Sayings from Navy SEALs, furniture designers and Steve Martin are just a few examples of how restaurants use signs to motivate their staffs.
When the chef Niki Nakayama opened her kaiseki restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles in 2011, she asked herself, “What does this work mean for me and for our staff? What do I want them to feel when we’re doing our work?” Then she wrote the following words on a piece of paper: “Every day, better in every way. Everything is done with focus, heart, gratitude, love, care, purpose, intention, faith.”
Ms. Nakayama placed the paper by her workstation, hoping she’d subliminally absorb the words’ intent. Over time it was printed on the menu and, in 2019, after n/naka was awarded two Michelin stars, a friend of Ms. Nakayama and her wife, the restaurant’s sous chef Carole Iida-Nakayama, reprinted the mantra as a permanent sign. It now hangs in two places in the kitchen.
“It’s everywhere we go,” Ms. Nakayama said.
Restaurant kitchens across the country, and especially those in the fine dining world, display inspirational quotes and slogans for their staffs to see and, hopefully, take to heart as they grind out service day after day. Some read like a meditation; others, a rousing locker room chant.
The popular TV show “The Bear” helped thrust this behind-the-scenes practice into the spotlight. The “Every Second Counts” sign that first appears in season 2 is directly inspired by the “Sense of Urgency” sign, meant to invoke focus, organization and expediency, that hangs in the restaurants of the chef Thomas Keller — not least because both hang near clocks. (The show’s creator, Christopher Storer, directed a short documentary film by the same name about Mr. Keller in 2013.)
Mr. Keller isn’t the only high-profile chef to post a mantra that might’ve caught on with generations of industry workers. When the chef Daniel Humm moved from Switzerland to San Francisco in 2003 to work as executive chef at Campton Place without knowing much English, he would say “make it nice” to connect with his team and to express what he needed, said a spokeswoman for his restaurant Eleven Madison Park in an email. It would become his mantra and the name of the company that operates the restaurant. More recently, Mr. Humm tacked on a second mantra: Make it matter.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.