Publication:	Nation's Restaurant News Magazine
Date:	March 31, 2003
Section:	Special Report
Page:	25,26,27,28,32,36,38
Byline:	Carolyn Walkup

 
 



 
 
It's the 21st century, and American career women have it made. Or so the myth goes.
 
In actuality women continue to struggle to reach the top rungs of the corporate ladder. Even in the foodservice industry, where the most visible role that of servers is dominated by women, female executives remain few and far between.
 
"There is so much opportunity now, but people still need to understand there are still some uncharted waters, and there is no textbook on how to do this," says Alice Elliot, chief executive of The Elliot Group, a Tarrytown, N.Y.-based foodservice executive search and consulting company.
 
According to the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation's recent "The State of the Workforce" survey, 77 percent of servers are female.
 
Furthermore, 57 percent of the 11.6 million foodservice workers in the United States are female. As women work their way up at the unit level, however, the percentage of the ones who ascend to the position of restaurant manager drops to 27 percent, the survey shows.
 
When one considers the executive levels in larger foodservice companies, the percentages fall dramatically. Women accounted for just 14 percent of corporate officers and held 8 percent of board-of-director seats at the parent companies of the 100 largest foodservice chains, according to a 2000 study by New York-based Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization that works with business to advance women.
 
Those percentages, while low compared with the success achieved by males, represent progress, especially in view of the fact that almost no women occupied those ranks a few decades ago.
 
Women's progress has been slow for several reasons, according to the Catalyst study, which was commissioned by the Women's Foodservice Forum, a group dedicated to the leadership development and career advancement of women in the foodservice industry. The study found that the top four barriers holding women back are lack of mentoring, exclusion from informal networks of communication, failure of senior leadership to assume accountability for women's advancement, and male stereotyping and preconceptions of women's roles and abilities.
 
The WFF currently is working on a study intended for foodservice companies to use as a resource to help them recognize and overcome the barriers and to develop programs to attract, retain and promote the best female talent.
 
Joni Doolin, chief executive and founder of People Report, a quarterly survey of human-resources trends, says most foodservice companies are doing little to find women management candidates beyond looking within their own ranks. "Very little college recruiting is done by the chains," she says.
 
That lack of planning could leave the industry with a serious management shortage in time, Doolin says. Many people, especially women, drop out of the industry after reaching assistant- manager positions, she notes.
 
"If you have a low percentage of women district managers or general managers as role models, women can be left feeling isolated," she says. "Successful companies are the ones who actively seek out what the barriers are."
 
Doolin, Elliot and other sources point to several major foodservice companies that have formal programs intended to help women advance. They note that the companies that are making significant progress in that area have chief executives who are committed to the advancement of women as well as to the advancement of minorities.
 
Darden Restaurants Inc., the Orlando, Fla.-based parent company of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze and Smokey Bones headed by Joe Lee, is one of those progressive companies. It has had an evolving formal program in place since 1995.
 
"There is a culture here that says any job is open to anybody who has the potential and is willing to work toward getting the skills needed," says Paula Shives, Darden's senior vice president and corporate counsel, who heads the company's diversity program.
 
"We worked a few years ago to articulate what our values are," she explains. "We have a culture where we value the contributions of individuals. We spend a lot of time in evaluating the leadership potential of the talent we have."
 
Darden recently pledged $50,000 to support the WWF's 2003 programming as well as its mentoring strategy. More than 100 Darden employees are WFF members, including Edna Morris, Red Lobster president, who was the WFF's first founding chair in 1989. The WFF is awarding her its 2003 Trailblazer Award.
 
Several companies in the quick-service arena also have formal programs in place to help women grow in their organizations. Louisville, Ky.-based Yum! Brands Inc., for example, began to develop such a program in 1997, primarily in an effort to stem high turnover rates at all levels. Yum's chains include Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W All-American Food.
 
In 1997 Taco Bell led team-member turnover among the brands at 243 percent, which was higher than the industry average of about 200 percent, says Valerie Davisson, Yum's vice president of human-resources services. At the end of February 2003, team-member turnover for all of the brands was 128 percent. At Taco Bell it was 133 percent.
 
Along with improving recognition, mentoring, diversity training and other programs, Yum began providing employees with better access to affordable, high-quality child care. It did so after learning that 65 percent of its team members are the primary breadwinners in their families, many of whom need day care in order to be able to work.
 
As part of the company's Focus on Family program, KFC created its KFC's Colonel's Kids program in partnership with the YMCA, a major day-care provider. The program addresses the issues of nontraditional hours and infant and toddler care as well as traditional daytime hours.
 
"We have done things to focus on retention, not just bringing people in, but growing them and helping them as part of our talent base," Davisson says.
 
Atlanta-based AFC Enterprises has been committed to building a more inclusive company since 1992, when Frank Belatti came aboard as chief executive. The company's New Age of Opportunity philosophy also addresses child-care and other family-friendly policies, including part-time work, complete with benefits, and flexible work arrangements.
 
"An absolute commitment from the top, from Frank Belatti, has filtered down through our culture," says Lisa Morse, vice president, legal and chief compliance officer.
 
In fact, in a speech Belatti made last spring, he said: "In eliminating the glass ceiling, we are opening ourselves to a greater variety of solutions. Let's create cultures where differences are celebrated and openness and tolerance are the norm."
 
