The Michelin Standard of Leadership with Chef Franck Desplechin, CEO of Incrementum

Nick: 00:00:02

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one. On the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo, and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it.

Welcome back to another episode of Titans of Food Service. I'm your host, Nick Portillo.

Please, if you're enjoying the show, if you're following along on Spotify, Apple podcasts, anywhere you get your podcast, if you leave a five star review, that would mean a lot to me. Okay. Today's guest embodies what it truly means to lead with passion, precision, and purpose. Most people simply know him as Chef Franc.

And that's exactly how he likes it. Because over the years, Chef Franc has become more than just a name. It's become a standard.

His journey began in small kitchens of Brittany, France, where he trained under Michelin starred chefs who demanded nothing short of excellence. Those early years forged in him a deep respect for discipline, creativity, and mastery.

Lessons that would carry him from fine dining restaurants to luxury hotels to executive boardrooms across the Pacific and the U.S. but what makes Jeff Franck truly special isn't just his culinary skill. It's his mindset.

He believes growth is the decision, mastery is a pursuit without a finish line, and excellence is a habit built one moment at a time. Today through Chef Frank.com which. Go check it out.

ok coming out here in October: 2025

Without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome, Chef. All right, Chef Frank, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. I appreciate you coming on and meet with me.

Franck: 00:01:53

Well, thanks for having me. I'm very, very excited for this conversation. Been looking forward all week, so, yes, very excited.

Nick: 00:01:59

Okay, good. And where do you live?

Franck: 00:02:01

I'm based out of Connecticut, so I live in the beautiful state of Connecticut, New England. You know, it's foliage season now, so beautiful. Beautiful to watch and to. To hike in the, in the trails of Connecticut right now.

Nick: 00:02:15

What brought you to Connecticut?

Franck: 00:02:18

Well, it's. It's a very good question. My wife was born and raised in Connecticut, so that probably helped.

Living in Arizona at the time, and that was on the kind of out of being in Covid and Pandemic and we had a five weeks old daughter and we just got closer to the east coast. That was my first time on east coast because I come from France.

So being closer to France to see my parents and, and then closer to my wife's family to get a support system when you're trying to be a new parent.

Nick: 00:02:49

Smart. How did you make it to the US from France?

Franck: 00:02:54

Oh, wow. I came to us about 13 years ago now. I've. I've entered the St. Regis in Bora Bora in French Polynesia, which was French territory.

So I got to work there. But the St. Regis was part of Starwood Hotel and Resort which was an American company.

And so I transferred, I got sponsored for a visa and that's how I got and what a best place to start in US I started in Hawaii on the island of Kauai for four years.

Nick: 00:03:23

Wow, that's, I mean that's a long way away from home, that's for sure.

Franck: 00:03:27

That is definitely so. But I'm in the life of traveling. I've been traveling for several years and lived in many, many parts of the world.

Nick: 00:03:34

Incredible. So tell me, how'd you get in the food business?

Franck: 00:03:39

The food business I started, I was barely 15 years old. So it's going to be about 26 years in industry now.

You know, grew up in France back in the 90s, 80s 90s France Just hospitality is part of the culture.

You just, you eat well, you have good product, you have good farming, you have good local markets, you just happen to have two decent parents that cook amazingly well and then you just kind of in it already from the very young age. So I think my curiosity got me into this.

But my parents who were both like I said, amazing cook, kind of sparked that curiosity and made me realize that there was a craft and there was something that I happened to be good at. So I just kind of follow that path and one day at the time, one week at the time, one, one journey at a time.

So it just got me into making it a career. And 26 years later, still as passionate as I was the first day with different aspect of hospitality.

But I'm definite, definitely as passionate as I was 26 years ago as a.

Nick: 00:04:47

Young person in France is getting into the culinary arts.

