Menu Talk with Pat and Bret is a collaboration between Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.
The veteran operator shares her vision of how she thinks restaurants should be run
Hollis Silverman played an instrumental role in expanding José Andrés’s ThinkFoodGroup. As its chief operating officer she oversaw the group’s food & beverage, service and human resources teams as it tripled in size from a small collection of restaurants to a national empire.
Now she’s running her own company, Eastern Point Collective, which at the moment is a small collection of foodservice venues, all in a row in Washington, D.C.’s, Capitol Hill. The Duck & the Peach is a New American seasonal restaurant, La Collina serves Italian food, and The Wells is a cocktail bar.
Hollis opened the first of those restaurants, The Duck & the Peach, in 2021, so naturally she designed it to fit the realities of the pandemic era. So there are efficiencies, such as a single kitchen for all three concepts, and also an increased awareness of how to treat employees, which means Eastern Point Collective adds a 22% service charge to all checks instead of anticipating tips, allowing more equitable pay between front- and back-of-house, but also freeing servers from the indignities they often endure due to their dependence on customers’ goodwill for their income. She also offers medical insurance for hourly team members after 90 days of employment and insists on having a work environment free of the harassment and substance abuse that remain endemic in the industry.
Silverman recently discussed her restaurants and her approach to doing business.
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