CULA: Culinary Arts: Restaurant Management

Two unequal worlds of work exist within the upscale restaurant scene of Los Angeles. White, college-educated servers operate in the front of the house -- also known as the public areas of the restaurant -- while Latino immigrants toil in the back of the house and out of customer view. In this book, author Eli Revelle Yano Wilson shows us what keeps these workers apart, exploring race, class, and gender inequalities in the food service industry. Drawing on research at three different high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, Wilson highlights why these inequalities persist in the 21st century, pointing to discriminatory hiring and supervisory practices that ultimately grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions. Additionally, he shows us how workers navigate these inequalities under the same roof, making sense of their jobs, their identities, and each other, in a world that reinforces their separateness.

This book uses original research to argue that senior managers -- head chefs -- should differentiate their people-management practices in kitchen brigades from those used in the hospitality industry more generally (induction, socialization, and performance evaluation), due to the group's strong occupational identity and culture. The understanding of chefs' work from a management perspective is critical for successful hospitality operations, but has been historically under-researched. Chapters provide a detailed account of chefs' work in commercial kitchens from a human resources management perspective. Using occupational identity and culture as a vehicle, this book explores the different aspects of managerial work in commercial kitchen settings: general management, leadership, education and training, skills and competencies, managing deviant behaviour, managing stress, and managing diversity (focused on gender segregation). The final chapter looks at future perspectives on this unique working environment and the many challenges arising from the latest developments, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing both theoretical insights and practical applications with the use of case studies throughout, this will be of great interest to upper-level students and researchers in hospitality, as well as a useful reference for current managers in the field.