Phil Jones
By Tunde Wey & Noelle Lothamer
March 21, 2012
There is reward and satisfaction in coming up with something new, some new process or technology, which completely transforms that which was previously thought unchangeable. But there is also reward in accepting the wisdom of the past, the recognition that some of the old ways of doing things were not so bad; the idea that instead of cooking up new solutions, it might be better to refer to antiquity for answers.
While the ingenuity and innovation of the restaurant
COLORS draws on new ideas and models of social entrepreneurship, its motto is not newfangled, novel or untested. It is simple and maybe more true now than it has ever been: “Just. Good. Food.” Food that tastes great, that’s great for you, and that you can feel great about.
Phil Jones, head chef at the new Paradise Valley restaurant, is part of a team of people at non-profit organization
ROC United (ROC stands for Restaurant Opportunities Center), whose goal is to improve the labor conditions of employees in the restaurant industry and to give employees the knowledge and training to feel empowered in their jobs. ROC is the only national restaurant workers’ organization in the United States. Formed after 9/11, its mission is to improve wages and working conditions for the nation’s low-wage restaurant workforce. COLORS trains its employees in collective entrepreneurship, food service instruction and food policy advocacy.
At 48, Phil Jones is a mountain of a man with a warm smile and gentle demeanor. For someone of his height and stature, he is surprisingly soft-spoken, yet possesses a commanding tone. A culinary veteran, involved in some fashion with food since the age of 6, Jones says his duties at COLORS make him happy. He gets to bed weary but fulfilled, his talents and creativity stretched. Jones ungrudgingly admits that even his tendency to control things is appropriately rewarded by the exacting work of running both a social venture and a quality restaurant kitchen.
Although COLORS is primarily a social venture, working, as Jones describes it, to “change the restaurant industry by creating a new working model”, it is, equally importantly, a quality kitchen. The diverse menu at COLORS reflects Jones’ stated food philosophy of “being creative within the context of local offerings”. Jones enumerates this as sourcing local ingredients, telling the rich and varying “food stories” representative of the region’s diversity, and bringing people together over food.
COLORS defies the norms of the restaurant industry by providing employees living wages, promoting access to fresh, healthy food, and supporting good food enterprise. “Our strategy is to lead by example,” Jones says. The hope is that if diners are given an option to choose a restaurant where the food is fresh and local
and the workers are paid and treated fairly, they will show their support with their pocketbooks. The long-range goal is one of innovation and good sense combined: that other businesses will then take notice, and will be influenced and motivated to change their own practices, so that restaurant workers as a whole will be positively impacted. In doing so, COLORS just might change the unchangeable.
Portrait by Marvin Shaouni Photography.