When I spoke with Nicolai Nørregaard, he was the chef behind Kadeau Copenhagen and Kadeau Bornholm in Denmark, a Michelin-starred kitchen with a second home on the island of Bornholm.
Nørregaard speaks to one subject in the book, the culture of the team, and he names it in language I have not seen a leadership manual improve on. The word underpinning the philosophy at Kadeau, he told me, is family. The kitchen has always treated its staff as family and works hard to build an environment in which people feel comfortable and secure. He was explicit about the boundary that makes this possible.
“We’ve always viewed our staff as family, and work hard to create an environment where our employees feel comfortable and secure. It’s vital that staff love their work. There is no shouting or bullying. It is simply not accepted.” Nicolai Nørregaard, chef, Kadeau
Three things in that paragraph stayed with me. The first is the prohibition. No shouting or bullying is a kitchen rule at Kadeau, treated on the same plane as a sanitation standard, and it is stated as a rule rather than as a value. The second is that the team’s emotional security is framed as operationally necessary. Nørregaard did not present it to me as a kindness. He presented it as the condition under which the work gets done well. The third is the cadence of the practice. Every summer, he told me, Kadeau Copenhagen closes and the whole staff moves to Bornholm to work the high season there. Everyone lives together in a farmhouse. The team that has spent three months on an island cooking together for a regional clientele has built the kind of bond that no off site exercise can manufacture. In my reading, the farmhouse is the practice, and the restaurant’s reputation has been earned there as much as in the Copenhagen kitchen.
“The key word underpinning our philosophy at Kadeau is family.” Nicolai Nørregaard, chef, Kadeau
In the book, Nicolai Nørregaard appears in Chapter 4, First the Team, where his account of Kadeau as a family, the rule against shouting, and the summer on Bornholm form part of the argument that the team’s security comes before the guest experience and produces it.