Food for Thought #5 — Matthew James Duffy: Professor, Chef, Baker
TGIF everybody and welcome back to F4T!! Thanks for following along and tuning in ❤ You’re in for a real treat — today’s interviewee is an incredibly accomplished, smart, versatile industry leader (THANK YOU FOR CONTRIBUTING, MATT DUFFY!!!!) but before we jump into his short and sweet wisdoms, let your girl entertain you with a thought:
For a few weeks now, I’ve been conflicted about writing ‘TGIF’ in my greeting because Fridays hold a totally different connotation for hospitality workers as they gear up for their weekend shifts. “What’s a parallel to TGIF?” I thought. Technically, any last day of a work week but... there’s no perfect parallel to that feeling of a Friday or a Sunday morning that we can all vividly envision no matter what industry we’re in, after all, we spend two decades of our formative years in school on a socially constructed Monday to Friday, 9 to 5-ish schedule! While some jobs allow us to continue living it (which makes life easier to coordinate socially) others don’t but ultimately there are social rituals that bind us all to that standard and it’s deeply felt; by parents working in hospitality when their time at home doesn’t coincide with their kids’ or by regular adults when they miss holidays and milestones with friends and family because that’s when work is busiest. Currently, these aspects of the industry simply ‘come with the job’ but how could we as a society adapt to support our hospitality workers better?
Today, we have Matthew James Duffy talking about the hospitality industry — a veteran who’s entire list of adventures and qualifications would take me too long to list but they’re too good so here’s a few. He’s cooked and baked bread and pastry at high-end restaurants around the world from Japan to Europe, New York to Vancouver. He’s worked as private chef to Oprah and Stephen Curry to name a modest few. He’s food styled for Master Chef Canada and one of Canada’s favourites, Matty Matheson. He’s baked bread for CSA’s and farmers markets around Toronto, has a micro-bakery business which he runs with his at-home flour mill, generously spreads sourdough cheer and techniques over social media and is a professor and program coordinator at Centennial College where he’s helped innovate the bread baking program…. nuff said. Enjoy the interview!
A.V: Based on your broad experience, what change(s) would you like to see in the hospitality industry for the next generation of workers to be happy and healthy long term?
M.J.D: A change in hours and pressure. I recently heard Blackbird [bakery] is doing a 4 X 10 hour work week that I think is a great way to prolong the desire of young bakers to stay in the industry. Working 4 10/12 hour days gives employees a real rest period. When I was working 5–6 days 15–17 hours a day I often spent my first day off sleeping and my second doing laundry/errands. With 4 days it would really allow employees to have some personal development on top of a proper rest.
A.V: As a parent, professor and food industry leader, can you talk a little about your thoughts on what you’d like to see from food education programs and meals administered in daycares, elementary and high schools and what are some steps you think need to be taken to get schools to that better standard?
M.J.D: I really want to see the continued push towards supporting local and providing real food to students/kids. Healthy food with real ingredients and teaching kids about what food is. How to cook it, where it comes from and how to prepare it. I know some schools have gardens that they use to teach kids with and it would be great to see more of these.
A.V: In your (idealistic) opinion, what do you think would be the best change that could come from this current pivotal period for the restaurant and/or food industry?
M.J.D: I hope that people start to understand the costs of real food. For example, sourdough bread is difficult to make and takes a long time from start to finish yet people think of it as a cheap product. With more people learning about food and ingredients it would be nice to see prices that can provide fair wages to farmers, cooks and bakers.
A.V: If you had to give readers one call to action pertaining to the food industry, what would it be? Give some advice on how to follow through with the action.
M.J.D: I’d love to see readers connecting with their farmers and food suppliers. A lot of farmers now have online order options/stores and it would be great to see more people signing up for CSA’s and weekly food boxes. Joyful Organics for example has a great offer with their CSA box.
Thank you, Matt, your message is simple and ACTIONABLE — our city is surrounded by farms producing organics sustainably and CSA’s are reclaiming how grocery shopping is done so I’m glad you brought them up! If you enjoyed my weird sociological angle earlier, you’ll be happy to hear that in the future I plan on exploring it more in combination with food education and industry questions to draw out correlations between that and how we value workers and approach careers in our food industry SO STAY TUNED. Lastly, I want to remind you that #Changehospitality and a healthy food industry depend on dignifying the workers; paying them fairly and consistently with rising costs of living, treating them respectfully as customers and employers, providing them with mental and physical health benefits... it all falls under, as Matt said, “understand[ing] the costs of real food”.
Eat well, be well, friends! If you enjoyed this, follow me on instagram to read more of my thoughts @innovativechef & till next week ❤
Photo courtesy of M.J.D
