 Our next speaker, my Antipodean colleague and dear friend, Ben Shuri, has put a tremendous amount of effort into making his restaurant Attica a safer and more enjoyable place to work, especially over the last few years. In conversation with accomplished food journalist Lisa Abend, Ben will explore what it means to realise the potential of your team and to create a workplace based on equality and fairness. Please put your hands together for Ben Shuri and Lisa Abend. They gave us little blankets here so we can have a picnic. I first met Ben at the very first mad and ever since then we run into each other at different events around the world and he's always one of those people that I seek out because time and again, including in that very first conversation, he has proven himself to be someone who thinks about the big questions and not only thinks about them but acts. He's somebody I've seen whether it's about talking about overfishing or indigenous rights or his own kitchen culture, translating his deeply felt ethics again and again into action. So we're going to have a conversation today and we thought this time we would invite some other people to sit in on it. Do you want to start off with the title here? Yes, so No More Cockroach was the title, there it is, No Cockroach. Do you know what Cockroach is? I really have no idea, why don't you enlighten me? Well, it's generally when a few angry white men get together to complain about their lives through music and it always proposes the question to me, what have they got to complain about? Not a hell of a lot. Okay, well, I did see you complain not very long ago. I saw some real anger with an Instagram post that you posted. Not that long ago, but I felt it up here. It came about because I had got a message, a direct message from a young man, a very misguided young man. Indenigrating woman in relation to a photo of a friend's dish that I posted on my timeline and I've never got a message like this before and I was shocked by it, like really shocked and I know to the woman in the room, it's nothing shocking to you, but for me to be confronted with this, to be confronted with the fact that this young man clearly thought that that was something that would impress me, rarely questioned everything. You know, I questioned my own leadership and my community. Had I been doing enough publicly? All the things that we'd been working towards at the restaurant, clearly like this young guy never heard of them because if he had of and he'd listened, he never would have sent this horrible message to me. And I sat on it for probably a week, maybe five days and every day, all the time I thought about it and I thought about what it meant and I thought about shaming him about reposting it and putting it out there, but I ultimately come to realize as the message says that it was a much bigger issue and I didn't feel like just addressing the individual really proved anything and it removed maybe my responsibility even and so I posted that and that was it was somewhat difficult to write and I read it to everybody in my team and to be honest I was so deeply ashamed by what he had said that I broke down and it's just unacceptable on the deepest level to me. It's profoundly unacceptable and I just wanted to express that and this is the only way I knew how, yeah well it's one of the things that struck me about it when I saw it is I think you know I could see you feeling like you had to give voice to what is acceptable and unacceptable male behavior but I also thought in some ways you are almost channeling an experience that is very common to women in the sense that you didn't see this coming you didn't ask for it it just popped up right and I think that's an experience that's so common to women whether you are a chef or a journalist you publish something and somebody decides to write in the comments section something that is derogatory or sexualizing or if you're a cook in a kitchen I think you know that there's a lot of discussion about jokes in the kitchen and what's appropriate I know it's not appropriate and I think one of the things that might be hard to understand about why that can be problematic is that if you're a woman and you are in the kitchen working as hard as you can like everybody else and then somebody makes a dick joke or some other sexualized comment it immediately reminds you that you're not actually equal and I sort of saw you channeling that in some ways with this comment as well yeah and it absolutely it's it's very very hard for a man to understand what it's like to be a woman you know it's just it's impossible for a man to understand what it's like to be a woman especially a white man it's on it's impossible for us to understand that because we will never experience the gender inequality we will never we were born in the beginning with such privilege and such benefits and my as I we were arriving this morning on the boat my 13 year old son Kobe texts me about the terrible massacre that happened overnight in America and I felt compelled to ring him about it so he had that discussion and he said what are you doing today and I said I'm speaking at this symposium and he said what are you speaking about I said I'm speaking about fairness and he said are you speaking about the thing that you posted on Instagram to dad a little bit and I said yes that's a part of the conversation and then I said he said what I said what do you think about you know gender inequality what do you think about women's rights and he said I think it's horrific I think it's horrible and then he went on to tell me all the things that bothered him about it like woman not being treated as equals woman not having equal pay