Happy New Year, everyone!
I am fresh off a 48-hour pause in the woods of North Georgia to do a little year-ahead planning. As I create menus and dreamed for the future, I also realized how fortunate our company has been for the past two years. The pandemic has taken over all of our lives, but it’s been very bad for the restaurant industry.
Thankfully, at Souper Jenny we don’t have the normal restaurant set up. There is no set menu, in fact, the menu changes every day - and has for the past 23 years that we have been open. It’s quite a challenge to be continually looking for new ideas and creating new recipes, creating varied menus that will satisfy a number of growing customer health requests. But this stubborn Aries has always been up for the challenge. This kind of set up can be challenging since we are always concerned with waste. However, at this moment in time, it is extremely fortunate that we can literally use whatever is available, because, let me tell you, there isn’t much available.
I am heartsick for my fellow restaurant owners who are struggling because they can’t get the items for their wonderful menus that were readily available a few months ago. We all have our favorite places to eat. However, I’m not sure the average dining guest understands how it can send an entire kitchen into shutdown mode if they can’t get their seafood order in. Or beef quadruples in price overnight, or the truck doesn’t show to deliver.
Don’t even get me started on staffing shortages. Where are the people? Why doesn’t anyone want to go to work? There is not one day where I haven’t seen a post about a popular restaurant having to close for a day because staff not showing up or a covid exposure. I’ve never seen this before.
Deep breaths, Jenny! Or I guess I should say, let’s ALL take a deep collective breath.
I guess where I’m heading with this short post is to send out a plea for kindness for people in this industry. I know you’re pissed that it took an hour to get your sushi, but only one guy showed up today and he’s working his ass off. I know you are frustrated that your favorite dish isn’t available at your neighborhood Mexican joint, but they couldn’t get any chicken this week. And did you know the Starbucks is having trouble sourcing Venti cups? It's endless.
Everyone is struggling. From fast food chains to fine dining. Please find it in your heart to have some patience and maybe even thank your regular service people (anyone from your barista to your mail carrier to your garbage collector) for coming to work today. Because they did so knowing that would probably have to pull double duty for someone else that didn’t.
Oh, and get vaccinated!
—Jenny