We were lucky to catch up with Mark Nargi recently and have shared our conversation below.
Mark, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?
The restaurant industry can be pretty rough. Back of house, front of house, management, ownership, everything. It’s a super thin profit margin industry. The hours are nuts. The physical labor is back-breaking. The pay is generally pretty not so good. It really is an industry where passion and love sustain things to a large degree.
And honestly, it’s so stupid. I’m pretty sure if I tried to pay my rent in passion, I would be looking for a new place to live real quick. The amount of abuse and manipulation that occurs in the restaurant industry is gross. And it is largely due to the fact that it is a perpetuating cycle that people just go with. “I was treated poorly and so should everyone else.” It’s like how unpaid internships exist in the financial sector. People just act like its okay because that’s the way it has seemingly always been.
The amount of chefs and cooks I’ve had disagreements with on what should or shouldn’t be okay is pretty staggering. Working over 100 hours a week for a $50,000 a year salary shouldn’t be considered okay. And yet I did it for 2 years early on in my career. I thought that was just the way it was and there was nothing I could do to change it. Ever since I started in management and was able to make major business decisions, one thing I always made sure to do was check in on everyone working under me and make sure they weren’t being overworked or unappreciated. Even little things like 10 minute breaks here and there can make a huge difference.
When I was a line cook, I worked at a Michelin starred restaurant in San Francisco and was forced to work 14 hours a day without breaks. I would have to clock out for lunch, but was required to continue to work. After some time of doing this, one day, I literally passed out on the line in the middle of service. When I came to, I crawled on the floor on my hands and knees across the restaurant and sat outside for maybe 10 minutes to get my bearings. When I finally came back to the kitchen, the Executive Chef made me stand in front of the entire staff and apologize for ruining their service and making them have to pick up my slack because I wasn’t on the line. This is not an unusual occurrence in some kitchens.
As time went on, I would think about how all of these experiences made me feel and I realized I never wanted to make anyone feel like that. There is literally no benefit to abusing and traumatizing your staff. It doesn’t make them work harder, it doesn’t make them more loyal; All it does is make them resent you (and probably want to punch you in the face). These days, I’m lucky enough to be able to work for myself and have quite a few really amazing people who work with me on the events that I do. And people genuinely seem happy to be at these dinners. And that overall vibe is noticed by my clients who regularly comment on how amazing all the staff is. I’ll get texted randomly by my colleagues asking if anything is coming up because they want to do something fun (and obviously getting paid for it isn’t too bad either). I do my best to pay everyone what they are worth and more if I’m able to do so, even at the expense of my own profit sometimes, because in the long run, I’d much rather cultivate a cool working experience with super dope people than make a couple extra bucks here and there.
The long and short of it is just that treating people with respect and not taking advantage of them goes a really long way sometimes and it is really unfortunate that more people in the hospitality industry don’t get that.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I come from a pretty typical East Coast Italian family that cooked together all the time. So I’ve been cooking meals legitimately since I was about 7 years old. When I got older, I had a series of random jobs – I worked in graphic design, I sold tuxedos, I dug pits for spas and pools, I made daily lunches for the local jail (in a warehouse off site. I wasn’t like… in jail). All sorts of weird things. Once I hit my early 20’s, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. And the only thing I was pretty good at was cooking, so I figured I might as well just lean into that. So I ended up going to culinary school and started working in kitchens at the same time. Over time I worked in almost every form of food service that I could think of. Catering, bistros, “fine dining”, meal prep, a burger joint, Michelin starred kitchens, private cooking lessons, even some kitchen equipment sales. Eventually I landed on custom curated, private events and that seems to be the thing that stuck.
For the past 8-some odd years, I’ve done some form of private dinners with varying customization. Weddings, birthday parties, in-home tasting menus, “look how rich I am” parties (I mean, in LA, those are pretty common to be honest). What I do tends to be at least somewhat unique in the fact that my clients and I don’t discuss the menu in advance. The whole meal is a surprise. Which sometimes takes a little convincing to get people on board, but people seem to like the experience because it’s fun and a little mysterious. If you want a chicken Caesar salad or pan of lasagna, I’m probably not the guy to call. Not that I can’t make a banging lasagna – I can and I do – BUT, people call me when they want something special. And I work really hard to make that happen. Having a custom menu and event every single time creates a lot more work for me than if I had set seasonal offerings, but the rewards and the satisfaction are more than worth the effort. I’m really fortunate to be able to do what I do and make a living doing so.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I don’t have a cofounder or dedicated business partner per se, but I do have a small number of people that work with me on a consistent basis that I trust implicitly. I met one of them while I was having dinner at a 2 Michelin starred restaurant in San Francisco. She was my server and I found out she was actually the General Manager. But the entire meal she just did everything so precise and effortlessly. And even though it was a “fancy” restaurant, she was super personable and unpretentious. I really just dug her overall vibe. At that time I was years away from working for myself, so I wasn’t thinking we could do events together. I just wanted to be her friend and that’s what our relationship was for years before we ever worked together in any capacity.
And honestly that’s how most of my long term team started out. I was friends with them, but admired their work ethic or some business acumen they seemed to inherently possess. I worked with someone else who was the General Manager of a restaurant where I was the Executive Chef. And we just clicked immediately and understood each other. And fun fact, we both got fired from that restaurant and since then have done probably 50 events together and have crushed it every single time.
I’m sure there is some school of thought that your business relationships should be pure business, but in my experience having a person connection with the people you work super closely with makes everything run so much more smoothly and makes working actually enjoyable instead of being straight up just a job. Work is work, but it’s dope to work with cool ass humans.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This goes back to what I was saying before about perpetuating cycles of abuse and punishment. Just because something exists and has existed, doesn’t mean that it should exist. Things can and should change if that change makes for a better existence for the people involved. Obviously capitalism needs a certain amount of factors to exist in order for it to function, but we can run a business and still treat people with dignity and respect. Like most people, I have plenty of bills to pay, but if me being able to pay those bills necessitates me being a bag of shit, then I’ll figure out another way to make that money.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: marknargi