and it was it was quite a little conversation to be having with a 13 year old certainly you raised him well well I don't know if I raised him well or not but he I mean I think he thinks independently of me you know and I don't know maybe that is like a glimmer of hope but right now like in this moment we're all living men and women together and we have to deal with the situation now like you know here's the hope young men and women who are coming up young boys and girls are the hope but right now we have to talk about what's happening and we have to confront it somewhat you know and I think I think from for men they're very scared of that well I want to I know that that's something that you've dealt with quite directly at Attica and as Kylie mentioned and as you yourself have mentioned you have succeeded in creating a different kind of kitchen culture there and I definitely want to talk about that in a few minutes but I thought maybe we could start by you stepping back a little because when you've been how when did you first go into a kitchen how old are you the first time I was ever in a commercial kitchen was when I was 10 okay we'll leave the child labor laws right New Zealand okay since you've been doing this since you were 10 years old I imagine that the equitable culture is not always a part of the kitchens that you experience can you tell us what I was like a bit I'm just coming up did you were there women in the kitchens where you work did you witness inequality or mistreatment yeah there were women in the kitchens growing up I didn't follow the traditional path in cooking I've not worked in the great restaurants of the world I worked in New Zealand in small town and there was there were women in the kitchen I didn't witness the terrible inequality that we're witnessing now but maybe also like I wasn't always aware of it either did I witness inappropriate behavior yeah I did but yeah well I worked for a head chef and on the line at night he used to tell me about how it sounded to have sex with his wife I was 17 and he just he was a direct conversation but that he would have with me and he seemed to think that that's something that I would want to hear again this is not something that I wanted to hear but then I didn't have the courage of my convictions to speak up about it I wish I had had the strength to speak up about it and you can make all of the excuses under the world why as a man you wouldn't speak up about it but it doesn't matter I didn't and how do you see that I mean if I asked you what were the kitchens like in terms of bullying or verbal abuse did you witness that and do you see any relationship between those things yeah I mean for sure I think you know I had a I had a job for a year in Wellington in New Zealand which was incredibly volatile environment a kitchen where because you know if you shined you would likely get punished if you shine a little bright you know if you tried too hard to make the cooking better somebody older and bigger than you would want to physically harm you and I remember being chased in that kitchen and being close to being beaten and a friend who was the head chef was one of two head chef save me and I remember the same person that wanted to beat me because I made a duck sauce properly was the same person that would have beaten a young woman in that kitchen had it not have been for the same head chef who saved her as well and sadly that that head chef is no longer with us he passed last year he took his own life and he was such a good guy you know who's a good person in a negative time you know it was somebody who you know like who shepherded us and he shielded us from this horrible environment that I endured for a year and a half who we all endured where drug taking was super common in fact it was incredibly uncommon to not and I was the only one one of the only people who didn't and the hour was a course we're just horrific as we all know but even more a little bit more horrific than normal with seven till midnight and no breaks and then you had to deal with this constant fear of like trying too hard or shining and otherwise you might you know that might be very confronting to somebody and they want to beat you for it you know okay so I think I mean you've you've just mentioned a lot of different negative aspects of a culture that a lot of people here come up through and come to think of as normal right I mean I think a lot of the ways in which these practices are perpetuated is that it's almost like they're passed on from generation to generation because it's what you learn because you are so young when you start and it's what you know but you made an active decision to change it so can you talk us through that I mean you you came on board at Attica's head chef in 2005 is that right yeah what was it was it where you wanted it then how did it start for you then like I you know I wasn't such a good guy then you know that first year like I was very insecure I was a 27 year old head chef who had no idea about how to behave really I mean I mean I couldn't meet my own expectation I couldn't meet my own goals and it was just two of us in the kitchen then it was myself and my best friend and I recall bollocking him for overcooking the fish you know it was me that was overcooking the fish not him like I hadn't taught him properly and I like bollocked him for it and that was a reflection on me not him you know but he had to cop it and he's such a good friend that we were able to get past that and we're still best friends to this day but I live with the guilt of yelling at him like that that's something that I think about every week almost you know like that here's this person so dear to me