Putting People First - A Good Egg Dining Group

Food has no meaning without people. It is how we connect to and care for each other. And if a restaurant is not serving its own people, then it is not providing good service.

Keith and Heather Paul opened their first restaurant, Cheever’s Café, on April 20th, 2000 in a former floral shop on the corner of N. Hudson Avenue and 23rd Street. In 2006, the couple founded A Good Egg Dining Group with a mission to redefine Oklahoma’s cuisine and the hospitality industry by encouraging creativity, teamwork, and fulfilling career opportunities. Their restaurants now include Iron Star Urban Barbeque, Red PrimeSteak, Republic Gastropub, Tucker’s Onion Burgers, Kitchen No. 324, The Drake, Barrios, and Mexican Radio.

A Good Egg is well-known for its outstanding food, but the value it places on its people may be its greatest asset. As Jason Chandler, the Chef de Cuisine for Kitchen No. 324, puts it, “Good Egg understands that there is a human aspect to running a business and we are not all robots.”

So, it should come as no surprise that the restaurant group put people first at all stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, even when it meant sacrificing profit.

For nearly three months, A Good Egg’s restaurants were curbside only, which meant they had to furlough nearly ninety percent of their staff. However, they did not ignore the needs of their employees during this uncertain time. They pulled their resources together and developed a plan to help feed their furloughed workers. They even solicited sponsors such as Heritage Trust, Polston Tax Resolution & Accounting, and Parrish DeVaughn Injury Lawyers for their Employee Relief Fund Market.

“At first, we cleaned out our restaurants’ food inventories and provided prepared meals two to three times per week to our furloughed employees. Once we used up the ingredients in our restaurants, we purchased extra food from Ben E. Keith that we provided free-of-cost to our employees in pop-up mini-markets two to three times per week,” Director of Marketing Aly Clark says. “The market was a special time for us because it gave us a chance to connect, talk, and check-in with our furloughed employees to see how they were doing during this difficult time. It was a small way we could provide for our employees and it was uplifting to see them and hear about what they had cooked.”

Mara Dearing, a server for Cheever’s Café, took advantage of the meals and the mini-market. “We could come up to the office and grab produce, canned goods, bread, toilet paper even (remember when t.p. was scarce?). Having the meals and the mini-market provided some relief because it helped save money to be used towards bills, but it also eliminated some of the need to physically be inside a store during quarantine.”

Billy Noble, a server at Barrios Fine Mexican Dishes, said that being furloughed and applying for unemployment was a nerve-racking process, but A Good Egg made it easier. He, along with other furloughed employees, received an email from the organization with resources to guide them through the unemployment process quickly.

For those who retained their jobs while the group’s restaurants were curbside only, collaboration skyrocketed. “I really can’t say enough about how the organization transformed during our curbside only. I saw tenured restaurant people relinquish some control and lean on their leaders. The amount of trust, love, and passion that I witnessed can’t be put into words,” says Chandler.

Once their restaurants reopened to the public, A Good Egg went to great lengths to ensure the safety of both customers and their employees. Employees praise the group for mandating masks before the city did, embracing curbside service and contactless pay, expanding patio seating, creating a new position for a “sanitizer” to sanitize hourly any highly touched areas in the restaurant, writing sanitation and safety training documents for each position, following the reopening phases to the letter, and conducting daily temperature and wellness checks.

“We have a COVID taskforce that employees and managers can reach out to for guidance. We also have a document to help staff who feel unsafe or unwell seek medical advice or mental health services as well as COVID testing,” Randy Newberry, the Area Director for Tucker’s Onion Burgers, says.

According to Heather Paul, if there is a possibility of COVID-19 exposure in one of their restaurants, the organization arranges for employee testing and pays for it. To date, nearly $30,000 has been spent on COVID-19 testing for employees.

All of the employees interviewed for this article said they feel safe being back at work because of the measures A Good Egg has taken.

This does not mean that the Pauls have known the exact right step to take at every turn, but it does mean they have always had a conversation with their employees before they took each step. That open and transparent two-way communication is what makes A Good Egg a success.

“Keith, Heather, and Jason Ewald did an amazing job with not only asking for input, but actually listening,” says Chandler. “There wasn’t a single time that I felt left out of a decision or didn’t know what was going on.”

“Heather and Keith took our comments seriously,” adds Dearing. “Returning to a public-facing role during COVID has definitely been an exercise in communicating and adapting, then re-adapting some more. Heather and Keith’s acknowledgement of concerns and fears is something that I’ve appreciated.”

“Things are changing on a day to day basis, and they are doing a fine job making sure that they keep us up to date with any resources we could take advantage of,” says Noble.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the importance of people in the restaurant industry. We were reminded that those who feed us are essential and deserving of our respect, admiration, and care.

Restaurants are where we go to celebrate our loved ones, to share in community, to escape from a stressful day. For many, this year has been a series of countless stressful days without enough reason or opportunity to celebrate. Now, more than ever, we need restaurants like those of A Good Egg Dining Group to alleviate some of that stress, both for employees and customers, and to bring enjoyable, yet safe, dining experiences back into our lives. We admire and thank them for their dedication to our community.