Good Consultants

I’ve had more than 20 “new consultants” reach out to me in the past eight months. These are good people who come from food & beverage, talented somms, capable managers, genre-defining chefs, all in New York City.  All out of a gig now, or probably just reluctant to return to the same old grind. Can’t say as though I blame them. And each of them looking for a few referrals, which I’m always glad to grant.

But it got me to thinking about the role of the “consultant”, what it means principally in foodservice.

First I had to look in the mirror. Here’s me by the numbers:

+ 1600 food workers trained

+ 1,175 foodservice operations inspected

614 clients served at Bulletproof! Food Safety

68 clients served at Endocarp Consulting

128 ROP HACCP plans written & approved

78% of Austin’s new business comes from word-of-mouth referrals

77 HACCP certificates issued

63 Preventive Controls plans, written & approved

38 Seafood HACCP plans, written & approved

20 years 9 months self-employed*

14 years in food safety & operations

4 HACCP certificates

3 food-safety lead instructor certifications

A consultant is experienced, yes, but also a subject matter expert with bona fide learning.  Someone who dives deep into the how & why, and always comes up with the right combo for the client.

Years ago, a very handsome young man fresh out of college opened a restaurant (with me on board for Health Code compliance), then he cleaved from his boss and opened his own consultancy. Seriously? After one restaurant, this kid was gonna help others?  I thought, even with his Hollywood good looks, he’s destined to fail. Or maybe he was out to bilk his clients? He just didn’t have the know-how, or abundant experience. Instead, he had opened one single 1800 sq ft restaurant. Seems he didn’t know his fresh water pipes from his sprinkler pipes, yet he was advertising himself as an across-the-board expert in restaurant openings, an expert in project management, a master juggler with all his chainsaws in the air. But he was not that guy.

When I first dealt with regulatory matters in NYC, the then-director of the food safety bureau would sneer when she said the word “consultant”, folding in a surprising amount of contempt and lacing that word with poison worthy of a puffer fish.  That’s when “consultant” became my new C word, when I shrunk back and claimed the euphemism of “service provider”.  LOL! As if that made a difference!

But the role of consultant, I started to argue, had a certain nobility to it. In NYC especially, consultants bridge the gap between the first-world English-only Health Code and those who are seriously good at cooking or bartending.  That can be a pretty wide gap. There are unwritten enforcement procedures, unwritten interpretations, and a bevy of ambiguous occurrences that then become violations and sometimes morph into legitimate food safety issues. In food safety, at least, expertise is the only way to cleave reality from the gossamer of paranoia or myth.  NYC expects operators to get it right all the time, and when they don’t, NYC reaps $92M in violation fines alone. So the consultant becomes a translator, taking food safety & code and tailoring it to the operation so when the vampires visit, the bite isn’t so deep.

Not so in other municipalities, where Health Departments know that standing up for public health means educating about what to do right, not ruling by fear. But I came up in NYC, one of the most punitive, arbitrary environments there is and, early on, I got a good feel for walking the tightrope.

But I digress. And I should definitely process some of that with my therapist ;)

A bad consultant paints you into a corner and charges for same. A good consultant uplifts your business and provides value far beyond their fees. But vetting a good consultant is the tough thing. Here are some questions to ask your potential consultant (no matter what the field):

1.       How conversant is the consultant with your particular business model?

2.       What are the agreed-upon deliverables, and do these match your consultant’s skillset?

3.       How predictable are the costs and are they above or below market price?

4.       Flat fee or hourly with a not-to-exceed? Is it spelled out in a formal, signed proposal?

5.       Does the written proposal match what you spoke about?

6.       What industry (or industries) does your consultant hail from?

7.       Will your consultant leave you high & dry if he gets a job offer? In other words, is your consultant running a serious business or just bridging a gap between gigs?

8.       Client list or references?  And how trustworthy is this consultant to get “a peek behind the curtain”?

9.       How satisfied are these clients? Have their projects been completed or are they ongoing?

10.   Available bandwidth?  And timeline for completion of the proposed project? Watch out for consultants who can’t say no and who become stretched too thin to do right by you.

So, maybe these 20 new consultants have stepped into this for the right reasons, for the long haul, and they probably possess the subject matter expertise plus the abundant experience to serve their clients well & be successful. I know them all and have enjoyed working with them, so I certainly hope so. For their sake, and their clients’ sake.

*if you scrolled all the way down here to find out about 20 years 10 months self-employed, here you go:

Austin’s Cooling & Heating (Tucson, AZ)…. 13 years 6 months

Bulletproof! Food Safety (New York, NY)…. 6 years 5 months

Endocarp Consulting (New York, NY and Wilmington, DE)…. 10 months