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228 | Crafting a Thriving Kitchen Culture: The Art of Culinary Leadership
Episode 228 • 11th March 2025 • Chef Life Radio: Empowering Culinary Leaders • Adam M Lamb
00:00:00 00:18:37

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Are you caught in the daily grind of managing your kitchen, constantly putting out fires and wondering if you're truly making an impact? It's time to shift gears and embrace the power of leadership.

"Kitchens run on systems, but thrive on leadership." - Adam Lamb

From Manager to Leader: Transforming Your Kitchen Culture

  • Create a compelling vision that inspires your team
  • Foster a proactive environment that anticipates challenges
  • Build trust and autonomy among your staff
  • Cultivate long-term growth and development in your kitchen

The Hidden Costs of Pure Management

  • Increased stress and burnout
  • High staff turnover and its financial impact
  • Stifled creativity and lack of ownership
  • The trap of reactive versus proactive culture

Practical Strategies for Culinary Leadership

  • Clarifying your vision and communicating it effectively
  • Shifting from controlling to empowering your team
  • Leading with emotional intelligence
  • Providing growth opportunities and modeling accountability

Your Leadership Journey Starts Now

This episode offers a blueprint for becoming a leader worth following. You'll gain insights on:

  • Identifying areas to implement leadership in your daily operations
  • Scheduling regular check-ins for individual growth and feedback
  • Adjusting your leadership style to team dynamics

Remember, leadership is not a title—it's a practice. It's about showing up consistently, intentionally, and being present for your team.

Are you ready to transform your kitchen from a place of chaos to a thriving, inspired environment?

Tune in to discover how you can lead from the heart and create a culinary team that doesn't just survive, but truly excels.

Stay Tall & Frosty

Adam

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Transcripts

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Hey, chef, welcome back to the show.

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Ever wonder why your kitchen feels stuck in chaos despite your best efforts?

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Do you constantly question if you're truly making an impact

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or just putting out daily fires?

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Are you struggling to get your team inspired and engaged

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beyond just following orders?

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In today's episode, we're gonna dive deep into the difference

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between leading and managing.

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You'll discover actionable insights on how to step up as

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a true leader in your kitchen.

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Inspiring your team, boosting morale, and creating a thriving kitchen culture.

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We'll get to that and a whole lot more right after this message.

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Welcome to Chef Life Radio, the podcast dedicated to helping chefs and culinary

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leaders take control of their kitchens, build resilient teams, and create

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a thriving career in hospitality.

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I'm Chef Adam Lamb, your host, leadership coach, and industry veteran.

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If you're tired of high turnover.

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Burnout and the daily grind, you're not alone.

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This podcast is here to give you the real strategies, insights, and tools you

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need to lead with confidence, build a culture of excellence and craft a kitchen

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that works for you, not against you.

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Because the best kitchens don't just survive, they thrive.

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Hit that subscribe button and let's get started.

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Welcome back.

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I just wanna start out by saying that leadership and management

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are both crucial elements.

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Of your kitchen.

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Problem is, is that a lot of great chefs just manage their environment

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without leading their environment.

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One without the other is failure.

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Leadership and management, while often used interchangeably in the

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kitchen, serve distinct purposes.

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Understanding that difference is crucial for fostering a kitchen that operates

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with efficiency and inspires growth.

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Leadership is visionary leaders set the tone for the kitchen by creating a

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vision that extends beyond daily service.

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They establish core values, nurture culture, and inspire their

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teams to strive for excellence.

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If you're still unclear, let me break it down this way.

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A manager writes the schedule.

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A leader spends an hour creating a succession plan for his

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kitchen over the next six months.

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Now you're probably wondering to yourself, how the hell am I supposed to do that

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when every day I am putting out fires?

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Well.

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Let's get to it.

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Management is, operational managers focus on immediate execution,

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ensuring food orders are completed.

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Service run smoothly and schedules are adhered to.

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That's a function of process.

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Leadership is proactive.

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Leaders anticipate challenges before they arise.

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Fostering an environment where growth and learning are continuous.

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Management is reactive.

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Managers respond to problems as they occur, addressing issues

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rather than preventing them.

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Leaders inspire, managers instruct.

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A leader builds trust and autonomy among their team.

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While a manager ensures efficiency by giving clear structured

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direction, leaders cultivate growth.

