The Culture Shift in Hospitality

Today Le Vin Papillon, a Montreal institution since 2013, is fully staffed and thriving. It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago its doors were closed and its staff at home, uncertain of their future. 

It was a baptism by fire for managers Jeanne Seguin and Florence Fortin-Houle, who had just started in the position a couple of months before lockdowns and curfews began. 

Many restaurants, especially small independent restaurants, were forced to reevaluate their operations and priorities—and make a choice to adapt or die.

It’s unnecessary to say these were hard times for restaurants. But while the lessons we learned from this period were painful, they were also invaluable. We spoke to Jeanne and Florence about how the pandemic has permanently changed restaurant culture.

In Montreal, just as elsewhere, the restaurant industry is predisposed to a “suffering as a virtue” mindset, one in which struggle and hardship are viewed as a noble and inherent part of the business. 

In this particular mindset, working long hours—often in grueling conditions and for little compensation—is proof of one’s passion and dedication. “Making it” means making sacrifices to do what you love. 

“For a very long time, restaurants were kind of taking pride in this “non-business business” way of operating,” says Jeanne. “Like, ‘oh, we don’t know how much we sell, we don’t care how much we sell, we’re hospitality, this is what we do and we do it because we’re passionate, money doesn’t matter.’

“People would waste money on things that they wouldn’t count or wouldn’t calculate. It got to a point where restaurants were making an average profit margin of 2% over a whole year. It made no sense.”

It was a classic case of starving artist syndrome. But as Le Vin Papillon and other independent restaurants have realized, the starving artist fantasy is incompatible with running a successful, sustainable business. 

Because while passion is the heartbeat of the industry, it must be balanced with business savvy and meticulous oversight. Especially in an industry where profit margins were razor-thin before inflation triggered by the pandemic sent food costs through the roof. 

“There’s been a huge shift in the past few years,” says Florence. “COVID made people realize that you need to know how much you’re spending. You need to have some money aside—you know, in case something happens.” 

“Of course, the big chains have been doing that forever,” jokes Jeanne. “But smaller restaurants, it’s like a bunch of pirates that just want to party and do their own thing.”

“I think successful restaurants have had to push aside a little bit of that dream land of what a restaurant can be and think of it more like, you know, you have families to feed, you have projects to push and you want to become the best version of yourself. And that comes with being financially healthy.” — Jeanne Seguin, Manager, Le Vin Papillon

Another industry issue that was brought to its boiling point during the pandemic was restaurant working conditions and staffing challenges. 

With its reputation for long, punitive hours, the industry was already struggling to hire and retain enough employees—particularly younger workers with fundamentally different values and expectations. 

This was before the coronavirus forced restaurants to close and caused millions of restaurant workers to lose their jobs within a matter of days. Many of those workers would never return; others, like Jeanne and Florence, would come to the profound realization that hospitality was where they belonged.

“COVID showed a lot of us industry professionals that we wouldn’t be doing something else if given the choice. Those of us who stayed, we stayed because we felt like this is what we were meant to do.” — Jeanne Seguin, Manager, Le Vin Papillon

With a tighter-than-ever labor pool, restaurants had to reexamine their culture and worker compensation to keep staff happy and showing up to work. 

“This industry has done a lot of work in the past five years,” says Jeanne. “As an industry, we started with being the worst of the worst in terms of treating people. We worked hard [to get on par with] other industries. Hopefully in five years we’ll be better than them.”

“At the end of the day, our job is a profession,” adds Florence. “And if you take it seriously, you can make a path for it to become something real that you can do with your life.”

Le Vin Papillon is part of the Joe Beef Group. Joe Beef’s multilocation business is powered by Lightspeed.

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