and this is how I treated you because I was shit basically like I couldn't reach my ambition I wasn't skilled enough as a head chef or as a person to be able to reach what I wanted to reach through cooking so I took it out on him and how did things start to change well I mean I think he left after a year so he was like you know what dude like you know you're my best friend but like you know you need to like yeah you need to be better than that you know and and so I guess I started to learn that pretty early on that that performance was based to the way you feel how the way the team feels how happy the team is if you're unhappy in cooking it's very very hard to reach your potential if you're angry you're losing control you're losing control you're not doing anything that's quality so in service in the moment when something goes wrong and the automatic response historically has been to rage you're just losing control of everything nothing is improving in that moment nothing is is getting better or fixing the problem for the customer so you need to create an environment where instead of fear you need an environment of honesty because the other thing is if you have a system of fear in the kitchen as soon as that person makes a mistake they'll hide it and then that that mistake might reach the guest and if you have a system where people aren't scared of you a system of fairness a system of honesty that's based on trust you will implore them to come to you immediately with the mistake and then you fix it together as quickly as you can to salvage the best out of the situation if you're losing control if you're not in control of your tension that won't happen and the quality will be much worse and that was what I found early on like it's so interesting you say that though because I've heard literally chefs say I want my cooks to fear me because if they don't fear me the food won't be perfect such garbage if they don't fear you the food will be better like isn't that what you want like don't you want to be in an environment that you feel good about going to every day like you look everybody in the eye and like genuinely feel something for them you know compassion or love or energy and you're gonna work towards something that's awesome but not at the sake of smashing people so how did you I know a big turning point with Attica came three years ago when you bought it can you tell us like at that moment where you're sort of starting your business again in some ways not from the ground up but you have an opportunity to make it exactly what you want sure how did you approach that this question of of fear well I think it for me it came from going through 10 years of madness with just ownership that just wasn't good you know I was the chef and I could never do what I really wanted to with the business so when I had the opportunity to buy it which was a lifelong dream that I never thought I would realize and it is it is possible I own it by myself and but I wanted I wanted to look at it differently I wanted to look at it as to be try to be like the best small business in Australia not the best restaurant but actually like the best small business and try to take kind of the fact that it's a hospitality business out of it because we've never taught anything positive in businesses as hospitality workers really like we always taught the wrong things people are doing too many hours people are losing their cool I mean the the behavior and restaurants just it's just crazy compared to the behavior it doesn't mirror our society you know we're off in the wild west a little bit so my my my idea and my wish was to create the best most ethical small business that I could you told me that you you thought that that had to be incorporated into the very business plan from the start yeah how did that work for you yeah I think I think you know I wanted to set a moral agenda from the beginning because because I have a conscience some would say it's strong and I can't leave the restaurant at the end of the night and sleep if if it's been bad you know if the culture is bad and toxic and people are doing things to each other which aren't cool I personally I kind of live with that so it's somewhat of a selfish thing first you know like how do I feel about it how does how does everybody else feel about it you know so that was as the business owner that was kind of the agenda and that's a process you know that's not like magically you wave a wand and everything's spot on you know like but it's something that we work out every day you know there's never a day where we don't try to be better in that regard and it kind of comes back to the question of like what's the point of being kind of the best at anything like the best at cooking the best restaurant in the world if it's not fair if it sucks for everyone that works there including me like there's just no point to that you know everything every accolade is completely meaningless if it doesn't feel good you know if it if it's not right you know and uh so those are the questions you know that we ask ourselves and did you I mean were you able to come up with uh concrete measures or or tools that would help ensure that you had both on the on the equality section but also on the people feeling good section how did you like create that so a couple of things I think um the way we hire people is a bit different we hire people based on attitude uh and heart not generally on skills it's very difficult to teach somebody to be a good person it's easy to teach them how to make a source so that's a big that's a big thing I don't care if you worked in the great restaurants of Europe in fact you know maybe it's even going to go against