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Effective leadership involves mentoring and developing team members for long-term

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success, whereas management ensures that each shift runs smoothly, all the

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stations are covered, everybody's in their place, and now it's time to jam.

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Understanding this distinction allows culinary professionals to

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strike a balance, a blending strong operational management with visionary

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leadership to create a thriving, empowered kitchen environment, as

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my buddy Greg Barnhill would say.

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Yeah, that's just a lot of words.

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So let me break it down.

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Leadership, visionary, inspiring, proactive, focused on long-term

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growth and team development.

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Management is task oriented, reactive, focused on short-term operations

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and immediate problem solving.

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Now you probably already see in your day-to-day how those two points converge

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and when those moments are that you're truly leading, and when you're actually

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managing and when you're in the shit, it's very, very difficult to lead.

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All we're doing is trying to manage the environment.

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All we're trying to do is managing declining resources, labor product.

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Many chefs think that managing means being control of all times,

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but true leadership requires trust, delegation, and empowerment.

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And it's the only thing that is actually gonna set your kitchen up for success.

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Building leaders within.

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So you don't have to do every goddamn thing yourself, regardless

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if you think you're the only one that ever does it correctly.

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You'll always be in that trap until you learn to trust your people, coach

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and mentor them such that you don't have to do that every single time.

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And I get it.

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It feels good to get shit done, especially when the environment is so

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hectic and all you're trying to do is see away from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM or

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00 PM or whatever that looks like.

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But if you're not carving out time to do leadership functions,

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you'll always be putting out fires.

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I was once asked to do operational assessment on a retirement community,

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so I spent seven days, talked to all the cooks, talked to all the management,

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talked to the residents in order so I could get a clear vision of what

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was happening from a 10,000 foot view, and then a very granular view.

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I. What I came to understand after I gathered all the data, all the interviews,

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and sat quietly to digest all of this, is that the kitchen was being run

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like a Chinese fire drill every day.

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Every day they were understaffed.

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Every day they were running from task to task.

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There was just barely enough time to get the food out and maintained that food

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until such time as service broke down.

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While I could understand that some of the staff thought that was exciting and

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made every day something to experience, I understood that it was incredibly

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unsustainable to continue to operate that way because there were needs of

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the associates that were going unmet.

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And when I talked to the associates, what became apparent was even

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though the staff was unhappy.

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They had been coached not to go to hr. Listen, we do all our laundry in-house,

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so therefore they would go to the chef, they would go to the dining director,

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and they would promise that things would get better and they would fix it,

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although they would never be empowered enough to change what was going on.

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So consequently what happened is the associates felt like they

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were unable to change anything.

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They couldn't speak to anybody, and they felt trapped in their jobs.

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Again, incredibly unsustainable, and it pointed to the leadership

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in the kitchen for the fact that nobody was actually leading.

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All they were doing was managing the day to day.

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And as I said before, it's incredibly unsustainable and

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these people were getting fried.

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As a matter of fact, talking to them, very few of them would

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actually look me in the eye.

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They just looked down at the ground as if they had already been beaten.

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It was a tough assessment to write, but the only way that I knew how to

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get it through to leadership was that.

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This particular leadership team in the kitchen were squandering their human

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capital based on short term financial goals, day-to-day, week to week,

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month to month, quarter to quarter.

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And after a while this stuff builds up and it creates quite a toxic environment.

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Turns out after I turned in the assessment, the chef texted me, he

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said, ha ha, just quit after 13 years.

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The next day I got a text from the chef saying, Hey, by the

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way, uh, I just put my notice in.

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See you later.

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And a couple hours later I got a call from the operations manager and they asked me

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to kind of bridge their search from chef to chef, but it was a reclamation project.

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I mean, building these people back up so they had a sense of self, so

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they had a sense of mission, they had a sense of vision because if

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it's just coming in every day just to be a machine and and crap through

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the day, that'll burn anybody out.

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Can you relate to this?

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Does it sound like an experience that you've had in your career?

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Yeah, I'll bet it does.

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Here's a question that can help you get back on track.

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Think about your day to day.

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Are you directing traffic or are you guiding the journey?

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Because one, you're just managing the other.

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You're truly leading the cost of just managing.

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When leadership is absent and management is purely reactive,

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kitchens become environments of stress, inefficiency, and instability.

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Instead of fostering a team that grows and thrives.

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If this lands with you at all and all of a sudden you're feeling kind of

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shitty inside because you're trying to figure out how you bridge the gap

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between managing and leading, I gotta let you know it's not your fault.