Is that something that is talked about a lot in, in the US I find that when you're going through school it's a lot of, you know, go be a lawyer, go be a doctor, go be A teacher, you know, they don't. There's not a lot of education or push around getting into restaurants or into the food service industry.

Franck: 00:05:13

I would say that it has evolved.

If you were to ask for like time off right now, there's definitely not necessarily a push for people to go in hospitality from an education perspective. But back then there's probably because I remember my parents not making it a problem or not making it an obstacle. I. It wasn't easy access.

I entered apprenticeship. And the apprenticeship, you technically go in the world of work. You're 15 years old and you're working already.

You just have an obligation to go to school one week every month in order to continue your curriculum and get your degree at the end of two years. But you about 80%, 75% of your time for two years is spent at work, working work.

So it means you're working on weekends, you're working at nights, you're putting the hours and you just 15. So you kind of condition to know then that's kind of what's happening. This is where I'm headed. So.

Yeah, you added two years of apprenticeship and then I moved on to two additional year in order to get the equivalent of a bachelor degree in, in the culinary. In the art of culinary.

Nick: 00:06:26

That's cool. I didn't realize, you know, apprenticeships, you know, in, in, in France.

So essentially they would you partner with some sort of maybe chef that has experience. You learn from him or her and they kind of teach you the ropes of the cuisine that they cook.

Franck: 00:06:43

Yes. Yeah, you pretty much, you pretty much do that.

You find not everyone does take apprentice because, you know, instead of having a full time employee, you have an employee. Granted the employee is pretty cheap.

You're not getting paid very much, but you're getting paid, but you're also losing them one week a month in order to go to school.

And you have as a, as a boss or as a kind of responsibility to make sure that your apprentice is excelling at school as much as he's excelling at work. So not everyone was partaking into becoming what they call an apprenticeship master.

But I got lucky to find someone very early and, and then after that I made my way in. So the four years that I did, I did not necessarily have to struggle to find a master. An apprentice master.

Nick: 00:07:33

All right. What a cool way to, or what a great way to kind of, you know, start your career.

Franck: 00:07:39

Right.

Nick: 00:07:39

In an industry working under somebody. So after you finished the apprenticeship, where did you go from there?

Franck: 00:07:45

So when I finished my apprenticeship the first year I did was in, you know, traditional semi gastronomic restaurant in France. My mom happened to know the chef, they went to school together and so that just how I got in.

So I got to be technically exposed to just the basic of culinary, nothing really extraordinary but the basic. And then after that I decided to go in the world of Michelin star ready restaurants. I was determined to just said, you know what?

I'm gonna look for the best restaurant there is in the area. And at that time I was 17, so I still don't have a driver's license, I've got my moped, so it's not like I can go across the world already.

But I found, and when I found the restaurant that was constantly mentioned to me throughout conversation, I decided to go.

And so I did my two years apprenticeship into a restaurant and we obtained the first Michelin star ready restaurant on the second year we were there and then from then on I, I'm, my impatience got in the way. I, I, I wanted to get into a second mission, a restaurant that had two mission star restaurant.

Now I was 18, I had my driver license, so I would, wanted to go and explore kind of the region of Brittany where I was from. And so I was willing to drive an hour away in order to go find work. And I was willing to kind of, you know, flying on my own wings.

And this restaurant was interested to have me, but it could not take me for another eight months. And so my impatience got in the way so I quit where I was. Then very quickly, a few weeks later, I realized that okay, now the novelty faded away.

What am I doing? All this work put in.

And so I ended up in Courchevel, which is in the Alps, the French Alps, and enter an Italian restaurant when I was the only French in that restaurant and everyone was Italian and learned to do pretty kick ass Italian food, if I have to say from a human perspective and a human experience experience and a chef experience. I hated every minute of this experience. And I've only connected the dots backwards.

Years later when I realized how much it was actually appreciative to receive that kind of knowledge that I would have never received from that experience if I didn't have that experience.

