Restaurant Management 101 (Brazilian Version)

They said it would happen and promised that it would happen. I didn’t believe them, or at least I didn’t want to believe them. I like to think that the human race is inherently good and that sometimes we just make mistakes. In this case, I was particularly wrong.

I received a phone call from my manager, Ana, last Friday night saying that she discovered that the employees were stealing from the restaurant (it was a great start to the weekend!). This was the phone call that I didn’t want. I was already on my way to the restaurant so I just told her to sit tight until I got there. Once I arrived, she explained to me what was happened. Our main sushi chef noticed that an order was canceled after he made it and saw it served to a table. He thought it was strange and notified the cashier. After a little prodding, the cashier told Ana that it happens a lot. After a little more prodding, the cashier said that she sees the waiters exchanging money regularly. Unfortunately, Ana had already put the order back in the system. I would have kept the order off to see how the transaction played out when closing the bill. I was curious to see how the waiters pocketed the money in the scheme. After a discussion with Ana, we decided to “interrogate” the waiter who canceled the order. Of course, he denied any wrongdoing and pled ignorance (I believed Bill Clinton and his "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" more than I believed this guy). We told him that it was very suspicious and that we would continue to look into it. Shortly after, we discovered that another waiter canceled the order (it was odd because it wasn’t her table). Only a minute after we finished talking to the first waiter, two waiters immediately came to us and said it was a mistake and the order was canceled erroneously (obviously, they didn’t realize how suspicious that was). We determined that the scheme was that the waiters told the clients about the error on the bill when it was being paid. The canceled orders were usually R$50 and below and the client would just pay that part in cash and they would pocket the money since the order wasn’t on the bill. Anyway, we decided to review the records to check on canceled orders and leave the matter unsettled until Monday.
Although we were fairly convinced what was happening, we didn’t have any real proof.

On Monday afternoon, we sat down and spoke with the cashier. She seemed to know a lot more that she was leading on and no restaurant scheme works in a restaurant without the help of the cashier. Of course, she indeed had a lot more information. She informed us that the head waiter personally asked her if she wanted in on the scheme when she was first hired (this certainly qualified as the proof we were looking for). They both used to work at another restaurant (a very popular one) where apparently stealing is rampant. She told me that she thought we were good people (that clean living is finally paying off!) and didn’t want to participate in what was going on. She then proceeded to explain her version of what was happening. What was interesting to me is that I became aware that this is just normal behavior for employees in the restaurant business in Brazil. There is always some version of a scheme. Those who want in can participate, and those who don’t want to participate have an understanding not to say anything. She was breaking the mold by telling us and I, of course, was relieved that she had done so.

What came next was the obvious firing of those who were involved. The shitty part is that employees have so many rights in Brazil that any situation involving a dispute almost always comes out in favor of the employee. The other part was that the cashier didn’t want the whole staff to know that she was the whistle blower so we had to keep that part quiet. I wanted to tell the employees who were a part of the scheme how incredibly effed up it was. I’m providing them all jobs (18 in all), I pay them fairly, I treat them very well and the payback is that they steal from me. The other screwed up part is that every order that they steal by taking off the system creates less commission for the other employees. Anyway, we had to come up with ridiculous excuses to fire them. The only solace is that they obviously knew that we knew, and that gave me some sort of satisfaction.

The good news is that we caught the problem quickly and, although we lost some money, it could have grown to be a much bigger problem. The bad news is just the disappointment that comes along with something like this. Like I said, I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt but when people steal from you, it’s hard to have this philosophy. However, it was a lesson learned, (and one that I was warned about) and it will only make us focus more on running a very tight ship. The restaurant business is hard enough as it is so we’ll chalk it up to experience and keep moving forward. I said to some friends last week that owning a restaurant is like having a girlfriend. When things are going well and you have a packed house, it couldn't be better. However, when it's quiet and there are problems, it takes a lot of work to keep things going.

On a brighter side, outside of this, things are going great with Tatsuya. People really love the place, and the compliments we get from the décor to the food to everything else are just overwhelming. I’ve even had many sophisticated travelers tell me that Tatsuya was by far their best night experience while in Floripa. While in takes time and patience to make a successful restaurant, I certainly feel like we’re on the right track. Now if I can just figure out how to do FBI background checks on employees we will be all set!