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Nobody teaches leadership in culinary school.

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That's why I do what I do.

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That's why this podcast exists, so that I can impart you the things that I've

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had to learn the hard way, such that you can actually use that of leverage

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in becoming a truly successful chef.

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Alright.

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Increase stress and burnout.

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Without strong leadership guiding the team, stress levels rise for everybody.

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A reactive kitchen culture means constantly problem solving on

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the fly without clear direction.

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This wears down both chefs and staff leading to emotional and physical burnout.

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The inevitable consequence is high staff turnover.

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Employees wanna feel valued, challenged, and part of something

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bigger than just executing orders.

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Remember what that felt like in the grind.

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Feeling like a machine.

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I wanna feel like an interchangeable part.

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I wanna feel like an essential contributor to the kitchen.

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Success without that leads to high turnover, which disrupts the

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kitchen operations and increases recruitment and training costs.

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How many more times are we gonna have to train on the pantry?

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There's a crazy statistic about 90 days they've figured out that.

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70% of employees will leave for the first 90 days.

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If you can make it to 90 days, it's like an 80% chance that that, uh, staff member

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is gonna be there at the end of the year.

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So my question is, what the hell is happening within those first 90 days

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that people feel completely disconnected, depressed, and not supported?

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What's going on in those first 90 days that we can't give them the support

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they need to make it to the 90?

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Is it on them or is it on us?

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And the unfortunate thing is that there are very few organizations that will

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actually plan from a p and l perspective and set money aside for turnover

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ratio and training for associates.

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It costs about $4,000 per person right now in the United States

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to replace an hourly $4,000.

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I don't know how many places are not factoring that in to the turnover

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rate of their operation such that they can actually afford to do that.

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And let's face it, if you're training well and you're inspiring

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people, that money goes right to the bottom line, saved bonus, bam.

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But that's the difference between just managing and leading

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another cost.

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All of a sudden, everybody's got a case of the fuck it.

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Now, it starts creating a lack of creativity and ownership.

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A kitchen that relies solely on reactive management often stifles innovation.

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Everybody gets a case of the fuck it.

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Team members become hesitant to take initiative or propose new ideas because

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they don't feel supported or empowered.

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The result is a stagnant kitchen culture that struggles to evolve and approve.

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A reactive versus proactive culture manages reactive problems as they

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occur constantly in crisis mode, while leaders take proactive steps

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to prevent issues before they arise.

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Five minute one-on-ones, making sure that you're sitting down with your staff.

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Morning standups.

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Those are all small acts that show your team that you care.

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A lack of foresight leads to inefficient workflows, repeated mistakes in a

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kitchen environment where stress is the default state of a controlled challenge.

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Kitchens don't thrive on reaction alone.

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They thrive on leadership that sets the course, empowers its

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team, and builds for the long term.

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Kitchens run on systems, but thrive on leadership.

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I was a chef of a high volume seafood restaurant in Fort

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Lauderdale down on the Intercoastal.

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And there were a lot of management principles, especially when you're

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dealing with say, 23 different types of fresh fish that come in four days a week.

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First four hours of your day are spent in the cooler with a jacket on cut and fish.

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And we measured everything down to the scrap so that we could make sure that,

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uh, managing our products was efficient.

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'cause the margins on that stuff are really thin and.

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Labor was managed in a similar way, south Florida, your busy time is, uh,

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typically wintertime in any other states.

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Summertime down there is when things get slow, so because the.

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The way the staffing guide was set up, it was based on covers.

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So we had this core group of guys and ladies who would be there through

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thick and thin, and we'd have to augment staff it during season.

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But we were just kind of like floating along from day to day to day just

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trying to make the numbers work until I realized, listen, I gotta get everybody

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together so that they understand what's gonna happen in the next six months.

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And once I started becoming more vocal about what are.

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About what our forecast and what our vision was for the next six months.

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All of a sudden I could see these people relax because they got out of

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wondering whether or not they were gonna be let go or, or laid off as

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well, and to understand that they had a part to play and the bigger

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mission when we started bringing in.

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Uh, seasonal staff, these folks were gonna hold it down and make

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sure that everything was right.

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So they had a sense of mission beyond just the day to day.

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And once I started doing that on a regular basis, that kitchen started really hum.

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Especially when you're doing 700, a thousand covers a night, 350 early birds.