So, and then after that I went back into mission style rated restaurant and I've done that for pretty much the first 12 years of my career was purely and exclusively Michelin star restaurant. Until I realized that I had a chance to go work in the world in the Caribbean islands. And I said, well why not?

And so I entertained and then I discovered the world of luxury hotels and resorts, which was its own path.

At the same time, you were receiving still the level of expertise, authority, pristine excellence that you need to thrive for, but in a whole different scale. There was not a restaurant anymore. You were in hotel with hotel guests that were spending so much money in order to stay with you.

So, so that's kind of what led my way. I never really had a very clear, clear, clear path across the way, but I had an ambition and I had a view of where I wanted to go.

Nick: 00:11:03

In all of the experience that you had working in France, working in the Alps, working in the Caribbean, working for these, you know, high end Michelin star restaurants, what did you learn about yourself and about leadership through that experience?

Franck: 00:11:22

Well, that's a broad question. I've learned a lot.

I've learned as I'm someone that observe a lot and obviously when you spend 16 plus hour at work, you got a lot of time to observe. And so I've learned a lot from cooks, peers, chefs on the things that I wanted to adopt for myself. But I also learned a lot more from what not to do.

I've been able to spend time with a lot of chefs that were not necessarily the nicest chef or they were not necessarily the chef that you would look up to from a culture in a workplace standpoint. So I've learned a lot from that aspect. And I'm someone that very early on wanted to obviously reach the top.

And I didn't know at the time if it was, I'm going to have my own three Michelin star restaurant or I'm going to be an exec chef, whatever the case is. And I knew I wanted to reach some level of top.

And in order to do that, I asked myself many, many times throughout the year what kind of exec chef I wanted to be.

Even though I was just a cook who I was just a lit cook who I was just a sous chef, I've kind of never, never went away from that question is, is it the kind of behavior I would expect from my exec chef? Is it the kind of behavior I want to demonstrate to my team?

So I think some of those leadership traits came out out of this because I was either replicating what I loved about what a chef was doing while I was going the complete opposite of what a chef made me feel. And so that kind of was my compass to navigate my own leadership journey.

Nick: 00:13:03

There's so many, you know, being in the industry, you hear a lot of different stories working in Kitchens working in an environment where it is, you know, not to use a food pun, like a pressure cooker, where the, the, the intensity, the stress, people not really being treated well, you know, the demand for perfection. Why do you think that exists so much in kitchens?

Franck: 00:13:32

I think in order for thriving, for excellence, I just don't, I think it has to come with it.

I think it's just now, after there is the pressure of the egocentric yelling, angry chef, and there is the one that received the same amount of pressure but is cool as a cucumber. So you kind of have to think, find out your own way of getting result without feeling all emotional about it.

I've learned that very early on, and just like when I was working plenty hours and it was a lot of pressure, we're trying to reach that Michelin star. And then the chef on top of that is adding the yelling, is adding the misbehavior, is adding the unnecessary push.

Sometimes that fall into what you would, what you would qualify now today as verbal abuse or bullying. So there's, unfortunately, there was a lot of that. And so you just kind of man like, can we get to the same.

I was planning on doing it like, I had all the intention on doing it. I don't need the additional bullying.

And you're learning as you're growing up and you're becoming an adult, that the bullying was not, never had nothing to do with you. It had to do with the insecurity of that person giving or providing that bullying.

So, so I, I, to answer your question, I think in that environment, I think if you thrive for excellence, are you thriving? Because there's so many variables for things to go sideways. There's so many things you have to have control over that.

I think the, the, the pressure is it has to exist. If there's no pressure, then you pretty much going to have to look at yourself like, do I even care what I do?

I think the pressure comes with a level of care. The discipline comes with a level of care. So I like to think that you almost need it.

And this time in my career, I felt like I was thriving only if there was pressure. If there was no pressure, then I felt I was getting bored. So maybe I'm psycho, maybe I'm just someone wired differently.

