There’s a lot of movement away from tipping restaurant servers, but I haven’t seen you comment on it.
I’m staying out of it, because I just don’t know enough to say that it’s the right thing to do and the thing that's what we’re going to do. I want to wait and see, where does the culture take that?
Speaking of culture, do you think Americans will ever start eating bugs? It seems like there’s a lot of push for a market that might not be there.
A big portion of the world does eat bugs, but I’m not convinced Americans will. There’s a lot of good farmland producing a lot of delicious food, a lot of potential to feed a growing population. If you’re a doomsday person about the future of feeding the world, I see the logic of it. It doesn’t disgust me at all, but from what I know, I’m just more interested in investing my time in other things.
It’s a great time to be a well-known chef, but it’s a hard time to be coming out of culinary school. Pay a lot of money on the way in, don’t get paid a lot of money on the way out. What is your advice to people that want to do what you do?
I remember when I was a young line cook and [a famous chef] was asked a similar question. Maybe even the same question. And he said, "I feel sorry for recent graduates and new chefs, because the bandwidth for chefs in this culture and making money, it’s not endless, and we’ve probably hit peak.' That was 20 years ago, and look at what’s happened. If you listened to him—and I didn’t—you missed, like, 20 years of some of the most exciting gastronomic advances in recent American history.
I’m pretty positive about the future of being in the food service business, because so much is so wrong, and that leaves opportunity that’s endless. Get into food in a way that activates these ideas. Maybe it’s not a restaurant. Maybe it’s a slice of the food industry that’s less risky, less overhead. It’s definitely a rough business, but so is every business, isn’t it? If you’re passionate about it, I don’t see why you wouldn’t pursue that in your own way.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.