Meet the Restaurant where the Customer comes Last… and it works!

[00:00:00] Leigh Balkom: Jesse Cool, thank you so much for joining! It’s been about a year since we’ve been going back and forth. I’ve been really looking forward to our conversation.
[00:00:11] You sent over a short bio and I just, I have to read it because it’s so wonderful. Jesse Ziff Cool has been dedicated to sustainable agriculture and cuisine for over four decades as a writer, restaurateur, spokesperson, and consultant for eco-conscious food service. Jesse’s the author of seven cookbooks and throughout the years has written for dozens of publications, appeared on numerous TV shows. She founded five restaurants starting in 1976. With the first organic restaurant in the country, Late for the Train, and currently operates the legendary and beautiful Flea Street in Menlo Park.
[00:00:56] I’ll say she’s also been called the matriarch of Menlo Park and Silicon Valley, a lecturer for Stanford’s department of education and the Rikers Center, a wonderful youth center I’m familiar with. She uses her home garden and kitchen as a model classroom.
[00:01:13] She’s building a beautiful community. Through the garden and the tending of that, and a lot of that produce goes back to Flea Street, I understand.
[00:01:24] She also created Farm Fresh at Stanford Hospital, an organic local menu option for staff and patients.
[00:01:33] Jesse invites the opportunity to mentor others, especially women embarking on their career in the food industry. And she loves sharing her own mistakes, supporting others in this very tough business, which she finds gratifying. And she loves long hikes, which allows her to devour more of all that she loves in life—delicious food and a nightly martini. That is just beautiful, Jesse.
[00:02:02] Jesse Cool: I think it’s so long. It’s always hard to sit here.
[00:02:07] Leigh Balkom: You’re like, is that me?
[00:02:09] Jesse Cool: I thought, we need to shorten that, but maybe that’s part of being a matriarch, or elder, words that I think are really wonderful to identify with at this time of life. So thank you very much, Leigh, for inviting me and the work you’re doing. Thank you.
[00:02:29] Leigh Balkom: Thank you. That means a lot coming from you. And I do think it’s important to look back and reflect and be proud of all that you’ve done. I’m curious after reading that—you’ve done so much over 40 plus years in building community and really rallying around health and wellness and sustainable agriculture.
[00:02:53] Is there an accomplishment that you’re most proud of?
[00:02:56] Jesse Cool: Realizing that a lot of my life ended up being an advocate, political, a leader without knowing I was becoming a leader, and especially a woman leader in the food industry.
[00:03:09] I think, in retrospect, some of the most important things I’ve learned are, one, to absolutely acknowledge my mistakes. And share them readily, to not be afraid to say, “I did something wrong and let’s fix it,” because especially in the restaurant business, even if you have the perfect business plan, or you have fabulous days that are successful, just like life, you always need to find ways to make it better and work with people in ways that are kinder and bringing more respect, especially into the food industry. I think that’s where I feel like I’m sitting now. I’m still learning about that.
[00:03:50] Leigh Balkom: Yeah, that is huge. Just to hear you say kinder and more respect and talking about the food industry. Every day we see news about the hostile, terrible, toxic culture in the kitchen, and it sounds like you have been working to build not only healthier menus and healthier bodies, and when I say healthy, of course, I’m talking healthy and sustainable, but healthier culture, which is phenomenal.
[00:04:22] And how do you do that?
[00:04:25] Jesse Cool: We have absolutely done that. There were many silver linings to the pandemic. I’ve done this for actually 46 going on 47 years. Late for the Train started in 75 or 76. One of the biggest things came when the service part of the restaurant business, a.k.a. the old front of the house, we now call it service, didn’t come back to work, and we needed the kitchen, and I’m a kitchen person, I’m a cook, I come from that place, and during the pandemic, it was even more evident that they were the ones who were really keeping the restaurants alive. Those of us that survived had people in our kitchens wearing masks for eight hours a day, and preparing food to go when some of us had never done food to go, or having nonprofits—we did 29,000 meals and sent them to the hospital, so we kept 13 people employed. But I realized then when we opened up again that we had to keep that respectfulness that was very evident and discovered during the pandemic. And so we started something different called heart of the house. And there are others that have done similar ones.
[00:05:32] Ours is much more equitable. And we charged a 20% service charge the whole way through the pandemic, we still do. We charge a 2.5% healthy living charge. And 100% of all of that goes to the staff. 100%. Nothing goes to the business. So the kitchen and the service staff receive all of it.
