It’s surprising that every restaurant that I have worked at really only has one thing in common and I’m sure there are millions of restaurants around the country that deals with the same issue: the staff dislikes how management runs things. It always seems to be that the majority of the staff believe that management has lost touch with their “line” or “floor” roots and has traded their ability to make seemingly easy decisions that even a 12 year-old could make for a bigger paycheck. Whether it’s the time to cut staff members from the floor, seating rotations, or even whether or not to be open on certain days, the minions who serve under the overlords apparently know everything.
I came up with this interesting idea after talking with one of my co-workers who had, like me, been in the industry for a long time. If the waiters and cooks are constantly complaining about how management runs the restaurant, why not have a restaurant that was completely run by the staff? No managers. No private owners. It didn’t take long to throw together how exactly this type of setup would work, but we came up with a small set of guidelines. Basically, we tossed around the conceptualization of the phrase “if you think you can do a better job, you do it”. Of course, the restaurant could only have one name: Republic.
1. At “Republic”, the staff must be comprised of people who have been in the industry for at least 5 years, preferably performing the same job. New hires must also have a large amount of experience as you really don’t grasp the mechanics of a restaurant until you’ve been in the industry for a long period of time. The staff must sign documentation saying that they take on full responsibility for their actions and will not take advantage of his or her fellow staffmembers.
2. Rules will be drafted by the staff and voted on by majority rule, but other decisions are made with the trust that the staffmember knows what they’re doing and adheres to those set rules (i.e. You may leave if the restaurant is dead and in a state that two servers could handle the entire restaurant, or a decision to close the restaurant on regularly slow shifts)
3. Each staffmember will have a job. There will be no executive chef (as it denotes power over others), so a staffmember of the kitchen will be responsible for ordering foodstuffs, another responsible for ordering untensils, etc. Same goes for servers, everyone has an important job that would take the place of a manager’s workload.
4. Should a staffmember of “Republic” break a rule and would be in need of being fired, either that staffmember will step down on their own, or the majority will vote to have them removed from the restaurant staff, essentially voted off the island.
If you have any other ideas of how a restaurant run by only staff would work, lets hear it. It is just a concept, however, but should anyone decide to actually do this, I expect royalties!