you if you come to Attica I want somebody who really believes somebody who's kind and I want to be able to see that in their eyes in the interview I want them to have a positive attitude and I want to know that they're going to treat other people with respect those are the main things that I care about I got to work with them every day I got to feel good about being alongside them everybody else does too we're a team of 40 and it's really critical to the culture of the restaurant that that is the way it is another thing that we did was um about six years ago I felt this and we all feel this in some level I believe in restaurants but there's often the disconnection between the front house and the kitchen it's two quite separate jobs in fact um within one business you know and it's important to understand the roles of both those jobs and they're both of equal importance but I always felt like there was a disconnect but in our team so I came up with this idea called staff speeches and twice a week we gather around in the dining room everybody who's rostered on that day and we sit in a circle there's a roster and each day that we have this there's somebody assigned to um have a speech to do a speech and they have to prepare that speech it's a great honor to be able to stand in front of your peers and give this speech and so um they the only real rule is that it kind of it has to be positive and in regards to being positive I mean that it can't be kind of just a session of complaining about you know work like it has to be kind of something constructive it can be something hard in your life and we've heard um you know conversations about um suicide um mental health issues um you know a young woman whose family fled uh North Korea to South Korea we've had so many heavy heavy conversations in the last six years like the heaviest and sometimes they leave you feeling deflated like oh and now it's four o'clock and we've got to get ready for service you know and but but my idea was that I hated feeling like I was a number in a business you know and prior to owning my own place I I often did feel like I was a number like oh it didn't matter because I was a quiet person and it really it really felt like it stripped my identity a little bit you know like I like nobody likes to feel like they don't count you know and it wasn't about like hey hey look at me it was just like I can contribute too and I really wanted to avoid that in our workplace so I wanted to give every single person that works here the opportunity to stand up and say something about themselves for 15 to 20 minutes and by doing that the idea was that the person that's right out the back in the you know the pot wash and the person that's right out the front maybe doing the glasses in the dining room those two people maybe they only cross paths once a day now they don't know anything about each other they ever have a conversation because there's no opportunity to they're really in separate worlds you know and when there's conflict between those two people it's mostly because they don't know each other you know they can't understand that person's perspective or point of view so by giving them a voice to be able to express themselves in a positive way or even a hard story that's where it is you get to know them a little bit now you you can't possibly feel empathy for somebody that you don't know like in a restaurant especially when the shit's hidden the fan you know so what's happened is that through this through people getting to know each other a little bit more intimately in the workplace that when something does go wrong people just pull back a little bit they don't jump down their throat aggressively because they know that you know maybe this person is bipolar and I've talked about it maybe they were abused so badly by the chefs that they work with in France that they're very scared especially around men it's important that they know that so that they can treat each one of us as individuals not just as hospitality worker all human beings and that that was the idea well I mean it seems to me like it was it was an important insight that that treating people with respect depends first on empathy right and and seeing them as seeing them as people right what about at the logistical level I mean do you find yourself hiring for gender balance for example sure yeah we want to we want a very I mean the business operates best when it's a it's even a split of men and woman as possible it's just a fact you know it's um when there's too many men in the kitchen I don't like it I don't like the feeling you know right now there's a and it's not always like this but right now there's a 50 50 split exactly I paid the wages this morning so that's how I know that which is which feels good you know like it just feels good and it's uh you know we never employ people based on their gender like but we would always want to have a good balance we want to employ people on their merits I don't think by employing people on their gender alone is helping anybody at all so for me you know that's what it is you know well I want to I want to go back to to Kylie's point about leadership because it's one thing to feel these things in in yourself and to try and behave ethically for yourself but you're managing a whole team and you can't you can't necessarily guarantee that at any moment they're going to behave everybody on that team have there been challenges for you or times when you have had to confront people working for you that we're not living up to your values and how did you deal with that yeah absolutely um we have a management team which is uh two women and two men and early into my ownership um our operations