[00:05:58] And that means that cooks now make more money, and that means that dishwashers make more money. And that means that maybe the service staff don’t make quite as much, but they also do well. The 2.5% is saved, and we now close the restaurant two weeks every year in July and January, and they get a big bonus.
[00:06:19] They also have 401ks, that we match, and they also have medical and dental that we match 50%. And it’s working. My bottom line is, okay, I’m not in the red. It does mean that the guest has to support that. And the industry used to be, if you had big cheap food, they didn’t connect it to the people. And we can talk more about that.
[00:06:42] But what we’ve done is secure a really good, happy staff that work hard together and treat each other and everyone respectfully. And our core value, as I mentioned to you, is actually the customer comes last. We can go into that more. Doesn’t mean we don’t care about customers because we do care about our customers.
[00:07:02] If you take care of the people who are taking care of others from beginning to end, then we believe that they will take care of our guests.
[00:07:12] Leigh Balkom: And do you allow tipping? On top of that? So it’s optional.
[00:07:18] Jesse Cool: Yes, because sometimes people want to, like there was a man in the other night and he wanted to give more, so he gave more. But all of that then goes to the service team. So it’s a way of attracting the service team. They can make a little more. But the biggest shift is the kitchen now makes, I would say, between 26 and 38 an hour.
[00:07:38] Leigh Balkom: Wow.
[00:07:39] Jesse Cool: Paid time plus all the other benefits. So the main thing that came from it was to just create a more equitable team within, a very difficult workforce, the restaurant business. In the back of house and the front of house, front of house made all the money, back of house made nothing. If we raise prices, people tip on percentage, no matter what it is, whether it’s you tip voluntarily or you tip by a service charge, which is just the way it is in the Western world.
[00:08:09] Mainly it went to the service staff, but now it’s more equal. So we lose no staff. I haven’t lost one kitchen person.
[00:08:16] Leigh Balkom: Seriously.
[00:08:17] Jesse Cool: Not One.
[00:08:18] Leigh Balkom: I mean, I hear stories every day of how, we need bodies. We can’t get anyone in. Nobody’s staying. It’s impossible. That’s remarkable.
[00:08:28] Jesse Cool: Brian, Our chef general manager who’s been there started just before the pandemic and, oh, my God, pivoted and still is pivoting since the close down because we’re not through it yet, even though people think we are, we’re not. He actually feels like this model is one of the best moving forward because it is good to the people who work.
[00:08:50] Otherwise, they’re not coming back. And so yes, we didn’t lose one kitchen person and we have a solid service staff of three or four people came back, because they saw they could make a really good solid income. And they liked being in a place that, they felt was back to that word, kindness, kind to them.
[00:09:12] They’re kind to each other.
[00:09:14] Leigh Balkom: Yeah. Wow.
[00:09:16] Jesse Cool: And it makes me happy. I was pretty burned out too. When you run a business and it’s healthy food and you’re trying to do something that really pays attention to where the food comes from in the environment, the politics of food, when you do that, that the staff are somewhat are struggling. It didn’t make me happy anymore, but now I’m extremely happy. I love it.
[00:09:40] Leigh Balkom: That’s so beautiful. That’s so beautiful. That holistic, healthy, from the ingredients and the sourcing and then in the staffing and the way you’re running the business, that is truly remarkable and beautiful. I wanted to go back to something you said. We’re not through it yet. Everybody thinks the pandemic’s over. Jesse, what’s going on?
[00:10:06] Jesse Cool: The news is full of it. I think what they think is over, which is true, we’re not masked up and we may be getting booster vaccines, and there’s still people getting covid, but it’s certainly not like it was, but the restaurant business like healthcare, like any kind of hospitality or service industry has been hit hard because during that close down, people lived a different kind of life who were working weekends and nights and holidays.
[00:10:31] They got to be with their families. They got to sleep, better. They got to take care of themselves and feel a sense of humanity that our industry often doesn’t include and yet here we are with people at tables who are extremely happy and celebrating, but they have no real sense of the work that goes into it.
[00:10:53] But the workforce learned because they stepped back
[00:10:55] Leigh Balkom: You’re like, wait a minute. What have we been doing?
[00:10:58] Jesse Cool: Yeah. And for not a lot of money, they’re not high paid. We are low paid people. What we have to do to rebuild and are still figuring it out is how to bring those people back, how to make the industry more responsible to those people, how to make sure the customers get cared for with thoughtful dining, not, we don’t call it fine dining anymore, we call it thoughtful dining. And to reeducate everyone who loves to go out to eat and loves to be taken care of, but to make sure that people who are doing that are acknowledged. And so that, that’s the biggest shift to, to get them to trust the coming back. They can make a decent living. They can pay their rent.
