Training & Development

From the Front to the Back of the House and up to Management

Chef Ali flambaying

– Ali A. Gonzalez

"Everybody brings something to the Table."

Chef Ali Training Back of House Staff

Operation Team Building

Grow A More Effective Team

Sustainable Culinary Solutions offers several culinary team-building programs, for groups of all sizes (and budgets), that can help foster better communication, intrapersonal skills, and leadership.

Our programs can also serve to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, or other milestone events, or simply as a unique way to recognize group efforts and successes.

Pick from any of our interactive culinary seminars, or let our team create a custom program to meet your goals and objectives. Group sizes typically range from 6-20 people, with scheduling based on your calendar (mornings, afternoons, or evenings available).

Concept development & innovation

Harness the power of the leading food consultants with SCS.

Predict trends, innovate your ideas, and find new customers with astounding ease.

Ali Gonzalez
Chefs focused on plating

Culinary Development Courses

Want to learn essential skills, methods as well as a foundation for your food service operation?

There is a growing need for food service professionals with compliance management skills to ensure food safety. Our courses will cover public health, food code and nutrition, and more to help your team get better equipped with culinary skills. 

Or maybe you just need a refresher on knife skills, cooking vegetables, or how to properly cook and hold proteins. We offer all sorts of culinary training programs customized to fit your schedules and team members. 

Front of House Development

The Key Between Your Kitchen And Customers

Whether you’re just starting a restaurant, or you’ve been around a long while, it’s always good to take a look at the front of your house and evaluate its effectiveness.

If your restaurant doesn’t have good customer service, your success may be limited. A key to your success is training your front-of-house staff to provide excellent customer service.

Not everyone is cut out to work in a restaurant, most especially in the front of the house. Your wait staff must be quick-thinking, creative, organized, friendly, able to multitask, and able to handle complaints with grace.

A waiter smiling with a rustic salad of prosciutto, roquette and rusk

An Experience With Chef Ali

fr8man01

Customer at Ledges Restaurant at The White Mountain Hotel

Chef Ali Gonzalez is AMAZiNG; Anthony Bourdain (RIP), eat your heart out!!! We've dined extensively, including abroad. Best restaurant in NH---LIKELY!!! Lexi's service is stellar. Restaurant is GF/GFM accommodating. Ledges is truly NOT to be missed!!! Chef's specials are creative, sustainable, and frankly, incredibly delicious!

A young waitress serving a elegant cocktail and pasta

Customer Service

Handling Good and Bad Situations

The goal of your host, hostess, bartender, waiter, and waitress is to provide your customers with the best possible experience so that they want to come back again and again.

The front-of-house staff is your liaison or intermediary between the kitchen and your customers.

Train these folks in the art of customer service so they have the skills necessary to handle happy customers, unhappy customers, a dinnertime rush, and slow times. This leads to returning customers and new customers which leads to growing your revenue. SCS assists in team training to meet all of these requirements with check-lists, webinars, and empowering coachable mentoring.

Health & Wellness

Plant Based and Vegetarian

Growing consciousness for health and wellness among American customers has been driving rapid changes in the food business. 93% of consumers want to eat healthy at least some of the time, with 63% trying to eat healthy most or all of the time. Health-oriented food primarily includes fresh, natural, additive-free, and sustainably produced food.

People are increasingly choosing restaurants that offer more than just good food. There has to be a fine balance of taste, authenticity, health, and transparency.

So Sustainable Culinary Solutions has the staff and training to help you balance your offerings to meet the current demand and trends.

A chef preparing a vegetarian dish
A chef caring for her ingredients

Sustainability & Food Ethics

The food choices of both humans and animals have consequences.

Ethical eating or food ethics refers to the moral consequences of food choices, both those made by humans and animals.

Common concerns are damage to the environment, exploitive labor practices, food shortages for others, inhumane treatment of food animals, and the unintended effects of food policy.

Our programs engage your team with food, menu, and business solutions that address environmental imperatives and embrace the accelerating interest—particularly among younger generations—in food ethics and values.

Hospitality Management

Putting Principles into Practice

Management is a key aspect of a successful business operation. Cooperation among existing employees and new hires is crucial to building company culture, as well as helping establish meaningful connections with clients. Front-of-house & Kitchen management helps to ensure the quality of production, track costs and profit, keep all workers on the same page, and allow daily work to flow smoothly.

Communication and understanding are so necessary for having a well-managed environment. By following individualized training and learning, inventory, safety, productivity, cleanliness, profit, and success will be at the forefront of your kitchen and business. We will show you all the resources to manage your kitchen are within your staff.

Front of house collaboration

Yesenia Gil

Chef

"I worked for Chef Ali for a little more than three years and it was a life-changing experience...

I began working at a corporate dining café with no previous experience. Since day one I was amazed by everything that was happening there and having Chef Ali nearby was always more interesting because he was watching even when he wasn't.

Chef Ali was always inspiring me to do better. If I were marinating a chicken with rosemary, he would ask, ‘Have you tried using rosemary, thyme, fresh ground pepper, and freshly-squeezed lemon juice?’ He would always add ideas that would inspire me to do better and go that extra mile because after all, his favorite saying is, ‘We don't only serve food. We make the food that we serve, and it is our loyal responsibility to the guests that trusted us to prepare their meals, leave this place talking about their experience here in a positive way. It is our name that goes behind every dish that leaves our kitchen’.

His experiences and his willingness to help others to do better and grow say more about him than words ever will."

The Sustainable Restaurant Plan

Still Planning?

The Sustainable Restaurant Plan

You can get started with my book which reveals how to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and maximize profits.

Latest Trends

Culinary Excellence

Ali A Gonzalez Seal of Recognition for Outstanding Leadership Award at the Food 2.0 Conference

We share topics ranging from world cuisines and cooking trends to the latest in wellness, sustainability, and food ethics.