6 Questions with Melissa Yanc of Quail & Condor on Being On Food TV, Opening A Third Restaurant, Leadership Training For Women

Read time: 13 min

By Sophie Braker

Melissa Yanc is the owner operator of Quail & Condor. She started baking with her grandmother at seven years old. Her passion led her to Johnson & Wales Denver and then into the Denver restaurant scene before she headed to California. In Northern California, Melissa worked at SingleThread Farm Restaurant & Inn before opening Quail & Condor. To learn more about Melissa’s journey, watch BSP396: Melissa Yanc of Quail & Condor on Women in Restaurant Leadership.

First restaurant job?

My first restaurant job was working at Row 14 with you. I have actually been waiting to tell you this for a very long time. There was this giant catering order for the places upstairs above the restaurant. It was like these pieces of chocolate cake that I’d cut too small. You looked at me and said these are going to look so weak. You have to figure out how to make this servable. I think about that pretty often. I’ll look at something and think, man that looks weak. It's like you’re sitting on my shoulder looking at the products with me.

Did you figure it out?

We figured it out. We made a mousse. There were some orange segments. We made it happen. For a first time job, I never took it as you’re weak. It was just that this was weak. I felt empowered. 

What’s a food / drink you always have on hand at home?

I always have Shoyu (soy sauce). Specifically Japanese sesame seeds. I have fermented bean paste. I put that in a lot of things and chicken stock. I pretty much make one dish. I also have Shirodashi. Shirodashi is amazing. It's fishy but not. It's salty but sour. It's like umami in a bottle. I have Hashi too (chopsticks). 

From your experience, is being featured on food tv a worthwhile pursuit for restaurant pros?

I was on the Holiday Baking Championship in 2019. It seems like forever ago. 

I am a competitive person. I’ve always played sports. For that side of my itch, yes, I think it's worth it. I don’t want to say pursuit, that’s too strong a work. But I think someone should put their name in the hat. Fill out an application. Don’t go out of your way to be on TV unless that’s what you want to do. It was a very cool experience. Once you’re in that circle, they invite you to do other ones. I don’t love it. I feel like a monkey with cymbals in my hands dancing around. It's really fun and I met some great people that I still talk to. 

I’m about to judge this world bread competition at IBIE in Las Vegas. That is actually what I wanted but didn’t know. I would do that over TV any day. I am surrounded by people who in depth understand what we’re doing, the fermentation, all the nerdy things about it. I realized I would do this over TV any day.

What was weird about it was that it was for the holidays but people were asking me in June to make specific holiday cakes. I’m not even a cake shop. I actually went on the show because I was a bread baker and I wanted to show that I could keep up. Given I won, I could do more than keep up. It’s like a weird sword, not sure if it's single sided or double edged, but I am just not about it. 

It's not bad. It's great for business. The food business owner on our show that got kicked off in the first episode had a huge increase in business. Then again I wouldn’t do it a second time. 

What type of leadership training do we need in the food world to empower future leaders, especially for women? 

It became so apparent to me in the second year of business now. When you are in such a small team or sometimes you’re just a team of one, you’re doing so good. You’re our best bread maker or our best something, and you get promoted. You don’t get to practice anything. I don’t really want the title unless it comes with training. The title is really weird. Maybe you can just call me your “lead something.” When you call me management, I expect or I should expect to get some training. Performance issues. How do you apply pressure without insulting someone? Or be sensitive that maybe they are new to the station? 

To be a manager of managers is very strange. I obviously had to practice on them before they became managers. Teaching them this concept of what seems so obvious, how to have clear expectations. How to say, this is the standard and our values. Here’s the timeline. Go. It's so obvious but it really does require a conversation. 

One, understanding who that person is first and understanding where they want to go from there. There are four kinds of people in a workplace. People who are enthusiastic with high skill sets. They are usually managers. Then there’s the opposite of that. They have no skill set and they have a terrible attitude, not willing to learn. Usually those people get fired or don’t exist ideally. There are other people who are enthusiastic but low skill set. But you can teach anyone to do anything. If they’re enthusiastic, want to go and don’t see this glass ceiling, then they are the ones to grow into managers. 

Then there’s people in this other category who have a high skill set but not a great attitude. Sometimes there’s a little bit of entitlement there. They are the highly skilled jerks that no one wants to work with. They rely on that. They’re not scared of getting fired. And I’m not saying anyone should work in fear. They don’t think about consequences or their mistakes. It feels very selfish. That’s really hard for me to train someone to be better when they might not necessarily want to be or they think that they are already there. That’s where I feel the most inclined to give directions. This is what I need. This is what I’m seeing or not seeing. Do you want to go in this position or not? Sometimes it's just asking them, do you want it?

My husband put it the best the other day, you lose your best employee to being your worst manager. I don’t like to say that to my staff. Once they move over to management, I’m losing my best cook to being my most green manager. So how do we get the people in their team to be as good as they were. 

What are you making sure to do differently in your third business, that you learned from mistakes in your previous locations?

This one is not about my team. I did listen to one leadership podcast that’s very helpful for me before I learned about Best Served. It's called How To Work With Your Spouse. We had our first bakery together. It was the middle of COVID and super weird. We had a new born baby. Sean became Mr. Mom. I think there was a weird thing where he was at the top when he worked at SingleThread and he took on another role. It wasn’t a step down, just a different role. Taking care of the kids while I’m over there grinding in the bakery at four in the morning. 

You know when a couple will have a baby to save the relationship. This is not me. So we started the business butting heads a lot over there. We opened the sandwich shop so that he would have his thing and I would have my thing. We manage very differently. He’s still in that old generation of too much applied pressure. A lot less than it used to be. For me it's a little bit of an open conversation but we still get things done. But who’s staff is happier? Whose staff is responding more? Who’s growing more? He helps me with a lot of things. I’m not pooh-poohing him at all. 

But when you ask what I’m doing differently now that I’m back in the sandwich shop, I’m learning to listen more and leave the conversation more open with him. I’m already watching him learn a lot, and grow a lot. He’s empowering the staff a little more versus just telling them to memorize steps. It's more understanding theory, understanding what we’re doing. Both staff have really mirrored on performance. 

Best advice for someone thinking of becoming a new restaurant owner themselves?

I think no matter how you are financing it, no matter what your concept is, no matter who your crew is, what your location is, you have to have a partner somehow. It could be a life partner, or a therapist, or a business partner. 

You need support. It is just so lonely at the top. A business coach is great too. That’s a partner in my mind. I tried therapy. I went on Talk Space. I tried to figure it out. I tried it for like two months. It really didn’t go great for me. I just felt like I knew how to navigate myself. Then I got onto this business coaching thing. And all these things made sense to me. My instincts were justified. I started seeing results because I wasn’t dancing around this big question of what I’m doing. I think having your own amount of support is so necessary. 

There are so many things that you are going to do wrong. There are so many things that could go wrong. And they still go wrong for me all the time. As long as you have someone to tell you what you are doing right, you know where to hit the target. 

Melissa began baking at seven years old with her grandmother. That interest grew with her through graduating pastry school, working in the best restaurants in Denver, to opening her first bakery in Denver and finally moving across the country twice to direct large pastry programs on the East and West Coasts for some of the leading names in the baking industry. Since moving to Northern California, she has worked at SingleThread as the hotel baker and baked bread for multiple farmers markets, and servicing Shelton’s, The Booneville Hotel, Kistler Vineyards, LIOCO tasting room, and other wineries spreading the name of Quail & Condor.