Big meaning for a small word

At Big Bowl, ‘and’ is among our most important and powerful three-letter words.

We believe that restaurants can serve good, clean food AND charge a reasonable price. Operators can run a profitable business AND give back to the community. And most certainly, we believe you can work hard AND have fun.

How often do you hear, “we can do this OR we can do that?” It’s just too easy to go with the choice of  ‘either’ this ‘or’ that. The difference between either/or and AND is usually just a little more effort.

For example, at Big Bowl, we use all natural chicken AND all natural beef, heirloom pork, local and organic vegetables, fresh (which means never frozen) scallops AND calamari and sustainable salmon. AND, we offer all of this at a reasonable price. We could charge more OR not offer these clean products, but we choose to serve good food AND charge a reasonable price.

When the economy tightened up, we didn’t stop supporting local charities. In fact, we took the opposite direction of some companies that halted their efforts by increasing ours. We believe you can make money AND give back, which allows us to support Make-A-Wish, Autism Society of Illinois, the UNICEF Tap Project, Gene Siskel Film Center and Growing Home.

Our belief in ‘and’ carries over to our staff.  Who decided that hard work AND fun can’t go together? Our teams believe in hard work, AND we encourage everyone – whether the cooks on the line or the servers on the floor – to have a good time.  There’s a great sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a hard task/day, especially when you had some fun along the way.

The take-away here is this:  don’t fall into the ‘either’ ‘or’ trap in your personal or work life.  With a little effort, you can make it an ‘AND.’