I've watched Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and his US show, Kitchen Nightmares, for quite a long while. Unlike a majority of the internet, who like watching Gordon because of his tendency to yell at chefs and restaurant owners, I like watching the transformation from a poorly managed restaurant into a well-oiled machine that can truly stand its own in the local market. There's something absolutely spectacular about seeing people confront their own arrogance, their complacency, and their own timidness to then rise above it and become stronger, well-adjusted individuals for it that is showcased well within the show.
For those who may not be familiar with the show, world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay goes to restaurants whose owners wrote in to the show, asking for Ramsay's help to turn around their restaurant. The common theme amongst these owners is that they are in denial of why customers refuse to eat at their restaurant or are dissatisfied with their dinner service. The only variations are if the owners are overly-confident in their restaurant's ambience and food or if they've become willingly ignorant of how their mismanagement has taken its toll on their business.
Gordon then comes in, meets with the owners and staff, tastes some of the restaurant's dishes, and then watches the restaurant perform a dinner service before giving the owners, the chef, and other staff members a rundown of what all is wrong with the restaurant. He also takes a look at the state of the kitchen and the food storages before confronting everyone beforehand, to give them a better idea of why their services aren't up to par. He then lays out a plan as to how to implement changes in the restaurant, which includes changes in the menu, getting the kitchen fresh food, and sometimes he'll provide the restaurant with newer equipment and an overhaul of the aesthetics of the establishment. More often than not, the owners and staff take these changes well and they see a substantial boost in their business' revenue.
Something that has never ceased to appall me is how all of these restaurants, especially in the United States, get away with having their kitchen in such dire straits without a health inspector coming to shut them down. For the restaurants that opened up within a year of being showcased on the show, that may be fairly easy to explain. According to studies done by Perry Group International and The Restaurant Brokers, most restaurants end up shutting down within a year of opening. In the US, health inspectors check in on restaurants every six months, though this changes if you have a public establishment and are subject to surprise inspections from anywhere between 6 weeks to 3 months.
Given that these are all private establishments, owned by independent owners, the chances are that they are looked over by Public Health or are given enough notice to clean up beforehand. Of course, if a customer complains to the health department, then they are more likely to show up and inspect the restaurant unannounced. However, we see that the restaurants featured on these shows, some of them having survived for decades, have gotten away with their poor practices and continued to serve sub-par food out of complacency.
Is this a sign of their being a major oversight in the regulation of restaurants? I'd argue that it's exactly the opposite, that this is a sign of restaurant owners and staff gaming the system and trying to make a quick buck wherever they can. For example, instead of regularly buying fresh ingredients and storing them properly, they'll resort to making large batches of foodstuff and then freezing it to then reheat (some even do it via microwave). They'll even stoop so low as to flash-freezing foods ahead of time, like pork, beef, fish, etc., which could potentially cause the consumer to get food poisoning when reheated and served.
There's also the infamous episode of Amy's Baking Company, where the owners, Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, openly harassed their workers and prevented them from receiving any tips out of spite. People had been aware of the couple's antics for years and received an even clearer view of it after the episode aired in 2013. Yet there weren't any formal criminal charges that stuck to them on these accounts, although Amy was previously busted for identity fraud (stole someone's SSN) and Samy for drug charges and intimidation charges overseas, which resulted in his being banned from France and Germany. When the government failed to act, their local community and the online community took to ostracizing them to the point where the restaurant shut down in 2015, although the couple adamantly denies it.
The takeaway I'd like for you, the reader, to get from this article and from the show is that Gordon Ramsay heavily promotes market competition and how to invest in your restaurant and local community properly. After so many years in the business, he could easily teach business owners how to game the system and to skate by with serving mediocre food, but he never does. He teaches them to look at their competition, offer services that will help perform better against them, and gets them situated with local farmers and livestock producers that will guarantee the best products for their restaurant.
With the Department of Health, they only seek to regulate businesses and ensure that they perform to a certain standard, not promote businesses to operate in a way that would benefit the business' growth. Nor should they, it shouldn't be their jobs to tell restaurants how to run their restaurant and what they should do to meet the ever-changing expectations of government. That is exactly how government continues to stifle and destroys businesses. What Gordon Ramsay teaches is to never settle for "okay", especially not in the restaurant business. "Okay" will never stand up to restaurants that strive for the best and that's exactly the kind of passion that Ramsay tries to instill in restaurant owners that he helps.
In recessions, businesses already have a difficult enough time trying to survive without having the anchors of bad staff, poor management, and terrible food to drag them down. If you offer fantastic food that customers can't get at home, provide phenomenal service in getting them that food, create an atmosphere that begs the customers to keep coming back, and offer all of that for competitive prices, then your business has a much better chance at becoming "recession-proof" and will last a long while. That is how capitalism and the free market at large prevails and will always do so.