Um, but I, I, I felt like I was really reaching a level of fulfillment and a level of appreciation for the achievement when hard work went through the process.

Nick: 00:15:49

That makes total sense. You're, you're hitting on a lot of different points that I've been Thinking about myself this week.

In my line of work, you know, when I deal with people that, you know, can be kind of that micromanager, you know, really high pressure, bully, you know, kind of way, you know, what is the reaction to a person to, to that? It's hard when you receive constant feedback. It's not even feedback. It's almost like what you said. It's an insecurity in a way being put on to you.

And when you confront it or set a boundary against it, sometimes, you know, you're, you're greeted with additional anger or additional pushback. Tell me, what are you, what are you working on now? In present day.

Franck: 00:16:37

incrementum which I built in: 2020

So I have chefs, pastry chef, director of housekeeping, director of fnb, restaurant manager, you name it. I've got about a team of about 25 to 28 people that have their own contractor.

I just represent them and I deploy them across the industry in order to provide quality interim support.

You know, when someone quits, let's say your director of food and beverage is quitting, then they're going to call me and say, frank, my director of NB is quitting in two weeks. Can you send me someone?

So I send them someone and while they're in the search of someone else, then they don't have a gap or a hole in their operation for X amount of months because we know how hard it is to find quality staff these days.

So I've kind of now providing, like I said, quality management that goes there first day, they just take over the entire operation based on the role and the scope of work. And then they just kind of covering for the time that is allocated in the assignment.

So that's one aspect that we do well and then the other one is the world of consulting.

So consulting is now we have developed, especially since earlier this year, we've developed a program where some properties that are going into heavy renovation or they want to do a concept development or they're underperforming. They just don't know what's wrong with the operation.

The food cost is high, the labor is out of whack, they don't know how to tackle this because they're not FNB background. Then when that's the case, they're reaching out to us. And then we deploy either myself or some of my partners.

And we're going into this operation making a full assessment and providing a critical path or doing a SWOT analysis in order to find out what is it that we need to fix in order to get you into a good place. So consulting is one of them.

writing a book since December: 2023

And it's called Relentless Cultivating a Chef Mindset for Professional Fulfillment. Fulfillment. And that's kind of what I've been up to now in the past. Like I say, four months.

It's trying to find an avenue to put the book into the right hands and doing it right and making sure that it just gets.

It just gets out there and helping the next student of hospitality or the next leader that's trying to figure it out how to navigate one of the world's most demanding industry.

Nick: 00:19:38

I like what you're building with your company. You've got the people going into, you know, and helping out at a high level with these. With these operators throughout the country.

I think that's really cool and really great. What you're doing in the book. What are some of the biggest takeaways?

What are the most things, you know, what are some of the things that you're most proud of in the book?

Franck: 00:19:57

The book, I. Man, there's a lot of intentionality that went into this book. And one would expect you would because it's obviously a book that you wrote.

But I had never anticipated to take two years to release that book. If anything, I thought it would take me less than a year.

But the process, as I was falling in love with the process and the level of details and intention I went to put in it, I think, I mean, two years is a lot of time. I finished writing that book December last year. That was when it was over.

And so the going into a developmental editor, going into copy editing, going into proofreading, going into designing the exterior, the back cover, the dust jacket cover, the interior design, how do you want the words, how many pages?

Like, there's so many things that goes into it that I fell in love with that process and decided to just doing it the best product that it can be almost unrecognizable from me. Self publishing. I got all the help that I needed.

I've hired all professional in order to get the best product versus choosing hybrid publishing or traditional publisher. So that's one aspect of this book that I want people to kind of take out of that it was done as professional as it can be.

And then the second aspect is the I think the flow of the book. I wanted to write a book that I wanted to read and I've been reading mostly self help books.

So I was trying to get into a place where each chapter, there's not one chapter that feels they fell flat or it's just like, you know what? We could have skipped this chapter. It was really a crescendo approach to this book.

