a story. B, I love chefs. It is the culture that I'm in for a reason, at 30 something years in the business, I love what we stand for, I love the way our brains work because we're different, and I realized I wanted to tell stories or have people tell me stories of a combination of that around what chefs do.

Simon Zatyrka: 35:33

But we're not gonna. I didn't wanna just like, all right, let's just go to the top of the list and find the James Beard Award winners and find all those guys, cause I think that that's whatever. There's people doing that, right? So what is the next thing? Well, I wanna find chefs that are doing different things.

Simon Zatyrka: 35:49

I wanna find chefs that spent 20 years in the business and then went off and became a recruiter and like how does the mentality of a chef, how does the ethos of a chef, how does all of that stuff translate into great work ethic in other places? How does being starting as a cook and moving along the line and then becoming a private chef or a country club chef cause don't talk about country club chefs, right? So we used to talk about country club chefs. Is that's how you go to retire?

Simon Zatyrka: 36:22

But I know a guy who's down in South Carolina and he's running two of the most like progressive, innovative restaurants where they're doing current, up to date food, because the folks are young enough to appreciate it, right, because it's a younger community, and so that private club thing is evolving, and so there's just all these different like chef journeys and that's what it's called. It's chef journeys and that we're gonna highlight and talk about and help. Maybe it helps other cooks, other chefs, understand what's possible. Maybe it takes the civilians in the world that have never been in a restaurant and helps them understand that there's more to life than just food, where it's put together with tweezers and microgreens and fancy cool stuff, but like that there's chefs that are doing all sorts of things out there.

Simon Zatyrka: 37:18

And I think that that's what's that show. Dirty jobs, right. Like I wanna be a mixture of dirty jobs and telling a chef story, Like just sort of there's more to it than celebrity chefs. There's like the anti-glamorous thing.

Christin Marvin: 37:36

Yeah, I love it. So the podcast is called Chef's Journey, and where can listeners find your podcast?

Simon Zatyrka: 37:44

All right, just this past week I got it all, so we're on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Spotify and Amazon. Wait, the way they say it, the way I always hear it, is wherever you find podcasts.

Christin Marvin: 37:58

Yes, that's what I said. I love it I love it.

Simon Zatyrka: 38:04

So it's there. But I'm also starting to take. I'm also recording everything in video and I'm dropping the interview episodes on YouTube so you can find my first couple episodes both on YouTube under Culinary Mechanic is what you need to search for, but they're there. I intend to do a little bit. I think that my journey will get thrown in there in solo episodes. I also have this concept for the occasional episode of Uncle Simon's storytelling time, Because there's just a ton of good stories about chefs and kitchens and the culture, for better or for worse.

Christin Marvin: 38:50

Absolutely so. Will you talk a little bit more about who again for listeners listening to this, who's the ideal client for Culinary Mechanic? Who do you want to help?

Simon Zatyrka: 39:03

Wow, that is such a good question. I really want to help the restaurant owner, the restaurant company proprietor. It's got a couple of restaurants, Maybe it's two restaurants, three restaurants. Likely they don't have a corporate chef, but they maybe need somebody to guide their chefs along. I think it's really easy to have a couple of restaurants and get things going and well, not easy, but you got to get things going. All of a sudden you're not seeing necessarily the best results, whether they be financial or for whatever reason. You hire the sous chef that wasn't 100% ready to lead. Now they're the chef and they need a little help with their leadership. Perhaps they need just a little bit of coaching around like, hey, let's help you manage your time so that you have time to manage your people, so that you can create a culture that keeps people around.

Simon Zatyrka: 40:12

I'm trying to work with restaurant companies small to mediums and restaurant companies small to medium hotel companies that have chefs that need a little pull along. Maybe you need a mentor figure to just make sure that they've got what they need to succeed. I think that almost anybody can run a restaurant when it's running well. Running it when it starts to sputter or do some weird things is altogether different. I've got a wealth of experience where I've seen small ones and big ones and purple ones and funny ones and sad ones. I've seen some great operations and I've also seen some really troubled operations. So I think what I can bring to people is the ability to troubleshoot and help people get on the right track, Whether that's inventory management, writing a good recipe or just like, hey, be nice to people.

Christin Marvin: 41:13

Yeah, we need more of that in the world, don't we?

Simon Zatyrka: 41:17

Yeah.

Christin Marvin: 41:17

Well, simon, can't thank you enough for coming on the show, really really appreciate it and would love to have you back at any point. Thank you. We can dive deeper into culture, into how systems create culture, impact culture. I mean gosh, there's so many topics we could talk about for sure. Absolutely. Would you tell listeners how they can? Where can they find you? How can they get ahold of you?

Simon Zatyrka: 41:40

The easiest way is culinarymechaniccom. I'm on LinkedIn every day what seems like all day, but it isn't really so. If you want to find me on LinkedIn, that's really easy. You can go to my website and kind of check out the fun stuff we're doing there. There's links to the podcast from there. I need to do one quick plug or unmasked capitalism, and that is. I've just started a merch store so you can get things that say culinary mechanic on them and get things I'm in love with bacon, so you can get shirts and hats.

Christin Marvin: 42:20

You've got an awesome. That's the one that say bacon. You're wearing one right now for people that can't see. It's a pretty awesome shirt.

Simon Zatyrka: 42:27

The letters are four inches tall, because what else do you want but bacon across your chest? And so that's. The easiest way to find me is culinarymechaniccom or on LinkedIn.

Christin Marvin: 42:40

Awesome. All right, simon. Thank you so much. Okay, everybody subscribe and listen each week. Like Simon said, wherever you find your podcasts, and be sure to follow me on LinkedIn at Kristen dash Marvin. We will see you next week. Thanks, everybody.