Our culture is easily and endlessly enthralled with fads!  Many of them enigmatic, even oddly contagious.  A silly T.V. game show has sprung, almost instantly, into the national psyche.  Suddenly monochromatic color on color shirt and tie "ensembles a la Regis" are de rigueur while "is that your final answer?" has become fully implicated itself into the cultural vernacular.

For many years the "Hush Puppies" expressed, in unspoken shorthand, the sense that the wearer was decidedly "un-cool."  Then moving into the mid-90's, with a full palette of pastel tones, the sensible, soft soled shoes became the footwear of choice for the fashion cognoscenti.  (Go figure it out….it's beyond me.)

These examples of group dynamics are less random than they might appear at first blush.  If I may use epidemics from the scientific world as example, I can recognize a distinct and largely definable set of factors can set in motion the makings of the next big thing, whether its an infectious disease, a fashion or cultural craze or food "fad."  Ideas and products, menu selections and those who create them as well as behaviors spread just like viruses do, eventually hitting the point where critical mass causes them to tip over from obscurity into mass acceptance.

Invested with a vital message that must be broadcast to every practitioner of the culinary arts audience,  foodservice needs to stir up its own enduring fad, this one, though about something other than the latest tastes in food and even beverage.  It is, How do we keep our talented people in the kitchens?  At industry conferences as well in corporate offices, much time and anxious energy is spent sadly lamenting the grim perceptions of foodservice, namely culinary as a career choice.  And from all the negatives that have been so deeply embedded in the public's perception comes the industry's great, blistering bane:  There simply are not enough foodservice workers or cooks drawn into and stay in this noble business, an inapplicable reality that casts shades of gray on an otherwise rosy aura.

In many ways, it's hard to figure where the tainted image comes from or why it's so ingrained  and seemingly unshakable.  The restaurant industry spins its share of glitzy, high profile stories about glamorous dining "spots," fabulous meals and star chefs.  Add to that the dedicated, honest unrelenting efforts with in the industry to promote its many career and opportunities.

This industry has to put into dusting itself off.  Maybe we're "so old" that we've lost sight of the target…the younger, eager cooks. Maybe we're so bust looking into a mirror that we see everything backwards with us the only thing in focus. 

High-profile players have embraced, with unbounded energy and dedication, the need to promote culinary careers.  And as the idea filters out to larger platforms, it reveals deep validity, a resonance that should allow it to settle into the cultural mindset.

What must underlie all successful epidemics, though, is a "bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face if the right kind of impetus."  Therein lies the tipping point, the eagerly awaited moment when the many efforts explode into an important, large scale initiative.

Is it our job to demonstrate that being a cook is indeed a career and not just something to do until something else comes along?  You bet your butt it is!  We have talent, bright young people graduating from our culinary "colleges," moving into the industry with the intent of leaving the kitchen first chance.  Not good!  The kitchen is a creative environment where a decent and honest living can be made.  But somehow sales and front-of-the-house jobs are the current draw, enticing our talent away.  What shall we do?  You tell me.  I suggest we stop complaining and begin (in earnest) constructing programs that motivate and encourage cooks and bakers to hold in there……allow their dream to really come true, and it will, given time.

I hope you all had a Happy and Blessed Easter and Pass Over as you look toward spring and the "new beginning" for business and refreshing our commitments as cooks, chefs bakers and pastry people.