manager Kylie who's here today came to me with a problem sorry this is a little upsetting because it's a feeling of failure when something like this happens in your workplace you know like I'm like I try to be a role model to them and like when somebody is like worm their way in who's not right like who's got the wrong shit going on their mind you feel like you failed and you take it personally oh so personally so personally and somebody like this was in our team and I wasn't aware of his characteristics and he physically you know I don't even know how to say it like he he manhandled a men and woman particularly men he threatened female members of our staff he intimidated our manager and this happened when I was on holiday and I came back and learned of this on the first day that I was back and to cut a long story short that was the last day that he ever had at Attica there's just no other thing to do despite the risk despite that that shit could come back to me why was it risky well because it's risky but from even from a labor perspective you know like to just say man like you got to go like this behavior is outrageous like this goes against our culture you've hurt people you've hurt me you got to go like I can't tolerate you and I don't care about the risk to my business or to the company you have to go now and that was what happened and we needed that position filled like we're a small team and we didn't have anybody to do that so that led to Kylie who works nine to five pitching in that led to me being on the floor in the dining room for six months and we were so scared that we were going to lose a hat or a star we think we came pretty close hey because of what he did and because of the decision that I made but you know what like if you didn't draw a line in the sand at some point and say people are more important than a star or a hat then what what are you doing it for like how can I look in the eye of anybody else who had been affected by this person and say to them oh yeah guys you know it's going to be great today let's go you know but dude you let this person do this to me you know like what do you stand for you're saying one thing and you're behaving another way so what do you say to your colleague somebody who is a head chef or has his own restaurant and discovers this kind of behavior but is worried that as I've heard from people that I've interviewed uh when they've reported something like harassment told yeah I know but he's a really good chef and then I'd have to fire him when you hear that kind of thing I'm in the industry as a whole how do you respond to your colleagues oh I mean it's it's really black and white to me you know like I'm sorry I know it's it could be difficult I suppose like it has it just has to happen you have to make a strong decision you have to look at the facts and if somebody it's super dangerous to allow somebody like that to stay in your workplace you know like what the hell it's not even a question for me you know like it just no question there you know it that person has to go that person's rotten you know you can't fix that if it's bad enough it you can't fix it and uh and it will write everything else you know and I've I've also been there as well well one of the I think one of the challenges is creating an environment not just I mean as you said with the with your staff speeches where people feel understood but where they trust that if something does go wrong or where they're not being treated fairly that they there's venues and they trust that it will be dealt with right and that and it there will be some kind of response because oftentimes there isn't how have you handled that have you discovered any ways to make people in your employee feel comfortable with coming forward with that sort of thing yeah that is something that is on my mind a lot especially um especially if you're I'm an I'm a man and I own the restaurant particularly if you're a woman I'd like to think that that any woman in my restaurant could come to me with any problem without fear but I also know that that's not the way it is in society either and so that's why it's important to have woman as senior managers in any restaurant as well and empower them and allow them to make decisions and that's what happens at Attica you know we have Kylie an operations manager capacity and she helps set the moral agenda along with me that's been hugely influential on me as a man but even beyond that I've been thinking lately and this is only really an idea but what would happen in a restaurant if something happened and what would happen if for hypothetically if a young woman or a woman of any age had been sexually harassed by a man in your venue and was scared to come forward because that person had been working there a long time and it was known that we had a very close relationship which is the truth in every restaurant including mine what if they thought well this happened to me but I said Ben talking and laughing with this man every day he won't believe me he won't do anything about it and I'm not going to say anything because I'm scared to say anything what if what would happen then so there's this idea that I had about there being another person that's not connected to the restaurant which is a person that you could go to somebody respected in the community like kind of like a restaurant ombudsman so that you could go to outside of the restaurant and you could talk to them about the problem and that person would hold the restaurant accountable if the right action wasn't taken that's such an amazing idea because I mean it's it's it's really innovative and I think one of the things that has struck me as an observer of this