[00:11:46] They can be with their children. They can feed their families. It’s fair. So that’s that’s what I would say is still a part of the now because everybody’s coming back thinking, Wow, look how busy you are. Wow, look, everything looks so much better. We’re back. How are you doing? We’re still figuring out how to do this.
[00:12:08] And to charge you money so that we can pay those people, not only the people who work for me, but the people who are producing food, they’re all short staffed. People going fishing, fishing is very hard work and ranching is very hard work, and anyone who has a garden and picks beans for an hour knows that’s very hard work.
[00:12:32] So in order to make sure those people, especially in our local community, are paid. We have to figure out how to get people to understand you have to pay more for food.
[00:12:49] Leigh Balkom: Are there any new tactics or things that you have in mind that you’re either rolling out now or thinking about or that you would be willing to share or things that you’re experimenting with to continue addressing those challenges?
[00:13:08] Jesse Cool: I think a lot of it’s storytelling. We talk about big, cheap food is not healthy food, mainly because someone’s not getting paid.
[00:13:16] Or if it’s food, you’re very interested in the healthcare industry and food, and finally, they’re realizing that if people eat chemicals or are around chemicals, preservatives, or plastics or artificial anything in processed foods, especially if they eat a lot of it, they’re probably going to get sick.
[00:13:34] So the main thing we think about is, we know where everything comes from in Flea Street. We pay for healthy food and that is true healthy food where the people are also producing it and processing it are not around chemicals. We’re not willing to pay less and have people in other parts of the world be poisoned either, or be treated poorly either.
[00:14:01] To answer your question, I think the biggest thing with everything I’ve just said is that this cannot be an elitist situation. This cannot just be for high level restaurants. It has to be that people of all different economic positions in life are not poisoned and have the opportunity for good healthy food because we know what’s going on with obesity and diabetes.
[00:14:24] I think that’s the biggest challenge is how to create stories that. That bring the general public understanding. And I think that’s what you’re doing right now by interviewing this matriarch.
[00:14:37] Leigh Balkom: Absolutely.
[00:14:39] 100%. And you just hit on so many things that I’m like, oh my gosh. Because you said obesity and diabetes, the U.S. has always been like, we’ve got something like three-quarters of all adults are overweight or obese.
[00:14:55] We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I love that you keep bringing the human element back into everything, right? Not only this conversation around your restaurant but also the supply chain. So I think that our eaters and diners and people that are passionate about organics may not connect to, wait, somebody is out in the field picking this stuff. And one of the reasons you don’t want to support conventional is because if they’re picking strawberries laced with methyl bromide, it’s hazardous to their health and the communities that live right near those farms, right?
[00:15:38] Leigh Balkom: The air they breathe, all this stuff. There’s a massive human element related to what’s going on, beyond just, I want to eat clean food, right? And it is figuring out ways to make sure people are connecting with the full reality of what’s going on. So I really wanted to thank you and appreciate that you bring that perspective to the conversation.
[00:16:04] Jesse Cool: I think what you just described is disconnect. They’re good people wanting to do good things, wanting to eat right, will sometimes say the same thing. Oh, I got a deal, or oh, it’s too much at the farmer’s market. And there are very few wealthy farmers or fisher people, very few. And until we really get into a place of artificial intelligence producing all our food, which I actually hope does not happen, then the new rhetoric, the new subject matter is not, where does the chicken come from? Where do the vegetables come from?
[00:16:57] That’s a story that’s important, but not as important as who are the people who are growing, processing, preparing, and serving us that food. Even in a grocery store, who is driving that food for delivery? What are they getting paid? Who is there preparing? There’s so many elements of people connection, and are we willing to pay them? And often they’re the people living on the fringe, and if they go away, then we are going to just be bringing food in from other parts of the world where they might be poisoning those people and they’re probably not paying them much, so the whole thing needs to be shifted.
[00:17:21] That’s not elitist, because those who have have to take care of those who don’t have.
[00:17:27] Leigh Balkom: Yeah.
[00:17:27] Jesse Cool: You can’t use the excuse, oh, organic’s just for the privileged.
[00:17:32] Leigh Balkom: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Jesse Cool: Go back 75 years when people in communities all over the world knew where their food came from, they respected the bread baker, they respected their neighbors, they respected the milkman, they respected those people. Somehow, we’ve got to go back and do that both in our own community, nationally, and globally.
[00:17:54] Leigh Balkom: Yes.