When you and the chapters that I'm going over, they are kind of the steps that I believe as a blueprint you need to take in order to, you know, reach fulfillment. You cultivate your chef mindset and you are reaching fulfillment, which is the end goal of this book. But this book is really of work with you.

It's book is about you. I'm not giving you any tools or any cues on this book to say this is what you need to do tomorrow, then you'll be successful.

It is more about if you really take the time to read the question and pausing and asking yourself the question and self assessing you will extract the most out of this book.

If you just read the question and you just move on to the next line, then you might just feel that you missed out on something on this book because I'm not necessarily writing down the black and white answer. Everyone has a different journey. Everyone has a different idea of success.

All I'm giving you is to go within you, finding those answers that you have yet to find because you haven't asked yourself the right question. So. So it's really that aspect.

And then I would say the third aspect of this book is I've illustrated any of my points that I'm making on my book with my career story. And in order to do that is because I wanted to stay relatable. I didn't want it to come across like I have found a secret sauce.

I found a recipe for success.

I just want to be able to be relatable and find out that I am a normal person that just decided to follow a course in my career and I have failed multiple times. I have been at crossroads multiple times. I have myself a lot of questions.

I have showed impatience But I'm just kind of trying to explain the lesson to extract from it and how to continue to move forward despite it. So that would be the three main aspects of what this book is about.

Nick: 00:23:37

Would someone reads the book, what are some of the lessons you hope that they take away from it?

Franck: 00:23:44

I would say some of the lesson is to not necessarily paying as much attention to the noise outside of their own journey. They have to be able to believe in themselves a little bit more.

They have to believe into the journey they're taking, even though it might be the unpopular choice. They have to embrace the process. And. And now I think one of the biggest lesson I want people to learn, there's two of them.

are living now Today in near: 2026

I'm an impatient person in some aspect of my life.

And I also like to think that I was part of the generation that requested and asked and demanded for Amazon prime delivered by the end of the day from binge watching Netflix the whole season rather than waiting week by week by week by week. So. So we demanded for this industry and for the world to go faster.

Now I think we are very quick to judge the younger generation to say they're impatient when we're the one who have created that world that they fell into. And I think at some point we have to take some level of accountability into the world with we've created.

Now what I want to extract from the book, because there's a whole chapter about patience and it's really about embracing patience, but also embracing ambition. Ambition is going to help you continue to move forward. When the patience is there's a lot of things that you cannot take any shortcut.

Fulfillment is not something you can just snap your finger and get fulfillment. Just knowledge is not something you can fast half assets. You just have to learn to go experience. It's not something you can just shortcut.

Of course you can take shortcut and get your way.

But at some point or another in your career, you won't realize that you have skipped some lessons that would have been beneficial for the time you had now. So that's one aspect. Patience is one. The other one that I want to cover is failure, redefining failure.

I think, I believe strongly that we've been conditioned to be scared of failure.

We've been conditioned all the way from school when you have to do tests very early on and if you Fail your test and you didn't study enough, therefore, you're being put on the side.

You're not necessarily being involved, or we're not asking your opinion, or you're being technically almost laughed out by your peers, or you're being outcasted because you're just someone that does not necessarily feed the mold.

And so I think we became conditioned to be afraid of failing, and we've been conditioned to be afraid of taking risk because of the emotional consequences that comes with it.

And I think when you're looking at some of the best athletes in the world or the most successful entrepreneur in the world, if there's one thing in common is they're not afraid to fail. They're just taking risks daily and they fail. They just say, that's fine, I'll just move on to the next thing, or I'll just start over again.

I'm not here to create something that hasn't been told before. I'm just adding into the conversation because hospitality does not necessarily have a voice in order to get those points across.

And how do you navigate that world of the hospitality industry? And I'm trying to make sure that by reading this book that you get access to something I wish I had access to 20 years ago.

