Our Staff

One of the most vital aspects of owning a restaurant is making sure that the staff are good. Without decent staff you’re dead in the water or, at least, very damaged.

We’ve learned a lot about this in the past year as we had a bad run with staff and, thankfully, our customers were good enough to point it out to us.

We’d like you to get to know us a bit better so that you know who runs the show, who cooks the food and who serves it and to understand why on some days, some people just can’t smile but could do with one off you instead.

Most of you know me, Dave Hackett, but I’m often not in the front of the house so you need to get to know Emma Burnet. She’s the lady who takes care of the bigger things happening in Hackett’s like the events, the seating, the menus and the hiring of staff, the smiles and the complaints. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it and Emma is mature enough to handle it.

Emma runs the place and makes all those important decisions about what we stock and who we buy from, seating plans, staff rotas, marketing, what events we host, how we decorate and all that.  Her job is not easy as she works long hours and fills in when others are ill or on holiday too.  Emma has two children at home, lives, eats and breathes Hackett’s Bistro and just loves that sarcastic chap who narrates ‘Come Dine with Me’.  She’s always smiling and when she’s not (on the odd occasion) it’s probably because she’s busy thinking about what supplier we should be using or which waiters can be on shift that night!  Just say hello and she’ll burst into smiles again.

Emma was responsible for our new chef joining us too.  His name is Richard Lenik, otherwise known as Chef Rich!  Many of you have already been in and tasted some of this wonderful creations like the King prawn and crab linguine, those mouth watering pomme frites, the ‘to die for’ desserts and that never ending array of specials he produces to fill our Specials Board on a daily basis.

Rich heads up our kitchen team.  Luckily they all get along quite well so there’s very few broken dishes!

Now, you won’t see much of the kitchen staff but they love it if you send a compliment back with the waiters to let them know that your food was a hit.  It does wonders for their morale and makes them stretch themselves just that bit further when producing the next menu!  Our Chef does a great job with creating the menus for our guests, labouring over them for hours with Emma and the team to make sure they’re just right for you.  If, however, you have any suggestions or things you’d like to see on the menu, tell Emma and she’ll chat to Chef!

We’re going to feature a member of staff each week now so that you start to know them and understand their little foibles.  They’re human too and generally run off their feet so be nice and smile at them sometimes for me.