[00:17:55] Organic is a birthright, and healthy food is a birthright, and people don’t have access to healthy foods as a result of the way we’ve built this world that’s not exactly the way it should be.
[00:18:11] And we’ve got a lot of work to do, so that’s one of my passions and an ultimate mission with Healthy Anywhere.
[00:18:22] Jesse Cool: And again, another dilemma we have. Just spin back 75 years, 50 or 75 years when people used to cook. The challenge is that many people have lost the ability to not be afraid to cook, which is why I love teaching the class I’m doing.
[00:18:48] Truly, there are no recipes. It’s go to the farmer’s market, shop outside of the store, get fresh food at the farmer’s market. Cook with seven ingredients and don’t be afraid to fail. Olive oil, which is fat, vinegar, acid, lemon, salt, pepper, sugar, herbs, and spices. Put those on your counter.
[00:19:18] When you cook meat, when you make a vegetable, when you bake a potato, don’t just use them because learning to use salt and sugar and fat in the right way in cooking is the opposite of where it’s hidden, and people are afraid of it and go on crazy diets. So I think getting back to healthy cooking the way it used to be is also a really challenging, exciting part of the work I’m doing in my restaurant.
[00:19:40] So you feel good after you eat, or you allow yourself to junk out 20% of the time. And the other time you’re very conscious and conscientious. And it’s a message that’s just gotten a little lost and confused.
[00:19:44] Leigh Balkom: Absolutely. So where did this healthy consciousness and, like, you’re very mindful about health—where did that come from?
[00:19:58] Jesse Cool: I struggle like anyone else. I have a Jewish-Italian background. So food was both love and disruption.
[00:20:06] I had eating disorders because I’m not a tall, thin woman. I’ve always been voluptuous since childhood. I think I went from children’s sizes to Chubbies. I live to eat. I think about it all the time. It makes me happy. And that means I also have to figure out how to make it work.
[00:20:26] Diets didn’t work. I had to go through a lot of therapy. I’m willing to— I am Little Miss health food person. I had to go through therapy too and learn how to make sure that I live a solid, balanced life. That I move a lot, even at my age, I have to move equal to what I bring in.
[00:20:49] I make sure what I bring in has mostly no chemicals, no preservatives, that it’s just real ingredients. And every once in a while, I have a good time and I indulge. So I’m not uptight about it. But it takes time to realize that it’s not going to be controlled from the outside in—artificial low-fat foods, all that crap. So just balance. And yes, making sure to have fun too is important.
[00:21:27] Leigh Balkom: And how do you have fun? What are your favorite things to do for fun?
[00:21:31] Jesse Cool: Well, I’m a hiker, so I really like being outside. I don’t like going inside to the gym, so I hike and swim. I love to cook. I love to cook. I love to be with my family and my friends, and I love my restaurant. I like being there and being around the people and a sense of pride in what, again, Brian, as leadership, has done with a beautiful team. Maintaining the ethics of a 42-year-old restaurant is very humbling. I’m very grateful.
[00:22:02] Where did you find him?

[00:22:04] He came to dinner on his 21st birthday. He is classically trained and won all kinds of awards. He’s only, he’s in his mid-20s now. He came for his birthday with his parents.
[00:22:16] I was in search of someone new and someone who could really learn the ethics of the restaurant. Rather than keep hiring people who thought they knew what was going on at the restaurant or brought things that didn’t quite resonate, Brian came in and learned the history with me.
[00:22:34] And now he is able to use the core values to be creative himself. So he balances the history with the new and he completely embraces the core values of “the customer comes last.” Ha! He’s so into it.
[00:22:52] Leigh Balkom: How do you mean?
[00:22:54] Jesse Cool: Oh my god, he knows where all the food comes from. He reads every label.
[00:23:02] He went to a food event, some kind of big event introducing new ingredients, and the broker put his arm around him and said, “I’ll take you to all the organic booths. I’ll take you to all the ones that are creating food the way you want it to be.” He gets it.
[00:23:18] He purchases his own food that way. He feeds his own family. He’ll never turn back now. And he’s a team builder. He understands that the emotional well-being of the people who work in the restaurant is important.
[00:23:38] And that’s hard for a young person. I mean, there’s one guy working for us in San Francisco who has been there 28 years, and the bartender 15 years. And here’s this young person who’s now been there four years. He’s their leader. He had to really become an ageless soul and be truly intuitive about how to draw limits while ensuring he’s a really, really thoughtful leader—and he is.
[00:24:04] From beginning to end, and I hear it from everyone. And that doesn’t mean that he too doesn’t make mistakes with me.