Nick: 00:27:18

I get it. I get it. Patience and failure. I remember, you know, I started my own business 10 years ago. You want things to happen quickly.

You, you can, you know, I remember visioning where my life, where I wanted to go, but being afraid to take the risk to get there as well.

You know, it's, it's, you know, going to school, I went, I got a bachelor's in business, and I learned all these different tools and, and ideas and theories around business. But when you put it into application, it's, it's scary.

Franck: 00:27:52

It's.

Nick: 00:27:54

I mean, over the years, I've had to, you know, I've met mentors, I've joined organizations and groups to help me grow. I've read books, I've listened to podcasts and things like that that have helped me grow.

But it's not something that, that you're right, that's necessarily innate in our nature because we do want that instant gratification.

We want to, you know, skip from, you know, your early days at 15, working as an, you know, in an apprenticeship and just become, you know, Gordon Ramsay or Bobby Flay or whoever these big name people are overnight.

Franck: 00:28:26

It's hard. So it takes a lot of time, and you have to fall in love with that process. And maybe because I left, I Never went to high school.

So maybe because I did not follow the educational system that was kind of, you know, the normal route, maybe I did not receive the amount of conditionment that I was supposed to receive. Therefore it made me kind of thinking very differently from an earlier on age.

But at the same time, Gordon Ramsay was not the Gordon Ramsay we knew and we know today all his life. So is Bobby Flair, so is Jean Georges, so is Alain Ducasse.

So at some point they were a normal person like we are and they just took a different route and they believed in themselves and they got the right partnership, they did the right thing at the right time and they just kind of got the success and continue to serve that wave.

So we want to be able to offer people through the book, through my philosophy to the way I approach things, we want to be able to say, you're not any different than anybody.

You just, you just need to apply into the right thing and you need to be able to do work on yourself first because you've got to decide what kind of adult you want to be, what kind of professional you want to be. And I commend you for 10 years of entrepreneurship and, and reading podcasts and reading book and being part of organization.

You surround yourself with, with like minded people in order to get influence, in order to say, okay, but I mean this ABC guy, they ended up doing this. So you know what, I'm going to follow the crowd and see where it led. And at the same time you are working your 10, 12 hours a day.

But then you spend another two, three hours to educate yourself on things that matters to you today. And all of that are sacrifices that are oftentimes just being overshadowed with success.

And sometime I'm getting frustrated or even at some point upset based on how it's being delivered. But it's like, oh, wow, you got so lucky. I said, sure, I got luck, but man, don't think a second that luck has all to do with what I did.

I've worked a lot of hours and a lot of days. I said, while you were on vacation for three weeks, I was working. So those kind of things.

I like to think I've been told by one of my mentor that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Nick: 00:30:56

That's right. Very well said.

For those that are listening, want to follow along also too, what I like about your book, I feel like there's books, you know, there's recipe books, right, on how to cook certain things. I'm sure there's books out there on, you know, just business management how to run a business. I like what you're doing.

It's, you know, talking to, you know, the culinary professional of this is how you can grow your business in this industry. I love that. How best to find the book? Where can people buy it?

Franck: 00:31:25

So the book will be coming out on the 14th of October, so it will be published on everything. So Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, Target, anything. You'll be able to purchase it anywhere as of right now, until next week, it's available on pre order.

So you can find it on my website, which is cheffronk.com you'll be able to find it, you can pre order and I will be mailing it directly from my house and getting it into your hands and then, yeah, that will be the best way to find about it. And then on social media, I'm very much having an online presence on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Nick: 00:32:03

Fantastic. Chef Frank, I want to say thank you so much for taking your time and. And I look forward to buying the book myself, getting a copy, giving her a read.

Franck: 00:32:13

Awesome.

Nick: 00:32:13

Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Franck: 00:32:15

Thanks for having me, Nick.

Nick: 00:32:16

Appreciate you, of course.