industry especially among restaurants and chefs at your level is that you're all so innovative when it comes to food and yet in many cases in most cases you've inherited a brigade system that dates back to the Franco-Prussian war literally and nobody's ever changed it and no one ever thinks to innovate that and it sounds like maybe I seem you still have a brigade do you a brigade I mean do you consider it a brigade we don't have brigades in Australia right we just have people that work in kitchens I mean there's some level of hierarchy but yeah okay it's pretty even but you're you're trying to sort of affect the structure of the kitchen I mean everybody is as important as anybody else all humans are of same value it's not it's just you know we place these kind of measures on on kitchens and we say some people are more more more important than others because that's how we control and discipline things but for me like if you do that too much what you do is you have a bunch of junior staff who can't think for themselves who won't call out things when they see them we're wrong won't fix mistakes so I try to make sure that everybody feels like they have proper ownership it's not just like a thing that I'm saying it's actually something that I believe in you know that if you actually have you know if you actually invested because you believe that it's a good place and and you are told hey you can affect a positive outcome in the service tonight just as much as any other person be the person that picks up the piece of rubbish on the floor and doesn't want to get recognition for it just do it as your very being you know so that's kind of what I try to promote you know that again it comes back not feeling like a number you know and I mean we we don't have time I don't think to go into much of this too but I know that you've also taken on questions about hours and how many what kinds of yeah what kinds of hours you're asking for people which has an impact just on everybody's general quality of life and whether they actually have a life but it can also impact whether that you know whether women feel like they can stay in the industry as well and if you look at something like that and you look at what you're saying about trying to diminish the the nefarious effects of hierarchy I want to go back to that question about you know that I brought up in the context of fear has it affected quality do you feel like you're a less lesser restaurant at the level of cuisine because of it no I think I mean we've we are working at most 48 hours in the kitchen or less in the front house at most 45 hours or less that's across four days in the kitchen so they have the staff have three days off I mean the quality is better than ever like there's just no comparison you know what I'm asking for I'm not talking about being all lovey-dovey and being soft as some people have have accused me of you know it's not what it is it's like I don't need 48 hours I need an elite 48 hours from you you know I need you to be great for 48 hours then I need you to go and forget about this and have a great life and concentrate on some stuff that's good for you have breakfast with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your wife or you know like whatever like I don't care please just don't don't be here and at the start of this we literally had to police it like I'm there first same time as Kylie we see in the camera staff coming like two hours before their shift literally we had to go out there and say go away like you can't be here you know like US shift is not starting so please go away have a coffee I don't care um and so it was a really big cultural shift for them as well because they never ever work like this you know they they always sort of everybody subscribes into this you've got to do the hours you know you just got to do the hours otherwise you're not hardcore you know which is such nonsense what about if you did less hours and you did them a lot better you know I think there's something in that and there definitely is something in that Attica that's that's how it is and and the food is better than it was um and the but the culture particularly the the environment the atmosphere is like the best of all time you know and it's not to say that I'm not sitting here saying we're perfect and that's you know we live in a bubble that we don't affect it by everything the same as you guys affected but but but but the culture is excellent you know and and people are like genuinely happy and they can do things they can get a haircut you know my last question for you yesterday um during the q&a session there was a man seated over here who asked about male male role models and where like how do you encourage men to step into that role for other men um you seem like somebody who might be have some insights into how to do that do you any tricks uh whoo how do you be a male role model um I mean I think it's like uh it's a daily battle you know to be honest like I think uh I had this I had this awesome conversation with a dear friend last night about how it was to recover from alcohol and drug addiction um and he was telling me how it was an every day thing here's the choice every single day to not take drugs every single day every moment of his life he's deciding not to take drugs and not to take alcohol and I would liken it to that somewhat every single day many many many times a day you have to think about equality in your workplace if you're a man you just have to it has to be on your mind as a constant thing you have to hold yourself accountable in my opinion too forever and a day actions will speak louder than words okay I think we should end it there thank you thank you