If we hadn’t sold the restaurant, Memorial Day weekend would look very different for me right now.
I’d be checking reservations.
Reviewing staffing schedules.
Making sure the wine fridge was stocked.
Watching weather reports like they were life-or-death predictions.
And mentally preparing myself for the unofficial kickoff to summer at the Jersey Shore.
Instead, this Memorial Day feels quieter.
And honestly? A little emotional.
As summer approaches, I find myself thinking a lot about the eight years in the restaurant business with Kitchen 330 & Trio North Wildwood. People often think owning a restaurant is about the food. And yes, food matters. Wine matters. Hospitality matters.
But what I miss most are the people.
I miss my staff — many of whom became family over those eight years. In restaurants, you go through everything together. Long nights. Crazy weekends. Equipment breaking at the worst possible time. Last-minute reservations. Packed holiday weekends. Exhaustion. Laughter. The “we survived another Saturday night” feeling.
There’s a bond that forms in restaurants that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.
And then there were the customers.
Some started as guests and slowly became part of our lives. I watched children grow up over those years. I watched couples celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, engagements, retirements. Some people came every single summer. Others sat at the bar and talked wine with me for hours.
Those are the moments I miss.
I miss sharing wine with people who were excited to learn something new. I miss introducing someone to a grape they had never heard of and watching their face light up when they realized they loved it. I miss conversations about life over a glass of wine. The restaurant was never just about serving dinner. It was about connection.
That part of hospitality is beautiful.
But there are parts of the industry I don’t miss at all.
And lately, as a customer, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with where the restaurant industry is heading.
Let’s start with the credit card fees.
We’ve become a cashless society. Most people pay with a card for almost everything they do. Restaurants know this. Customers know this. Yet now many restaurants are adding an extra 3% fee to use a credit card.
I’m sorry, but I believe that’s simply part of the cost of doing business.
Businesses incur fees for accepting cards — just like they incur utility bills, insurance costs, and rent. That’s part of operating a restaurant. It should not become another surprise charge added to the customer’s check at the end of the meal.
And what many customers don’t even realize is that they’re often paying tax on that extra fee, too.
Go out to dinner once or twice a week and suddenly those “small” fees aren’t so small anymore.
Yes, food costs have skyrocketed. Gas prices impact everything from deliveries to utilities. Inflation has affected every corner of the restaurant industry. I understand all of that because I lived it.
But if restaurants need to offset those costs, build them into the menu pricing. Don’t nickel-and-dime customers with added fees after the fact.
Then there’s the food itself.
This is the part that genuinely makes me sad.
At our restaurant, everything was made from scratch. And I mean everything. Did it make life harder? Absolutely. Did it require more skilled labor, more prep time, and more stress? Without question.
But there was pride in it.
Today, I see more and more restaurants relying heavily on pre-made and pre-cooked products from large food distributors like Sysco and US Foods. The push is toward convenience: products that arrive already prepared, where all the kitchen has to do is heat, plate, and serve.
And little by little, the art of the executive chef is disappearing.
Many restaurants today don’t even employ executive chefs anymore. Instead, they rely on line cooks to assemble pre-prepared products. That’s not a criticism of the cooks themselves, many are working incredibly hard under difficult conditions. But structurally, the industry has changed.
The open-kitchen concept we had at Trio showed people what went into their meals. Guests could see the cooking, the timing, the teamwork, the pressure, the care. Even if not every restaurant wants an open kitchen, there was something honest about it.
Now, too often, food feels manufactured instead of crafted.
And while we’re talking about restaurant structure, there’s another issue that never sat right with me: the imbalance between front-of-house and back-of-house pay.
Servers and bartenders absolutely work hard. I know because I worked the floor myself. Great service matters tremendously.
But the kitchen works just as hard.
The back-of-house staff are sweating through brutal summer nights, standing over hot grills and fryers, working nonstop to make sure every plate goes out correctly. Without them, there is no restaurant experience to begin with.
Yet there’s often an enormous income disparity between front and back of house.
The reality is this: if the kitchen doesn’t produce good food, the front of the house doesn’t receive the tips they depend on.
It takes both sides working together.
Always.
Maybe that’s why I’ve become more selective about where I dine now. I’m looking for places that still care. Places where you can feel pride in the food coming out of the kitchen. Places where hospitality still feels genuine instead of transactional.
Because, despite everything, I still love restaurants.
I love what they can be.
I love the conversations they create.
I love the memories made around a table.
I love the way wine and food bring people together.
And every Memorial Day, when the shore towns start waking up for summer again, a part of me will probably always miss being in the middle of it all.