Wallace Doolin, chief executive of Dallas-based La Madeleine for the past year, is another white male who long has advocated equal opportunities for women and minorities, including during his prior stint as chief executive of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide. He recently put together a new executive team that includes one man and three women.
 
"I think to compete in the marketplace today, you have to find the best talent and not all in only one area. I'm looking for a team that can complement and challenge me, and sometimes they don't look like me," Doolin says.
 
"Women are getting hired in the management ranks because there is more awareness. There was none when we started; that's for sure."
 
Diana Wynne, incoming WFF chair as well as senior vice president and treasurer of Metromedia Restaurant Group, also remembers when there were few, if any, women in what she calls the "C" management ranks, like chief financial officer and chief operating officer.
 
"Now there are 12 women who are presidents and CEOs. That's a huge accomplishment," she says. "However, there is still certainly room to grow."
 
Citing Catalyst data, she says it will take 39 years for women to occupy 50 percent of corporate officer jobs at the present rate. "If you look at the same data set for women of color, it's even worse," says Wynne, an African-American.
 
Wynne's own professional background in finance, which she says has helped her to advance, came about because of a mentor she met while she was pursuing a law degree. The professor, who saw her aptitude for accounting and finance, encouraged her to pursue accounting instead of law, which she did. That led to a job with one of the Big 8 accounting firms and eventually to the foodservice arena.
 
"There is no doubt that finance is still underrepresented when it comes to women," Wynne says. "There is an absolute requirement that women who get to the executive level have a knowledge of finance."
 
She now shares that insight and additional ones with other women through WFF's mentoring program.
 
Starlette Johnson, executive vice president and chief strategic officer for Dallas-based Brinker International, is another woman who works in an especially male-dominated area of foodservice management. The "deal-making" skills that go into the mergers-and-acquisitions portion of her job are things she learned by doing, she says.
 
"I've had some good leaders and role models who let me sit in on early mergers-and-acquisitions discussions," Johnson says. "Brinker is very team-oriented and gives you room to establish your own identity.
 
"I always liked working whatever position I needed to help; I don't necessarily have to lead," says Johnson, an avid sports fan who also played on a lot of sports teams in school. "I surprise the guys with how much I know about football."
 
Although Brinker is only in the beginning stages of developing a diversity program, Johnson says, women have nonetheless been pretty successful at the company. "It's a nonissue whether you are male or female," she claims.
 
Women who work in the back-of-the-house also have made progress but still have some catching up to do, according to Ann Cooper, president of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, an organization dedicated to promoting the education and advancement of women in the restaurant industry. Cooper is executive chef and director of wellness and nutrition at The Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., and author of "A Woman's Place is in the Kitchen: The Evolution of Women Chefs."
 
"When you think about great chefs in America now, women come to mind," Cooper says. "Twenty years ago there was none, except maybe Alice Waters." She estimates that women now account for about 20 percent of executive chefs.
 
The first woman graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in 1970, when the school was 50 years old. When Cooper graduated from The CIA in 1979, she was one of three women graduates in a class of 72, and there were no women instructors, she recalls.
 
Today 24 percent of CIA graduates are women, and 35 percent of the graduates of other culinary schools are women. Females account for about 20 percent of culinary instructors today across the United States, according to Cooper's research.
 
She predicts that the number of women chefs who reach the top spots in restaurant kitchens will increase, but it will take time. "It takes 15 years to get to the top in a kitchen," she says.
 
WCR, which is 10 years old this year, is now in a position to help younger women through a mentoring program, scholarships and awards. "We are coming of age as a mature organization that is able to give back to the industry," Cooper says. "It's very exciting."
 
Sarah Stegner, head chef of the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room in Chicago and a James Beard Award winner for Best Chef-Midwest, says that as a novice intern 18 years ago, she benefitted from working with Fernand Gutierrez, who was then executive chef and director of food and beverage.
She now mentors other women through WCR.
 
"I hire on the basis of training and skill level," says Stegner, who notes she does not take an applicant's sex into account. "If you have a strong desire to do it, that's the key."
 
Stegner adds that she is content being chef of the dining room and does not aspire to become executive chef of the hotel's entire food-and-beverage operation.
 
"Some women choose not to run kitchens," Cooper notes. "It's not easy to balance a family and a chef's career if you're working nights, weekends and 60-plus hours a week."
 
Jody Adams, chef-partner of Rialto and two other restaurants in Cambridge, Mass., and Boston through her Sapphire Restaurant Group, says she chose to be her own boss so that she can set her own priorities and write her own schedule. "I don't do this alone," she states.
 
With the help of three business partners and husband Ken Rivard, who works at home and is the "primary" parent for their two children, Adams is able to achieve an acceptable degree of balance in her life. She also credits good communication with her teams of sous chefs, cooks and managers for helping her succeed.
 
More and more young women and men will be starting their own companies in the near future, predicts People Report's Doolin. She notes that women already own one in four foodservice firms, which include catering, bakeries and other specialty businesses.
 
"With Generation X and Y, you will see a phenomenal escalation in entrepreneurial businesses," Doolin says. Those generations in particular place more value on flexible schedules and want more time for family and leisure, she notes.