[00:24:10] We all make mistakes. We all have to get up and figure it out and say, “I wish I had done it differently, but let’s try it again.”
[00:24:19] Leigh Balkom: How fortuitous that he came to dinner that night.
[00:24:22] Jesse Cool: But I don’t think it’s any different than any business that’s operating in a way that’s conscious and conscientious. The food industry, unfortunately, has not been built that way.
[00:24:42] We are reading a lot about chefs like Anthony Bourdain and so many people in this industry, especially after the Me Too movement, revealing that there were so many unhealthy practices in the food industry that shouldn’t have been there.
[00:24:53] Leigh Balkom: Ingrained, yeah.
[00:24:54] Jesse Cool: I believe that what we’ve come to is a great understanding of what’s important.
[00:25:00] To keep good practices in the food industry moving forward. We read so much about its demise right now. I get just tired of it. I want to say, “Call me, talk to me. Let me talk about this working because we want restaurants to exist.”
[00:25:20] We want people to come in and eat, and we want to go out and eat. But we also want the people from the very beginning to the table to be just as happy as the guest who’s enjoying delicious food. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
[00:25:35] Leigh Balkom: Glad to hear that.
[00:25:37] I know sourcing is very important. It’s been important from the beginning—seasonal, local, organic—but you’re also doing something unique.
[00:25:46] In hyper-local sourcing, where you’re growing a lot of the ingredients yourself, and you’ve got some great helpers. Could you talk about the garden that you’re maintaining?
[00:26:01] Jesse Cool: I come from a family that had gardens—my father did—and my uncle had a slaughterhouse. I grew up eating sweetbreads and tongue and all of it.
[00:26:09] My dad grew up gardening, and my children, my two boys, are incredible cooks. They’re not in the industry, but I’m so proud of them. And their gardening makes them so happy. My youngest son just sent me a text and said, “Mom, the garden started.” Nothing makes me happier.
[00:26:29] Though we have gardens at Flea Street and have since I opened in 1980, we’ve always had a garden. And we have a big garden in the back of my house with chickens. I’m right in the middle of Palo Alto, next to Stanford. We have beehives and our own honey.
[00:26:42] It’s on Stanford Open Space, where I also teach and collaborate with a nonprofit. As you mentioned, I’m so glad you know about the Rikers Center.
[00:26:55] But I think I’m not a big national person. I’m what everybody talks about—I am so into this community because this community has supported these core values since the mid-’70s.
[00:27:05] They’ve kept us alive. They’ve come back and embraced old-world values. There’s nothing new about what we’re doing, but this community, through the pandemic, was so unbelievably supportive.
[00:27:27] They came to the front door with money, knowing that we were still buying local food and keeping people employed.
[00:27:37] So, yes, we have gardens that bring “Taste of the Season.” Yes, we have people actually connecting. But I think it’s more that the restaurants are truly local.
[00:27:48] I’ve done a lot of traveling and work globally. The most important thing is right here, and everybody gets that.
[00:27:53] Leigh Balkom: Taste of the Season! Right!
[00:27:56] Jesse Cool: It’s my favorite course of the meal, besides the homemade biscuits that everybody loves. My dad was the first baker in the restaurant when we opened. My mom watered the plants. As a family, my kids had to work.
[00:28:08] Taste of the Season is whatever we get from our own garden or from a local farm. You get a little taste of it first—it’s our gift.
[00:28:18] Leigh Balkom: Oh, that’s beautiful.
[00:28:19] Jesse Cool: It’s not a soup sip. It’s not a little puff pastry. It’s not just a little bite. It’s little bits of whatever’s in season.
[00:28:28] Leigh Balkom: That’s great.
[00:28:30] Jesse, I know you’ve got family in town. You’ve got a lot of stuff to do, so I want to be mindful of your time. Is there something that we haven’t covered that you would want people to know?
[00:28:54] Jesse Cool: I think it would be that we really help one another understand the real cost of food.
[00:29:12] Again, where we live and on the planet. What goes into the food we eat? How do we make sure that health care includes that in their equation?
[00:30:13] Jesse, thank you for keeping it real. I would love to continue this conversation with you.
[00:30:41] Jesse Cool: I want to invite you to come to my restaurant, sit at the bar with me, or sit at a table, and we’ll drink and talk.
[00:31:12] Leigh Balkom: I will take you up on that.
[00:31:13] Jesse Cool: Thank you.
[00:31:14] All right, a beautiful day.
[00:31:15] Leigh Balkom: You too. Have a great visit with your family. I’ll talk to you later.