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Sarasota Herald-Tribune
September 1997
Restaurant's Staff Cooked Up it's Own
Place to Work
by Joan Altabe
 What
do you get when you let employees design their own workplace?
A workplace that works, says Miles Millwee, owner of the
Hillview Grill, who had to rebuild his restaurant after it went
down in flames three years ago.
He had been operating the restaurant for five years before the
fire, which gave his staff a chance to redesign the space as
they saw fit.
"Several key service people helped us
decide on spaces. We said we had this much space, what do you
want to do with it?" he said. " They were real
involved in helping us decide."
Fire insurance provided for continued payment of
salaries to Millwee's core staff, which enabled them to work on
cleaning and renovating the space.
Originally the restaurant had occupied about 2,400 square feet,
and had about 1,050 feet of kitchen space.
"It wasn't very efficient and not well
designed," said Millwee, whose redesigned kitchen space is
now a reduced 850 square feet. The kitchen crew was involved in
the redesign process, he said.
The former kitchen was in an L-shape, with the
cook's area on the back wall for ventilation and exhaust systems
and the main refrigerator sitting away from the actual point of
cooking.
Now the kitchen is in the shape of a rectangle,
with everything closer to where things are needed, including the
walk-in refrigerator – about six feet from most of the
cooking.
More space-saving: Whereas the staff used to
prepare all of the soft drink – coffee, tea, ice tea, soda
drinks – in the kitchen, now they're made near the liquor bar.
Moving the beverage service out of the kitchen saved 100 square
feet, Millwee said. He credited his employees with the idea.
And while Millwee was able to buy used booths from a restaurant
that went out of business, his staff did all the refinishing of
the wood tables and almost all the interior design work.
"We thoroughly used the employees' help, both physically
and mentally," he said. Hillview Grill where everything is
made in house, including the décor.
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