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If that team's not tight, forget it.

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It falls apart really quickly.

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How to become a leader worth following.

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Alright, I'm gonna give you some practical strategies for

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transitioning from management.

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To leadership.

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First thing is you wanna clarify your vision.

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Leadership begins with an understanding of what kind of

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kitchen culture you wanna build.

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Clearly, define your values, set your expectations, and communicate your

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vision consistently to your team.

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Shift from controlling to empowering Managers oversee every detail,

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but leaders cultivate autonomy.

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Delegation isn't about offloading work.

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It's about giving team members a sense of responsibility and ownership.

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They will fly with that.

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They will actually blossom and become more than what you thought they would be.

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Lead with emotional intelligence.

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The best leaders recognize that relationships are key

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to effective leadership.

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This means actively listening to your team.

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Managing your emotions under pressure and adapting your approach

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to fit different personalities, provide growth opportunities.

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Leaders create opportunities for their team to develop in advance.

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This could be teaching a new skill, encouraging cross training, or

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simply having open conversations about people's career aspirations.

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My favorite question to ask is, okay, you got this job.

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I want to know what job you want to get, and let's start

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working on those skills now.

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Model accountability.

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If you want a culture of accountability, you have to lead by example.

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You gotta hold yourself to high standards.

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Admit when you make mistakes and show your team that growth is a continuous process.

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It's about being transparent and vulnerable in front of them so they

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see you as a human being so that they can start understanding that

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you're viewing them as a human being.

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Develop a feedback culture.

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Instead of only providing instructions, encourage open feedback loops.

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When team members feel heard, they're more engaged and motivated to contribute

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to a thriving kitchen environment.

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That's why those standup meetings are so crucial, not only as an opportunity,

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10 minutes, five minutes for you to disseminate information of what those

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folks can anticipate or look forward to in the shift, but also what's going on

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in the week, the weekend, what they can look forward to in the next 90 days.

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Give an opportunity for folks to actually open up and talk about

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what's working for them and what's not working for them in the group.

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And let's face it, the only reason why you wouldn't ask a question is

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because you were afraid of the answer.

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And as long as you're afraid of the answer, there's no opportunity

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for growth for you or the team.

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Great leadership is about more than managing tasks.

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It's about inspiring people to rise to their potential.

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Okay, I wanna give you some action steps.

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Clarify your vision.

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Empower through trust and delegation.

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Model the right behavior, develop your people.

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Okay.

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Identify one area in your daily operations where you could move from managing

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to truly leading schedule, regular one-on-one check-ins to discuss individual

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growth, feedback, and team culture.

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Clearly communicate your expectations and vision for the team this week.

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Observe your team dynamics and adjust your leadership style accordingly.

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Leadership is not a title, it's a practice.

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It's about showing up daily, consistently, intentionally, and

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being present to your team members.

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If there's an issue.

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If they've got a problem, you gotta act like there's nothing else going on

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in your world and be there with them.

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Over with them, not with you.

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With them, be with them.

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Give them your full attention, and you'll be surprised at what kind of

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emotional payback is available for you.

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If today's episode resonated with you, I challenge you to ask

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yourself, honestly, am I managing the kitchen or am I leading my team?

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Remember, change starts with awareness.

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Take a moment today to reflect and take one small step towards becoming a leader.

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Worth following.

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You can.

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You got this, and if you fail, it's an opportunity to try something new.

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It's all about iteration, iteration, iteration.

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Don't give up because you can become a successful chef.

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Until next time, stay tall and frosty and keep leading from the heart.

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That's a wrap for today's episode of Chef Life Radio.

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If this resonated with you, do me a favor, subscribe, share, and leave a review.

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Your feedback helps us reach more culinary leaders like you who are ready

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to take their kitchens to the next level.

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Want more connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or join our Chef

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Life Radio community for exclusive insights and leadership tools.

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Remember, leadership isn't about perfection.

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It's about progress.

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So take what you've learned today and apply it in your kitchen,

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your team, and your life.

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Chef Life Radio is more than just a podcast, it's a movement.

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The focus is no longer just on career survival, but on transforming leadership,

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creating sustainability, and ensuring chefs can build kitchens that thrive.

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Remember, the secret ingredient to culinary success isn't just in

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the food, it's in the leadership.

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Keep learning, keep growing, and as always.

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Lead with the heart.

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See you next time.

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